Review: Protect the Prince

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review contains spoilers.

Protect the Prince takes place a few months after the events of Kill the Queen. Everleigh has reluctantly settled in to her duties as queen of Bellona. Even after defeating her cousin Vasilia and claiming the crown for herself, Evie still hasn't won the minds and the hearts of her people because she is still seen as unworthy of her status.

After proving to the nobles that she is no weak queen, Evie ends up thwarting her first of three assassination attempts. With a keen sense of smell and her immunity to magic (mutt magic) she defeats her assassin, not before the young woman takes her own life.

This sets off a series of unanswered questions for our heroine which forces her to take a trip to Andvari to see King Heinrich to convince him to have a peace treaty with Bellona.

However, not everything is smooth sailing for Evie in Andvari, as she is seen as the cause of the deaths of the Henrich's son, Frederich and many others. The nobles give her a less than welcoming feeling as she finds herself in a battle to the death against the Andvarian captain Rhea, with whom has a grudge against Evie for the death of her father, Lord Hans.

Estep's book has Evie explain many times that she doesn't want to appear weak in front of people, therefore she must go out of her way to prove to others that she has what it takes to be a Winter queen (making the hard choices for the good of her kingdom regardless of what the cost is to herself).

It is because these hard choices that Evie eventually decides to marry her love interest's, older brother, Dominic as per the king's demands. Realizing that she and the future prince had served a second assassination attempt, and discovering that Heinrich was poisoned by someone close to him, Evie ultimately decides to marry Dominic, (but not really wanting to marry him or go through with the engagement) so she can lure the would-be assassins into a trap.

Her decision breaks Sullivan's heart and her own in the process.

As the story progresses, Sullivan tries to change Evie's mind about marrying is legitimate brother. When they make love for the first time. But soon as the moment is over, Evie is reminded of her duty to protect the prince and tells Sullivan that it was just a one time thing between them.

Sensing that Mortans are outside in the shadows and her being outnumbered, Evie breaks Sullivan's heart all over again by telling him that she could never be with him because he was nothing more than a bastard prince.

She let herself get captured by Maeven the Bastard Brigade and it is soon revealed that Sullivan's mother, Dahlia is the one who was poisoning the king and behind the second assassination attempt.

After some exchanging of words, Evie is saved by Gemma and her faithful gargoyle, Grimley. Sullivan comes back to the rescue and fights the Mortan goons.

Sully gets injured and Evie's true power is shown. Her immunity to magic doesn't just work with touching a magier, she can hone in their power and seize it (taking their power away permanently?)

Once the Mortans are defeated while Maeven escapes, Sullivan and his family stay in Glitnir to process what has happened and to give life to the treaty between two kingdoms.

Evie then returns to Seven Spire to her mundane court duties when Sully comes to ring the bell at the Pureheart bridge declaring his love for the Winter queen.

She climbs down and they share a kiss.

Analysis:

I liked the book, but I felt like something was missing from this one compared to the first one. I was introduced to all these new characters like Cho, Serilda, Paloma and Xenia etc. But most of the characters are reduced to background characters. I wanted to see more from these characters.

I understand that Evie and her search of finding the persons responsible for the assassination attempts was the driving force of the story, I would still like to see more character development in most of these characters.

The book took place over a span of three days? That is a short time for all of the events to go down compared to the first book which occurred over a span of months.

I don't know if it's just me, but the book feels a bit rushed, but a good read nonetheless.

I like the fact that we got to find out how Evie's family died and that she carries the watch that her father's killer had. It will be a constant reminder of who were she came from and who she is today.

In addition, there were a couple of grammatical errors, but can be easily overlooked.

With that being said, I can't wait to read the third installment Crush the King next year!

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