The Whisperer by Fiona McIntosh

This Australian middle grade novel reminded me of The False Prince by Jennifer Neilsen, but not as funny or witty. I saw comparisons by other reviewers to The Prince and the Pauper.

From Amazon: “Lute is a prince, next in line to the throne. Griff is a poor carnival worker who does the heavy lifting while the malevolent ringmaster orders him about. But there’s something special about Griff: he can hear the thoughts of everyone around him. And one day, he begins to connect with Lute’s mind, even though they’ve never met and are miles apart.”

So, mental telepathy in mythical kingdom. I enjoyed The Whisperer. It took two attempts for me to get into the story, but the second time around, I was engaged and curious to see what would happen to Lute and Griff and the other characters in the story. The pace was a little slow, with an over-abundance of explanations instead of active descriptions and insight into the characters and their plight.

For the lover of princely adventure and rags-to-riches orphan stories, I would recommend this one—after Meg Whalen Turner’s The Thief and Nielsen’s The False Prince and Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. For younger children, Sid Fleischman’s Newbery award book, The Whipping Boy, is similar, too, but sans magic. Actually, The Whisperer may be the only one of these commoner-to-prince, prince-disguised-as-commoner, vice-versa, books that I’ve named that does include magical events. So, if you want magic with your royal and plebeian characters, The Whisperer would be the book.

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