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336 pages, Unknown Binding
First published May 31, 2016


“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can. Because I slept for five hundred years and now I want some sport.”






“Why do I matter to you?”
“You don’t.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I can. Because I slept for five hundred years and now I want some sport.”
“Fortune favors the bold."
"So does death."
Welcome to the Kingdom of Tregellan. A place ruled by logic and science. The opposite of Lormer, which we aquatinted ourselves with in book one.We’re not Lormerians, with their temples and their living goddesses, and their creepy royal family. We’re people of science, and reason.
But what happens when a 500 year old fairy-tale wakes up? Where logic goes? Right, out of the window. People panic. People turn to superstition. It's in their nature to seek shelter in anything that at least slightly can reassure them. But nor logic, nor Gods can give such shelter any longer. What happens when hope is lost?“Burn all the food, and people will starve, weaken, and turn on one another. Destroy the temples and their acolytes, and the people will have nowhere to turn, no sanctuary, no charity. No hope.
Then people turn into monsters. They steal, they betray, they kill. This is a new world. Our heroine Errin lives in this world, in a god forsaken place called Almwyk. Just six months ago - which now feel like ages ago - she had it all: family, home, occupation, friends. Now she lives in a shack with ill mother and only her skills as an apothecary to make and sell dangerous poisons to sustain them. She lives in constant fear that greedy local mayor will take advantage of her, that hunger will never pass, that soldiers will come someday and kill her, that tomorrow will never come.
Once upon a time there was a young apprentice apothecary who lived on a red-brick farm with a golden thatch roof, surrounded by green fields. She had a father who called her a “clever girl” and gave her a herb garden all of her own, and a mother who was whole and kind. She had a brother who knew how to smile and laugh.
But then one day her father had an accident and, despite her efforts to save him, he died. And so did all of her hopes and dreams. The farm – the family’s home for generations – was sold. Her mother’s brown hair greyed, her spirit dulled as she drifted towards Almwyk like a wraith, uncomplaining, unfeeling. And her brother, once impulsive and joyful, became cold and hard, his eyes turned east with malice.
Errin has an only friend - Silas - a man she met a few months ago in the woods, who became, first her client for poisons, and then her only friend. But Errin never saw his face; he's always hooded and inconspicuous. It's no wonder he acts that way, because anyone can betray anyone, and you can't trust a soul with your life or your secrets. But at least Silas is here and he's a friend, or is he?
Errin is one of the strongest heroines I've read about. She lives a terrible life, she struggles everyday; she's no hero, she does what she must to survive.If it were real gold someone would have had it off her neck by now – Gods, if it were real gold, I might have had it off her neck. At least if it were gold it would be worth something.
But despite all of it, she's so head-strong I couldn't not admire her.Enough. I don’t have time for this; self-pity’s a luxury that I can’t afford.
Like bread. Or pride.
Enough, Errin. There’s work to do. Get up.
She stands up, she goes on, she fights. There's nothing that matters more to her than family. Family always comes first. But also, family is the thing that hurts us the most, or is it?
MythologyThat’s the trouble with knowing things: you can’t un-know them. Once you let yourself look at them, or say them aloud, they become real.
Remember how the world looked in book one? We were isolated. We knew almost nothing. With the heroine Twylla we pieced information crumb by crumb, but if you thought you knew anything in the end of book one, reconsider. Now our world is widening, we are not just in one palace; we travel, we learn, we gasp in terror, we run. But oh, how deviously genius Melinda Salisbury is in her spinning of the story: we thought going "outdoors" will make us less claustrophobic, but after this book you will want to cuddle and lock yourself in a castle again.
This new world is terrifying. Monsters do not live in fairy tales any longer. They roam the land, collecting souls for their master. What we thought was real turned out half truth: going from teller to teller and changing in the process until it became unrecognizable, but we still believed that new lighter version. The author stamps on our belief; it crumbles under new facts that grow and spread without any regard for what was before. Religion, science, myth - everything becomes one. It felt like my eyes were open before, but, no, before I looked at the world with wide closed eyes, and now I am wide awake.
Twist upon twist. The pacing of the book is so rapid, I didn't have time for respite. I don't remember when was the last time I read a book with so many twists in it. Maybe never. I felt like Jon Snow: You know nothing, Nastassja! Honestly, I don't know how I've survived the book with so many emotions coursing through me. And after all the revelations and twists I still can't imagine what will happen in book three! That is how one writes a book! You can make as much theories as you please, but the story is so unpredictable, you probably will end up in the opposite direction from your theories.
I deliberate giving little information about characters. This book, as the previous one, is written from the 1st POV, so we see everything through Errin's perspective. She's a more reliable narrator than Twylla, and there was never a question from my side why the girl acted one way or another. Errin was a perfect narrator to follow on this terrifying journey. Reading this book also gave me a new angle to look at the characters from book one. Dead or alive - you will understand them better, and some of them will surprise you, because, again, you thought you knew them, but you didn't, not really. Character-development is fantastic in this series. The author shows and tells, and it's evidently that at first the author created the whole story and then divided it into three parts by giving information to us in little doses vial after vial, and, at times, deliberately misleading us, because first impressions are deceptive and you can't look into the problem's core without learning the problem from A to Z.
The language is a thing in itself: so beautiful, so very measured, like an alchemic formula coming to life if composed correctly. It was a pure joy to read this story and savor every word, every symbol of it.
This story is a pure alchemy on which it is easy to become addicted. If you haven't read The Sin Eater's Daughter - go read it! And then come back and read this book. If you read book one and it didn't make you feel, give The Sleeping Prince a chance to awaken your feelings, trust me, the guy knows a thing or two about slumber.
11 out of 10
"Be a good girl, or the Bringer will come, and then the Sleeping Prince will eat your heart."
"From our first meeting, to today, he has always, always been hooded, gloved and cloaked, and he’s never removed them, never even pushed them aside, whether we’re indoors or out. When I asked him why, he told me it was safer like that. For us both. And to not ask again.
Mysterious boys are not as enjoyable in reality as they are in stories."
“If someone had told me six moons ago, before I watched my life slip through my hands like water, that my mother would be cursed, locked away, and drugged by my own hand, I would have laughed in their face. Then I would have kicked them for the insult and laughed again.”
“Other people come and go, but family is for ever.”
��“The apothecary, the monk and the living Goddess went to war. We sound like the start of a joke.”
— The King of Rats (Крысиный король) #0.5/3
— The Sin Eater’s Daughter (Дочь пожирательницы грехов) #1/3
— The Sleeping Prince (Спящий принц) #2/3
— The Scarecrow Queen (Королева-пугало) #3/3

