Book: “Prisoner of the Crown” by Jeffe Kennedy
Publishing Info: Rebel Base Books, June 2018
Where Did I Get this Book: NetGalley
Book Description: Princess Jenna has been raised in supreme luxury—and ignorance. Within the sweet-scented, golden confines of the palace seraglio, she’s never seen the sun, or a man, or even learned her numbers. But she’s been schooled enough in the paths to a woman’s power. When her betrothal is announced, she’s ready to begin the machinations that her mother promises will take Jenna from ornament to queen.
But the man named as Jenna’s husband is no innocent to be cozened or prince to charm. He’s a monster in human form, and the horrors of life under his thumb are clear within moments of her wedding vows. If Jenna is to live, she must somehow break free—and for one born to a soft prison, the way to cold, hard freedom will be a dangerous path indeed…
Review: I picked up this book purely based on the description, not having read anything by the author before or realizing that this was an offshoot of another series. While neither of these things proved to be too great of an obstacle when jumping into this book, I would warn future readers to pay a bit more attention to that book description than I did: monster husband and horrors of life, indeed. It was a bit more and also less than what I was expecting.
Jenna’s childhood was idyllic, but the future before her is anything but. She’s always known what her life’s purpose was, to be the first wife of a powerful husband whom she is meant to serve and provide children. But when she learns that her to-be-husband is a man with a reputation for having his young wives die off on him, she suddenly begins to see this role in a new light. Trained to please, Jenna is unprepared in every way to deal with her new reality, but knows that she must now find an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed to save herself and potentially much more than that.
For the positives, I liked Jenna, overall, as a character. Much of the book is devoted to her slow realization of what her life will be like going forward and what it means to have power in this world. Given the nature of her childhood, its limitations and the forced ignorance that was thrust upon her, Jenna is often naive and frightened, sometimes making very poor decisions. But as the story is told from the perspective of some future Jenna who is recounting her tale, these bouts of ridiculous moments are clearly set up to provide a point of change: she must start out truly struggling to learn to gather what power she can in this world. That doesn’t mean that actually reading through some of these aspects of her character change weren’t a bit cringe-worthy, but I appreciated the reality added to the story that Jenna wouldn’t simply suddenly become POWERFUL WOMAN after what her childhood had been.
That said, while much attention was given to this slow-burn characterization on Jenna’s part, I had troubles with the story as far as world-building and pacing goes. It was one of those strange mixes of a book where the story was too short to truly feel as if the world-building had been flushed out but also read incredibly slowly. Perhaps this world-building wouldn’t have been an issue had I read the other series, but a general criticism for books like this is that they should still be capable of supporting their world on their own, unreliant on a reader’s knowledge of a different series. As for the pacing, it wasn’t until almost 75% of the way through the book before I felt like the action was really beginning to pick up.
And while I liked the slow development of Jenna’s character over that first 75% of the book, I also very much struggled with the subject matter. This book doesn’t shy away from the monstrosity that is Jenna’s husband and the humiliation and objectification that Jenna undergoes at his hands. This is where my biggest issue with the book lay. I wasn’t quite clear on what the author was trying to do with this story. Obviously some level of criticism about the violent patriarchy that makes up this world was present, but it also felt almost a bit too close to torture porn at other time for any seriousness of its message to really get through. The tone was a bit strange, with a fantasy romp somehow being tied into a Margret Atwood-type dystopia ala “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Personally, for me, the violence and misogynism was a bit too much and started to feel as if it was being sensationalized.
I’m still curious about where Jenna’s story will go after this book, and have hopes that a sequel might not include as many cringe-worthy scenes. But I’m also not dying to get my hands on it. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. If you’ve read other books by this author, particularly the “Twelve Kingdoms” series, you might want to check this out, but I also give a strong warning to the casual reader about the darkness that this includes and the fact that it was a bit of a slower read.
Rating 5: Didn’t absolutely hate it, but made me incredibly uncomfortable at times and didn’t do enough to justify the use of that discomfort in a meaningful way.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Prisoner of the Crown” is a new book so it isn’t on many Goodreads lists, but it should be on something like “The Grimdarks.”
Find “Prisoner of the Crown” at your library using WorldCat.
The Library Ladies 