Review: The Last Life of Prince Alastor by Alexandra Bracken

The Last Life of Prince Alastor by Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  This was released today February 5, 2019. 

This is the fun and whimsical sequel to The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, which I adored. This book was a little too whimsical and slow paced for my tastes. It is still fun and has all of the great characters from the first book. I would still highly recommend it to the middle grade crowd.

The plot picks up with Prosper and Alastor heading Downstairs to save Prosper's sister Prue from Alastor's sister Pyra. You would think they would go on some amazing adventure, and they do, it just takes a long time for for the action to develop. This is where the pacing was off for me. The boy and the fiend just kind of wander around dealing with different kinds of fiends and accomplish nothing for about half the book before anything exciting happens. I had so much fun reading the first book, but this one just didn't have the same feel. I think because this takes place in the realm of the fiends, there were many scenes that were just kind of silly that I think middle grade readers will LOVE, I'm going to recommend this series to my 10 year old for sure. This is where the book was just a bit too much on the whimsical side for me.

There is a ton of character development in this book. I was excited that Nell came along for the adventure and we get to know her more and see her develop as a witch. Prosper also develops a ton as a character as he is faced with many tough decisions on his journey to save his sister. We also get to know Alastor better both in the present and in the past as we get quite a bit of his back story when he dealt with Honor Redding and made his original bargain. There are quite a few twists when it comes to the characters in the book that I really liked.

That being said the 2nd half of the book picks up was fairly exciting and a lot happens. There is magic, there are some really interesting fantasy creatures who are really well described, the fiend world of Downstairs is well developed, and I think as far as the story goes it wrapped up nicely.

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