All I had to do then was get along with a group of people who I still, at heart, thought were totally inferior and should do what I told them to do. Resisting this impulse took a lot of energy and thought, and one wearisome day a week later I told the two main shareholders in our little enterprise how I really regarded them. Five minutes later I had a very bruised face and was looking for another contract... [loc. 2071]
Khemri is special. Not because he's a Prince: one of ten million Princes who rule a wormhole-reliant galactic empire encompassing 'trillions of sentient subjects, most of them humans of old Earth stock'. Princes (the term is gender-neutral) are taken from their families as small children, if they have the requisite talents and abilities, and undergo a rigorous programme of physical and mental training and modification before they come of age and enter into competition with the other Princes. Khemri survives multiple assassination attempts within the first few hours of being a Prince. Luckily, he has an extraordinarily gifted Master of Assassins to protect him, and acquires more staff rapidly. This must, he reasons, be because he has been Chosen. Every twenty years the Emperor abdicates and a new Prince ascends the throne. It's nearly abdication time: can Khemri survive the training scenarios and the attentions of his fellow Princes for long enough to have a chance at supreme power?
The Empire, though, is not what it seems: Khemri slowly realises that a lot of what he's been taught is not wholly accurate. He encounters normal, unmodified humans who have little to do with Princes: he fights, and dissembles, and falls in love, and grows up into a rather more likeable person than he was at the outset.
This YA novel is good old-fashioned space opera, with some of the flaws of that genre. The romance, in particular, felt contrived, and though the scale was epic, the worldbuilding felt thin in places. There were plenty of indications that Khemri's understanding of the Empire was incomplete, but mostly this aspect of the story faded out without resolution. I'd have liked more about the Empire's enemies and the abandoned systems and the whole 'immortality' thing. That said, A Confusion of Princes was great fun, a solid YA narrative that focusses on the evolution of Khemri from arrogant Prince to relatable human being: it would make an excellent film. Plenty of scope for sequels, too.
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