The Prince of Starlight: The Heir to Moondust: Book One

3.5* stars. This is not your average fairy tale. Prince Cricket, the only son to the King of Lunette. He's loved by all and cares deeply about his subjects. So much so, he is willing to endanger his life to save the towns in his country that are plagued by mysterious curses that no one knows the origin of or how to cure. He and his loyal handmaiden/body guard/adoptive sister conduct investigations to get to the bottom of things, and along the way they run into a mysterious (and handsome) white Knight from the neighboring country who is also investigating the strange happenings, and they join forces to find out who the real culprit is. The atmosphere of the story is totally inducive of a fairy tale, it was masterful. From reading the first page I found myself totally lost in the world of Lunette and trying to picture what the country looked like. The descriptions of what the characters were doing or handling was well written, but I found the overall scenery description to be a bit lack luster. While it was simple enough to use my imagination to envision what a castle or small town would look like in a fairy tale setting, it took me out of the story a bit. Though about half way through the descriptions did get better. The characters themselves were well thought out and definitely had a personality of their own. I did find Cricket's childish attitude a bit annoying at times, especially when he would pout a lot, but I did enjoy when his handmaiden, Ignacia, called him out and whipped him back into shape, like the sister she is to him. I also found Yoshi, the white Knight, and Cricket's interactions incredibly adorable! I couldn't stop giggling through those parts, especially when Cricket's charms seemed to have null effect on him, but would later be softer to the prince and his antics. The book is told from in 3rd party point of view (pov), meaning it has a narrator, but it is told from Cricket's perspective. Cricket is young and turned 18 during the course of the book, being so young of course he would still have quite a few youthful characteristics, like not wanting to admit his crush on Yoshi when he is trying to concentrate on doing his princely duties of saving his people, but I found it tiring when half of what Cricket thought about Yoshi would be taken back by the last sentence of the paragraph he was thinking it in. Ignoring your feelings, especially as young person, is completely normal and natural, but constantly taking back everything you just said in the same manner each time felt repetitive. There was also quite a few phrases used repetitively that I felt were overused. Thankfully by the later chapters of the book the repetitiveness and retracting got a lot better and it was easier to fully immerse myself into the characters feelings and doings. All-in-all, it was a really fun book that I can't wait to continue into volume 2, (The Prince of Daybreak,) to get lost into the world of Lunette, follow Cricket and his friends on their adventures, and see if Prince Cricket and white Knight Yoshi make a go of things. Thank you so much to the author and publisher who gave me this arc review. All thoughts here within are completely my own.