A father who is trash, a world that is trash, a boy who knows he is trash but strives to become better. Makings of a great story, albeit used quite often.
I would have preferred the alternative direction; of the boy gaining power by any means, keeping the thought of saving the girl in his heart, only to be brought low when at the finish line he is turned away by the thing he wished for the most. Not because he isn't good enough, or strong enough, but because she herself is not. She had resigned herself to her miserable fate, used as a toy for a corrupted 'husband'. She couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't, know her true love's warm embrace. Tainted by foul sin.
He would leave her there as she cried him away, but he would not turn inward and sulk. He would only get stronger. Stronger still. So that he may, one day, bare her burden alone.
Years later, concubines later, wars, and kingdoms later, he would return. A maddened prince, now king, drunk with corruption and power, cowers at the boy, now man, and pleads with him to spare his miserable life. He offers gold, prestige, and women. But none tempt the man, as he continues to walk down the royal carpet towards the king's demise. Suddenly, the king remembers the original boy and offers the girl, just as the man reaches his twisted throne. But the girl, she has long since passed, dead by a broken and heavy heart. The man knows this, he has long come to terms with it. He raises his blade, his judgement, for the blow. But softly, a whisper, a young girl, too young to be the princess but holding a remarkable likeness. She would be her daughter, a waif of a girl, somehow the last remaining purity in this den of darkness. She grew upon stories of the boy, nurtured by her mother's love for not only her daughter but for the boy turned man.
This would be not a story of true love, of a boy hero saving a princess. But of a man who would become a father.
Book signings will be on the 3rd and 4 of August between 8 am and 1pm. Please bring snacks.