Garth Nix is an author I've loved ever since reading his Seventh Tower series way back in the olden days. Since then, his fantasy writing has taken on much more complexity, with different books embracing dystopian themes or hints of science fiction. Whilst The Old Kingdom trilogy was high fantasy (with a talking cat and plenty of undead to keep it interesting) and The Keys to the Kingdom series was some kind of alternate world / dystopian / fantasy mash-up, A confusion of Princes is set in the distant future, where Earth is almost a myth for the humans that now live scattered on countless planets across the universe.
The story centres on Khemri, a human-born teenager who was removed from his parents at birth and re-conditioned into the super-powered, super-intelligent human-computer hybrid we come to know in the story. Khemri is a Prince of the Empire, connected wirelessly to the Imperial Mind, and expected, along with ten million other Princes, to do the Mind's bidding to keep the Empire running smoothly. We quickly learn that Khemri is unlike most Princes, with an independent spirit and enquiring nature which quickly gets him noticed by the Mind. Initially Khemri's greatest wish is to rise to the position of Emperor himself and it is not until he is sent on a special mission for the Emperor and is stripped of his enhanced abilities that he actually asks himself the meaning of his existence and what it is to be human.
Garth Nix throws his readers straight into the deep-end of an incredibly complex world, but with persistence the reader is well rewarded.
Caitlin @ Balwyn
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