Prince Of Fools

This first entry into the Red Queen's War trilogy is about a layabout, womanizing, alcoholic prince. He's also just funny enough not to think he's an utter bastard. Okay, he's quite funny. He's torn away from his life of being thrown from women's windows by their enraged and surprised husbands when he's magically bound to an honourable Viking warrior on a quest to save his family from the undead. So, so many undead. While this trilogy and the Broken Empire trilogy are set concurrently in the same world, the protagonist of this book, Prince Jalan, lacks the ruthless competence of the Broken Empire's Jorg, and as such, the true horror of the undead that run rampant in the world are revealed. Beyond ravenous zombies and recently reanimated corpses, far more personal and monstrous creatures appear to plague Jalan, and it becomes genuinely upsetting and emotional for reasons deeper than mere horror. Mark Lawrence is a master at drawing you inside the heads of his characters, and at times, Jalan's mind is a genuinely unsettling place to be. The prose is superb, and Lawrence has no equal when it comes to intimately personal, first-person fantasy. Read this book if: you want to see a pampered prince get chased halfway up a continent by zombies, and think you might enjoy the quips he makes along the way.