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Javan Najafai has spent the last 10 years at an elite boarding school with only one goal in mind — to fulfill his mother’s dying wish. If he can do that, he can go home to his father, the King of Akram. He can take pride in who he is and what he’s accomplished, knowing his father is proud of him and knowing he’s prepared to be the best ruler he possibly can be for his people. But when a mysterious imposter takes his place, no one believes Javan is the true prince, and he finds himself thrown into Maqbara, the most dangerous prison in Akram.
The only way to gain an audience with the king and unveil the truth about his identity is to fight in Maqbara’s annual tournament, but when winning means facing terrifying beasts in the arena, as well as a band of prisoners intent on killing him, Javan realizes the odds of coming out alive are not in his favor.
The only person who can help him is the prickly Sajda, a girl enslaved by the warden since she was a child, who carries a deadly secret of her own. If they can outwit the warden and survive the arena, Javan just might have the chance to save his father and the kingdom and give Sajda back her freedom. If they fail, he’ll die a prisoner right under his father’s nose, and no one will ever know the truth.
I adore all things fairy tale, so when I discovered the Ravenspire series — a group of companion novels all about fairy tales — I knew I had to give them try. And when I found out The Traitor Prince was a mash-up of The Prince and the Pauper with a lesser-known fairy tale called The False Prince, I snatched it up immediately.
While the story itself was interesting and held my attention, the writing felt distant and stagnant. I’ve had some previous experience with C. J. Redwine’s writing, so I was a little surprised to find this story lacking the quality of the others. However, it was still an enjoyable read, and I fully intend to give the rest of the books in the series a try.
Rated: Mild. There is no profanity. Two characters kiss. Surprisingly, there is a lot of violence, blood, and death, though nothing too descriptive. Still, characters are constantly battling for their lives in an arena against mythical beasts and fellow prisoners. There are also a couple of areas that readers might find particularly unsettling, featuring the torturous way a character died (the main characters discovered him dead and were not witness to it), hinting at a barbaric source of the prisoners’ food, and the villain strangling his own father to death.
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