The Oddling Prince by Nancy Springer – Review

Published: May 15, 2018

Publisher: Tachyon Publications

Series: Standalone

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 288 (Paperback)

My Rating: 3.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

In the ancient moors of Scotland, the king of Calidon lies on his deathbed, cursed by a ring that cannot be removed from his finger. When a mysterious fey stranger appears to save the king, he also carries a secret that could tear the royal family apart.

The kingdom’s only hope will lie with two young men raised worlds apart. Aric is the beloved heir to the throne of Calidon; Albaric is clearly of noble origin yet strangely out of place.

The Oddling Prince is a tale of brothers whose love and loyalty to each other is such that it defies impending warfare, sundering seas, fated hatred, and the very course of time itself. In her long-awaited new fantasy novel, Nancy Springer (the Books of Isle series) explores the darkness of the human heart as well as its unceasing capacity for love.

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I’ll be honest, The Oddling Prince was mostly a cover based request… It was just so pretty and the synopsis did intrigue me a bit too. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in to this one since I’d seen both rave reviews and others that described it as boring. I can see both sides of the argument here and didn’t feel strongly either way.

Aric a prince in Northern Scotland and his father is laying upon his deathbed, at least until a mysterious stranger rides into the castle yard. This stranger is Albaric, who is a prince of the fae and Aric’s half-brother. Albaric saves the king (his father) from the enchantment put upon him by the slighted fae queen and all should be well. Except it is not. While Aric and Albaric immediately click, their father dislikes Albaric immensely and is hostile to the point of violence in some cases. This book primarily focuses on Aric and Albaric’s growing brotherhood and how they handle their father’s treatment of them and his changed personality since his miraculous recovery.

The Oddling Prince is written in a very classic fantasy style – think a style similar to Tolkein- rather than the more modern prose that most fantasy authors are using. Also, while not lacking in action, it’s certainly not the main focus of this book, which focuses far more on the relationships between our characters. I think these two factors are the biggest reasons why people are less than happy with this book. I personally didn’t mind that there was less action than in many fantasy books and this ended up being a leisurely read. My gripe with this book wasn’t so much the book, but rather Aric’s father. I couldn’t stand his character and felt like he was being a jealous a-hole and super paranoid, especially since both Aric and Albaric were clearly good hearted.

I liked that this book defied my expectations for Aric and Albaric’s meeting. I expected the usual immediate rivalry between the half siblings, but to my pleasant surprise they hit it off and became inseparable. Their interactions tended to be melodramatic at times but it worked with the storytelling. The Oddling Prince had a strong Celtic lore influence and it ended just as strangely as these tales tend to do.

This was a book that I liked but it didn’t grip me the way other books have in the past. That being said, it was well written and quite different from what’s being published in the mainstream fantasy field presently. The ocean scene at the end has quite a few people puzzled, but I thought it was a nice ending and a scene that I would like to see illustrated. This is a great book to break up the monotony of reading the same ol’ stuff all the time, but it definitely won’t be a good fit for everyone.