Jennifer Estep’s Protect the Prince continues the story she started in Kill the Queen, following the saga of a young noble turned gladiator who must first fight for her life and then her kingdom. And while the novel isn’t perfect — more on that later — it’s nevertheless a fast-paced, exciting ride full of twists and turns.
Protect the Prince picks up a short time after the events of the previous novel. New Queen Everleigh Saffira Winter Blair must properly establish her reign, now that she’s killed her monstrous cousin and claimed the throne of Bellona as the last surviving member of her family line.
But her new reign will not be an easy one, as she must contend with constantly demanding nobles within her country, hammer out a peace treaty with a neighboring kingdom and deal with the encroaching threat of the Mortan Empire. Within the story’s first chapters, Evie faces an assassination attempt and has to fight off multiple marriage proposals from men she doesn’t love.
Being queen is maybe not as much fun as its cracked up to be. Or at least that’s how it looks.
Despite the fact that it’s full of adventure and political machinations, Protect the Prince remains a story primarily about Evie, and that is a very good thing. We watch her struggle to believe in herself as a queen and to have faith in her own decisions, particularly when they go against tradition or expectation. She begins the story at a loss about what being a Winter queen even means in a broader sense, and ends it by putting her own stamp on what it means to be a leader in Bellona.
Evie also spends a great deal of the book attempting to figure out what, exactly, her relationship is with Lucas Sullivan, the illegitimate prince of Andvari and her former training partner in the Black Swan gladiator troupe. Since he’s not a true prince, he technically can’t be with Evie romatically as she’ll eventually have to marry for the good of her kingdom and not as her heart prefers.
Her ultimate journey is one in which she claims her own power and discovers precisely what she’s capable of, both from a magical and personal perspective. It’s immensely satisfying and feels very earned. It’s hard not to love Evie, who means so well and tries so hard at all times.
Her trip to the neighboring kingdom of Andvari is full of lots of action, as more plots against her life are discovered and she must sort out how to build a relationship with the very same royal family that her cousin murdered several members of in the last book. There’s grief and rage and sadness, but some redemption and forgiveness too.
Also, gargoyles. Which, surprise, are actually real in this universe and are actually kind of adorable?
Most of the major players from Kill the Queen are also present here. However, Protect the Prince doesn’t devote nearly as much time to the story’s supporting characters as its predecessor did. In the first novel, Paloma, Serilda, Cho, Xenia and others are important figures with their own agendas and arcs. Here, they don’t have nearly as much to do, either as individuals or as people who have preexisting relationships with Evie. They’re just kind of, well, there. And that’s a disappointment.
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Paloma’s entire purpose in Protect the Prince basically involves spinning her mace threateningly at anyone who looks at Evie funny. And Serilda — such a force in the first novel — barely even gets the chance to speak in this one, and we learn nothing more about her bizarre time-bending prophetic abilities. This is a particular shame since these women, as well as the rest of the Black Swan troupe, were something that really helped Kill the Queen stand out. I miss those relationships and that side of the story.
Obviously, Evie can’t exactly fight gladiator matches any more. She’s queen now, and that comes with certain responsibilities and duties that generally take over the bulk of her life. But the almost complete erasure of so much of what made the first novel in this saga unique is…it’s upsetting.
On the plus side, we do learn quite a bit more about Sullivan. We meet his father King Heinrich, his half-brother Dominic, his mother Dahlia — who’s been the king’s mistress for decades — and even his ex-girlfriend Helene. Sullivan, it turns out, has some deep-seated self-worth issues as a result of growing up as an also-ran in his own home, and watching him deal with that is a pretty interesting development. (At least if we discount the fact that he often takes out his emotional state on those around him, which gets real annoying, real quick.)
As a result of all this, Evie and Sullivan’s whatever-they-are-to-one-another relationship becomes even more complicated as they both struggle with varying degrees of despair, jealousy, longing and more. And the position in which they find themselves by the end of the story feels both earned and right.
On some level, Protect the Prince suffers from being an intermediate volume within a larger story, which likely explains why some of its characters don’t necessarily get their due. But it’s also an exciting, entertaining ride that will leave everyone eager to see what happens in Crush the King.
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