The Child Prince

The Artifactor, Book 1

By: Honor Raconteur

Narrated by: Cheridah Best

Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Sevana Warran, reigning prodigy Artifactor of the age, has absolutely no desire to selflessly serve her fellow man. She wants, in fact, to be left alone so that she can putter about in her workroom.

But her efforts in avoiding other people prove to be in vain. The reigning family of Windamere is no longer sitting upon the throne and the Council has instead taken power. The sole hope of avoiding the evil machinations of the Council is Bellomi Dragonmanovich, Prince of Windamere. As a 21-year-old cursed into the body of a perpetual eight-year-old, he lacks the power and ability to stop the Council.

Sevana, after a judicious review of the situation, decides that she cannot let things continue. If she did, she'd never be left alone and would instead be buried in paperwork if the Council has anything to say about it. So she kidnaps the prince from where he was locked away in the palace and sets about breaking his curse.

Prince and Artifactor quickly realize that simply breaking the curse won't be enough to free Windamere from the Council. It will take training, cunning, allies, information, and more than just a little magic if they are to reclaim the throne.

©2013 Honor Raconteur (P)2014 Honor Raconteur

Well crafted story, but for younger audience

This is a well written story, with a solid storyline and good world-building. Very family friendly. I think it's probably best targeted at 10-15 year olds. The plot is fine, but a bit shallow for adults. The narrator speaks VERY slowly, however, after playing back at 1.3 - 1.4x it sounds almost normal. Yes, THAT slowly.

Fun but a bit longer than needed

This is definitely not an epic fantasy adventure but it is a clean (no gore, sex, or language) fun read if you are not in hurry. I think it would have benefitted from an editing chopping it down to more like 10 hours. The narrator is fine.

Good Story

If you could sum up The Child Prince in three words, what would they be?

Interesting story, political intrigue et al, interesting plot.

What did you like best about this story?

Magic system and characters

What three words best describe Cheridah Best’s performance?

She doesn't allow a dialogue to flow, from character to character.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Sometimes.

Any additional comments?

Narrator needs to listen to a conversation, then emulate that when she is reproducing it.

Good start

Great book the performance was ok but the overall story was well done just like the other books by this author.

A good story

I was looking for a new author. I've had this book on my Wish List for awhile. I was hesitant to get it due to its length. The cover art seemed to imply a novel for teens and younger. I also have too many audio books that get tedious with such a long duration.Well, I finally decided to give this book a try. I was pleasantly surprised. The book is well done. It has appeal for adults as well as teens. I enjoyed hearing a story were bedroom scenes real and implied were absent for a change. I found the characters interesting and fun. The development of the cursed prince is kept a part of the story. I also enjoyed Cheridah Best reading and character interpretations. There was predictability and surprises. A new world with magic and a touch of steampunk, magical and mythical creatures and a sentient mountain home for added interest. These complimented the main characters. I hope there will be more books from this author. I recommend this book.

Give it a whirl, its quite good.

I'll admit it , when I first listened to this audio, I was raging because the narrator just seemed to be blowing the emotions, sounding WAY too cheerful whenever the character called for fuming mad. but once I grew accustomed to the narrator's timbre, it got quite good.
Go on,try it!

Fun listen!

We definitely got a lot of laughs out of this one! My kids and I loved it and are excited to listen to the next! Sevana is hilarious, she does and says everything that people normally wouldn’t on fear of offending someone with no regrets or cares if she’s offended. It makes for an interesting read!

Protagonists actually practice problem solving!

I appreciate that the characters actually work through problems with critical thinking, brain storming, and other real problem solving techniques rather than letting other people think for them.

Really aimed at kids.

I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy this book. I found the story very clunky and simplistic, and the narrator kept mispronouncing words (like scabbard).
But I'm trying to be generous and figure it is aimed for a young audience (maybe 10yo?). I'll try it out on my neices and see what they think.

Took me awhile to get through...

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Cheridah Best?

Not sure. Perhaps a male narrator. She just read in a really drawn out fashion, that drove me a little crazy. Luckily I was listening on my Droid app so I could put on speed read at 1.5x. That seemed to work much better, making her sound like she was speaking at a normal speed. I did really enjoy some of her voices. BUT Bel's grown up voice sounded like his childs voice. His child voice was quite good, for a child, but for an adult it was really bad. This made it very hard for me to picture him as grown up when he sounded like a four year old. All in all I think she was an OK narrator, but could have used a better editor/ producer to guild her. And perhaps this book just wasn't aa good fit for her...

Any additional comments?

This is a long book. Honestly it could have been shorter but it wasn't. Which I'm still debating with myself about. I kind of just viewed it as a TV series, with multiple episodes and the length worked in its favor then. I also enjoyed it much better with that mindset.