Ok forget book one and everything it could've been... this one actually delivers some of it.
Errin is the sister of Lief and is left alone with a mother who turned into a beast. A folklore tale like the Sleeping Prince which Errin didn't belive in at first but after the return of the Prince, who knows what is real anymore and what isn't?
With no parental supervision and stuck in a town you can't even trust your own shadow... Errin meets Silas. A mysterious boy that she sells homemade poison to.
Even tho she considers him her only friend and he knows everything about her and her life before she had to move here.... She knows nothing about him. Not even what he looks like.
He wears a tunic that covers his entire face appart from his mouth. Even his hands are covered with gloves.
They never make direct skin contact and everytime she asks him a question about him, he tells her “Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.”
However when the Sleeping Prince declares War agains the entire land, they are forced to flee.
Silas has a mission, to find a girl that is important to all of this but betraying her, Errin makes it her mission to find the girl first and find a way to help her mother.
+ I know he is a psychopath and has no redeeming quality in him but I looooove him.
He made it in my favorite Villains list. (The Darkling will always be no 1!)


I hate the feeling that I’m breathing in my neighbours’ breaths, hate knowing that even the air I breathe these days is second-hand, or stolen. I can hardly breathe as it is.
Loss washes over me, breaking like a tide, my insides feeling hollow, my eyes smarting, and I fist my hands and rub them angrily.
Enough. I don’t have time for this; self-pity’s a luxury that I can’t afford.
Like bread. Or pride.
Enough, Errin. There’s work to do. Get up.
________
I force myself to speak. To beg.
“Please let us go,” I say, my voice cracking. “I beg you. Please. I won’t tell anyone I saw you. I won’t say anything. Please let us go—” Then my control breaks and the words come out as a sob. “Please, please. Have mercy on us…” I’m shaking so hard now that I can’t speak; all my courage has left me. I’m afraid I’m going to wet myself; I’m afraid it’s going to hurt. I’m ashamed that I begged; Lief never would have. I can’t remember what you call a prince. “My Lord.” I try to bow as best I can. “Please, Your Grace…”
________
“She sat there, Silas. I ran into the room to defend her. I would have died trying to save her but she didn’t do anything. She stared at the wall while her daughter, her only living child, was struggling before her. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t fight. Not after that.”
________
Lief and I ate separately, both of us seething because he’d demanded I make the supper and I had refused.
“But it’s your job.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Yes.”
I glared at him. “You’d better not let Papa hear you saying that.”
“I’ve never seen Father cook a meal, have you? That’s Mother’s job.”
“Well, today I was a farmer and that’s a man’s job. Which means today I am a man and I’m cooking nothing for you.”