This is part of a Book Review Blast hosted by MotherDaughterBookReviews, and I was lucky enough to receive both the first and second ebooks free for review.  My review of Prince Iggy and the Kingdom of Naysayer is here.  Now for the second in the series.

I finished the previous review saying I thought Prince Iggy’s story would be well-served by the second book.  In fact it continues where we left off – like starting a new chapter. Our heroes continue on the ship they sailed away from Naysayer at the end of the first book and turn it into a spacecraft to visit the Rose Star, which is sending help messages.  A control box was dropped, which seemed to be important, but they didn’t need it later, which puzzled me.  The first part of the book is an interesting morality tale of wishing you could be someone else.

At 67 percent of the way through we reach Part 2: Prince Iggy and the Tower of Decisions.  The wicked queen (so much for getting rid of poor female stereotypes in children’s literature) and Iggy have to fight through levels of challenges to reach the top of the bell-tower.  This turns out quite exciting, like watching Simon Cowell on his latest talent show, and proves that being true to yourself does not beat cheating.  We do not reach the end of the story in this book, since Iggy is adrift in a boat, rocking on the waves into the next book.

Have I mentioned how much I detest series that don’t have completed stories?   I wish the author hadn’t done that.  Naysayer and the Rose Star episode would make a good book 1.  Tower of Decisions plus however Iggy gets away in the future story sounds fine for a second.

But I was also disappointed because the narrator starts that old-fashioned “my dear reader” lark, which sounds amazingly patronising.  But Prince Iggy is an old-fashioned kind of tale.  I don’t know why, maybe it’s just language choices or a fairy-tale sort of style.  I tried comparing Prince Iggy to The Princess and the Goblin, which is the nearest I can think.  I know I found George MacDonald’s style old-fashioned but it was a cracking good tale.  Prince Iggy and the Tower of Decisions is a good tale, but not cracking, and it wasn’t written eighty years ago.

Of course I’m not an 8 to 12 year old.  I think the eight year olds will love it, and badger mom or dad to buy the next one straight away so they can find out how the story ends.  I suspect most of the twelve year olds will have had enough of the morality tales by now, but it may grab a reluctant reader.

I’ve given it three stars, which on Goodreads is “I liked it”.  It’s got some very good writing and the tale is a mixture of thoroughly inventive and rehashed fairy tale.  I’m sure lots of people will love it.

But as I had so much time left in my reading slot I read Paul R Hewlett’s wonderful Lionel and the Golden Rule as well.  You can find my review of that on Goodreads.

PS.  I’m way behind on posting my reviews to Amazon.  I will get there soon, I promise – when I get back from Camp.

 

Book Review: Prince Iggy and the Tower of Decisions by Aldo Fynn

One thought on “Book Review: Prince Iggy and the Tower of Decisions by Aldo Fynn

Comments are closed.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers: