(3.5 stars rounded up)

Prince of Thorns sat on my shelf for 4 years. This was my, probably 3rd attempt to read it. I never got past the first couple of chapters before - but I'm glad I came back to it because I very much enjoyed it this time around.

Oh Jorg, the 14 year old edge lord with both daddy and mommy issues, what an interesting protagonist to follow. He's a terrible person but I could not help but want to see him succeed.

The bits of world building that Lawrence has sprinkled in has me hooked. I am a sucker for

Spoiler

a post apocalyptic fantasy world built on the back of the previous sins of humanity

. I can't wait to see how the setting factors into the plots of the later books.

My biggest complaint is that you can tell that this was written by a white dude. There's two non-white characters in this book, and one of them isn't even named. And I'm missing a female character to help contextualize the world. Knowing what we do about the setting, I'd think that the status of women would be different from medieval Europe, or at least worth exploring a little more. But, there's also 2 more books of world building so we'll see.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series and seeing what fucked up adventure Jorgy goes on next.