I love Megan Derr stories. So sweet and lovely and hopeful and her characters always fit together so perfectly well. This was yet another beautiful example.Reyes is a lovely main character, sweet and self-effacing, hard-working and loyal, and completely in love with Kinnaird. The world was also interesting. Great to see more of the world of Kria, and a fascinating new continent where magic is used in fascinating ways. I read this older edition since I won a paperback copy from a giveaway, so I'll not really quickly that while there are typo issues on occasion, they weren't too big and they may have been fixed in the newer edition.Anyway, I had been a bit shy about starting the book, if only because I belatedly realized it was the third story in that particular universe. No worries, though, since this is purely stand-alone as far as I could tell.First off, I really enjoyed the world-building in this particular story, especially the facts that the climate really affects the way the country shown is run and it has royals that actually do something (in that it's not all about nobles hosting parties all the time or having occasional hearings; there's actual paperwork, martial commands, gathering intel, etc. but I'm probably making that sound boring).The only real issues I actually had with the story were the romance and the resolution. I'll just separately deal with those in a spoiler-free way:While Reyes and Kinnaird, the protagonist couple, are cute, I didn't really connect with them all that much, personally. Reyes honestly stayed belligerent toward Kinnaird about the possibility of a romance and kept telling him no for the most part towards physical affection in particular (there's a lot of kiss stealing, comparatively speaking), so that probably didn't help me jump on board to say the least. I think I can see what the effect was supposed to have been, Reyes trying to avoid the possibility because of his upbringing in comparison to Kinnaird's rank, but it didn't work for me. I would've enjoyed if there was more emotional progression between them instead of swinging between vehement "he's not my boyfriend" and "he's away and I'm fretting over him, so maybe I do like him that much, too". They are still pleasant characters, though, and I did enjoy some of their interactions.For the resolution, I'll just say that everything right at the end fell very neatly into place. It was maybe a bit too tidy, considering everything that had been building up to it.Still, overall I was curious to see what would happen, and it was a quick enough read. I don't regret picking it up and I had some fun reading through it.
What do You think about The Bastard Prince (2000)?
This had a very different feel from the other stories set in the Prisoner world.
—soccerd14
Nothing great or too in depth; a nice quick, fluffy read. I liked it.
—Josephine
