Last year I requested a review copy of The Lord of Stariel on a whim and loved it! So when the author contacted me a month ago asking me to review the second book in the series, The Prince of Secrets, I jumped at the chance. I am happy to report that I loved the second book just as much as the first. I do want to make it clear that my review is 100% my own thoughts and is in no way influenced by the author’s decision to give me a review copy. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s begin!
The story picks up a week or two after the end of the first book. It opens with Wyn trying to find a pregnant cat before she has her kittens where she shouldn’t. I thought this was a great way to begin the book because it gives the reader a chance to refamiliarize themselves with Stariel House and the characters Wyn interacts with while he searches.
We get a lot more fae creatures in this book, which was awesome! While we get some familiar-sounding ones, such as brownies, we also are introduced to some creatures I’ve never heard of! For example, Hetta and Wyn discover a starcorn, which is kind of like a unicorn, but it is purple and blue and indigo and is only about the size of a large dog. It sounded so pretty! I wish we could have had a drawing of it!
We also get a look at the world of Faerie itself. I’d been curious about Wyn’s home realm since we first found out he was fae, so when I got to the chapter that showed the capital city of Aerest in ThousandSpire, I was really excited. We didn’t get much more than a glimpse of the city from afar, though. I was hoping to get to learn more about how the fae live. I wanted answers to questions like: How do they decorate their homes? What do they wear, fashion-wise? Do they use money to buy necessities or do they barter? These are just some of the things I was curious about.
One thing I’d like to mention is the author’s choice of fae names. Sometimes when I read a fantasy book, the author will try to come up with unique-sounding names for their characters/creatures and end up with an unpronounceable name that I inevitably just skip over every time it appears. In Lancaster’s books, however, the names are unique without being unpronounceable. For example, Wyn has a brother named Rakken and a sister named Aroset. I thought the author did a marvelous job at finding the balance between generic and unique when choosing the fae names in this book.
I found a couple of typos in The Prince of Secrets. There was also a scene where the senior housekeeper comes to tell Wyn something despite a previous sentence that stated she left earlier in the day due to a family emergency. These mistakes didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story, though. Also, keep in mind that I am very good at spotting errors in books, so most people probably won’t even notice these things.
I really enjoyed The Prince of Secrets and give it four stars! Now for the hard part: Waiting for the next book to come out!
