Prince of Fools is the first in a new series – The Red Queen’s War – by Mark Lawrence who wrote the Broken Empire trilogy. This new series is set in the same world as The Broken Empire, but focusses on a different set of characters. Emperor of Thorns was one of my top reads for 2013, so I had high expectations of Prince of Fools – I’m happy to say it lived up to them. What I liked The setting. Both Red Queen’s War and Broken Empire trilogy are set in a world which is strongly implied to be ours many millennia after a cataclysmic event (the “thousand suns”) in which magic plays a part. Some references to our world bleed through but often in an almost unrecognisable form. It’s a great deal of fun spotting these references. These are very subtle – for example our protagonists meet a circus elephant, who is, of course, called Nellie. A week later I still can’t get the children’s song out of my brain and now you can’t either. You’re welcome. Anyway to return to the setting. One very interesting choice Lawrence made with the Red Queen’s War trilogy is to set…