Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Prince of Thorns is the first volume in a powerful epic fantasy trilogy, original, absorbing and challenging.
Before the thorns taught me their sharp lessons and bled weakness from me I had but one brother, and I loved him well. But those days are gone and what is left of them lies in my mother's tomb. Now I have many brothers, quick with knife and sword, and as evil as you please. We ride this broken empire and loot its corpse. They say these are violent times, the end of days when the dead roam and monsters haunt the night. All that's true enough, but there's something worse out there, in the dark. Much worse.
From being a privileged royal child, raised by a loving mother, Jorg Ancrath has become the Prince of Thorns, a charming, immoral boy leading a grim band of outlaws in a series of raids and atrocities. The world is in chaos: violence is rife, nightmares everywhere. Jorg has the ability to master the living and the dead, but there is still one thing that puts a chill in him. Returning to his father's castle Jorg must confront horrors from his childhood and carve himself a future with all hands turned against him.
Mark Lawrence's debut novel tells a tale of blood and treachery, magic and brotherhood and paints a compelling and brutal, and sometimes beautiful, picture of an exceptional boy on his journey toward manhood and the throne. From Goodreads.

It was a violent book but not as bad as I had expected from some of the reviews I had read. Prince Jorg experiences a lot of violence when he sees his brother killed and his mother raped and killed when he was nine. At the age of 10 he goes with a group of outlaws and starts killing and raping. There is also a lot of dark magic and necromancers in the book.
It was an okay read but the fate of Prince Jorg just isn't interesting enough to make me want to read the next book in this series.

This book qualifies for:
2014 Ebook challenge
2014 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge
2014 Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge
You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge 2014
Crazy Challenge Connection: 1000 Member Celebration!
Goodreads Reading Challenge 2014
Crazy Challenge Connection - Sub-Genre Challenge 2014
Nothing but Reading Challenges - Spell it Out - Animal Alphabet (L-leopard)
Crazy Challenge Connection Scrabble, anyone?
Crazy Challenge Connection Bard of Avon