Yet another book featuring an Arrogant, Swaggering Shitkicker, though this one doesn't have a heart of gold. Maybe he did, once, but he clawed it out of his own chest, melted it down and coated lead with it, sold it off, spent the lot on gambling and hookers before falling into massive debt and fleeing the country.
Naturally, I enjoyed him quite a bit. I was keeping notes in my Kobo whenever he did something particularly scuzzy; I've never ended up with so many highlights/notes saved in a book before. Goes to show, really.
The setting was a little confusing at first, being a really-close-but-not-quite parallel of Earth as we know it, but little details dropped here and there tells us that Something clearly happened at one point - perhaps a nuclear war, going by the terms 'Thousand Suns' and 'false Ragnarok' that were used - leaving behind a shattered and changed world. I liked it, once I got my head around it.
I'm very keen to read the second book now, if only because I gotta know if Jal doesn't suddenly drop his redemption arc because of the events that happen at the end of Prince of Fools. He tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, will it even matter?
EDIT:: Forgot to mention that my main criticisms with the book were actually technical - maybe it was just the edition I was reading, but there were some grammar mess-ups here and there. Definitely also could've used more commas and semicolons sprinkled about.
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