STATUS: First book in The Ascendance Trilogy
AUTHOR: Jennifer A. Nielsen
GENRE: Young Adult, Fantasy, Adventure
PUBLISHER: Scholastic
LOVE TRIANGLE: Not yet. Give it time.
PAGES: 352
I think it's impossible to read this book and NOT compare it to (1) Megan Whalen Turner's "The Thief" and (2) Victoria Aveyard's "The Red Queen." Both feature thief-protagonists --
Sidebar: Are thiefs the new vampires? It seems so.
--who eventually fulfill royal roles. Turner's Gen is a similarly unreliable narrator -- although I think she pulls off that unreliability a bit better. Even at the end, you're still not quite sure where you stand with Gen. Aveyard's Mare is a similar-but-notably-different character -- perhaps because she's female? -- more reliable (you never feel like you can't trust her; in fact, the story works because Mare's uncertainty and precariousness mirror the reader's uncertainty) yet VERY unwilling to fill the role she has to play. But the thing with Mare is that she does whatever she has to in order to survive: readers learn through her internal monologuing that she despises the role she has to play, but, in the end, she goes along with it. (Mare also has a family, whereas Sage does not...here, gender stereotypes seem to be at play: the boy gets the "luxury" of being an unencumbered orphan whereas Mare's desire to protect her family forces her to accept the "unthinkable." Hmmm. Must meditate more on that.)
Either way -- the last 100 pages or so were worth it for me. However, the first 250...not so much. As I was reading, I kept being bothered by a few things:
(1) Sage's Weird Moral Compass: It's no spoiler that Sage isn't like the other orphans. Whereas both Roden and Tobias are, in their own weird ways, willing to do whatever it takes to be Conner's prince (which just sounds weird, no matter how you spin it), Sage just...isn't.
Sidebar: I think this must have been deliberate on Nielsen's part, but the vacillation of the characters just...didn't work for me. First Conner was noble and patriotic, then he wasn't. First Roden was arrogant and rude, then he wasn't. Then Roden was soft and kinda pathetic, then he wasn't. First Tobias was meek and mild, then he wasn't. (Except he totally was.) First Mott was a hard-ass and cut-throat, then he wasn't. Maybe it had something to do with Sage's perceptions of them and his underestimation of them...but his name is "sage," which literally means "wise." I don't know -- it just didn't work for me.
Anyway. Throughout the novel, Sage just isn't willing to go along with The Master Plan. He's stubborn and willful and obstinate and headstrong -- all things we might think we want from our hero-protagonist. Except...it's pretty clear he's fighting for his life. And I don't Jennifer Nielsen or her writing process, so I can't speak to whether or not this was intentional, but it just seems off. Or preternaturally important -- as in, "Hey! Reader! Pay attention! Look at me! Look at me!" Because if Sage is truly an orphan -- if he truly did run away from home and have to fight for his very survival -- and then Conner came along and offered him everything he could possibly dream of, I would think his character would be much more amenable to that plan than Sage actually is.
(2) Conner's Master Plan: Okay. I really dig the premise. Guy wants to groom group of orphans to replace dead prince in order to wield power? Awesome. Lots o' potential. Guy only allows two weeks to complete said plan? LOTS OF PLOT HOLES. (Each of which kinda gets"conveniently" addressed at some point in the narrative. Not a fan.) If the setup of the first book had been Connor's selection of ONE orphan and had involved pitting them against each other with the understanding that he would then further groom the one he chose, I think that would have been...better? I hesitate to use that word. Maybe it might have made for a more believable plot. As it is, I spent the first 200 pages or so going, "Does NOBODY see the giant flaw in this plan?!" After all, if you have a prince who's been missing-presumed-dead for four years, but still spent 10 years at court, SOMEONE is going to know him, to ask him a question that the prince would *reasonably* know. Like, "Oh hey, Prince Jaron. Remember that time we ate pancakes with blueberries all night in the kitchen?" "Oh yeah! That was awesome!" "FAIL. We didn't have pancakes with blueberries! We had waffles with cherries!" It's so cliche it happens on every single imposter storyline ever. But not once did anyone in the first 200 pages seem to address that fact -- that someone would ask "Jaron" a personal question that he wouldn't be able to answer. Everyone was more concerned with knowing history and sword-fighting and horse-back riding. Which, yes, all princely things -- but could easily be explained away by amnesia or something. Which, for the record, I'm glad never came up, because it's a very soap-opera-device, but still. You would think that someone would mention it to Conner -- like, "Oh hey, can't we just say I got hit by a rock? or suffered from a debilitating disease and hovered on the brink of death and the trauma of it all just makes everything fuzzy?" -- if only for Conner to shoot it down. Either way--it seemed like a major plot hole.
In the end, though, there's a reason for that...but that's the twist, and I won't spoil it directly. Let's just say that after 200 pages of being frustrated with things, I put on my Critical Thinking Cap and arrived at a very logical explanation -- which is why the twist wasn't THAT surprising. Satisfying, sure. But not surprising. And the last 100 pages or so did save the book, so I look forward to reading the sequel.
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