Some writers drag us along into their writing, wading into a hastily-created and flawed universe of their own making. If you're looking for a fun YA space opera, this is your ticket.Īn Interesting First Foray Into A Unique Universe Best of all, it moves at such a breakneck pace that there's no time to get bored.

The story and themes here are old ones, but it's told with slick tech, cool weapons, and world-building, that ultimately it makes for a lot of fun. This is my first exposure to Goldstrom, and he did a fine job of separating the characters from each other without being distracting. Part of that is due to Michael Goldstrom's solid reading. Khemri starts off as an arrogant youth, and so the story of how he learns to embrace more than his own selfish agendas and learns to love more than himself - told through his voice - feels pretty authentic. It seems like there's a real dearth of YA SF, and so it's refreshing to hear Nix weave such a fun, high tech space opera. But when assassins show up, and his chances of renewal are questionable, the prince has to put his plans of luxury to the side and figure out how to survive. This is especially annoying for Khemri, who'd prefer nothing more than to command a starship, feast, and have sex with his courtesans. An added difficulty is that there's a good chance your fellow Princes are out to kill you so they can advance their own political ambition. If they're deemed unworthy - or for some reason disconnected, that's another story. In Garth Nix's A Confusion of Princes, the thousands and thousands of princes (male OR female can - there are no princesses) are connected to the Imperial Mind, and so if they're killed, and deemed worthy, their uploaded memories and consciousness can be loaded into a new body. Partially because he's not exactly mortal - as he tells us in the opening paragraph, he's died three times. Teenagers often feel like they're immortal, and Prince Khemri of the intergalactic empire is no different.

A Rollicking Space Opera From Beginning to End

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix