This review is also available on my blog, Read Till Dawn.

Honestly, just look at that cover. Does this look like a good book to you? Snail's leggings are truly hideous, and Aspen . . . well, he kind of looks like a girl. Which is kind of ironic, thinking after having read the second book.

Yeah, I've already read the second book as well. Because while The Hostage Prince looks very mediocre from the cover, it's actually really, really good. My mother, who also read it, was willing to make a special library run the day the second book (The Last Changeling) came in, even though she'd been running around all day doing errands, just because she wanted to read it so badly. She finished it that same night.

The thing about the Seelie Wars books is that they don't pull any punches - sometimes literally. As middle grade fiction goes, this series is surprisingly dark and full of violence (a lot of it implied, but some deaths actually shown). This makes the tale that much more gripping for the main characters, and makes me love them that much more for not being like the people (er, creatures) around them. Because they live in a world of ruthlessness, where any sign of mercy or sympathy is treated like a deadly crime, their own behavior becomes that much more endearing. I love the way that they begin the book behaving the way most people of their respective classes would to each other (the prince completely in charge, Snail completely submissive), but then the wall between them breaks farther and farther down as the story progresses. There just reaches a point when you're in danger and it's more important to grab someone's hand and drag them away than it is to ask their permission for touching them, you know?

Snail makes for a great main character, because she's not a huge rebel. Honestly, I'm sick of stories about girls raised in servitude who spend all of their time revolting. Snail is the low of the low, and she knows it. She understands her own position of weakness, and while she may get a little bitter from time to time (when the nobility get especially capricious), and she never loses her own self-respect, most of the time she just goes along with however things are going. She begins to gradually lose this mindset of needing to "keep her place" as the story goes on and she develops a friendship with Aspen.

Speaking of the prince, he's not always the brightest bulb. But then again, I think that goes along with his upbringing. He's basically just meant to be a placeholder to keep war from breaking out between two kingdoms; there's really nothing he can be expected to actually do with his life besides that, so he hasn't exactly gotten a lot of stimulating training or anything. I love him a lot, though, especially as the book goes on and he begins to discover things about himself and how the world works that he had never even considered before (for example: just because someone isn't born into royalty, doesn't mean he or she is good for nothing more than cleaning up after you - she might actually make a great friend, too).

So yeah, I'm a huge new fan of the Seelie Wars series (and of Jane Yolen's!), and I can't wait to read the third book. Keep an eye out for my review of book two, The Last Changeling, in the next couple of weeks! ( )

Eh. It's not bad for a YA book, but I found it very hard to find anyone I wanted to root for, let alone identify with. Aspen/Bran is a wimp - he's spent 7 years there, mostly (according to what we're told) yearning after the twin princesses and taking lessons. No friends - we don't get to see him talking to Jaunty, and Old Jack Daw has his own agenda, but he's never (apparently) even talked to anyone else, just interacted with those assigned to him. Nor has he made any enemies - he's just "gone along to get along", taking no action. Snail's lack of drive is more reasonable, since she has many fewer choices in her life - but she has acquaintances at best (plus at least one enemy), no real friends. Chekov's gun - her appearance should be very important, since it's carefully described several times, but it seems to be irrelevant, at least as far as this book goes. The book also ends...not on a cliffhanger, but without any solid ending. It's Part One of a single story, not even the first book of a trilogy - a good series has completed arcs within each book as well as the overall arc. Overall eh. I'm not sorry I read it, and I _might_ even pick up the second book if I happen to come across it, but I won't be looking for it. I was surprised, afterward, to notice Jane Yolen's name on it - I would have expected better from her, so I suspect it's mostly Stemple's writing. ( )