Book Title: To Kill A Kingdom
Author: Alexandra Christo
ength: 352 pages
Genre: YA, dark fantasy, romantasy, fairytale retelling
My Rating: 1/5
Age Rating: 13+
Content Notes: no sex, mild profanity, crude and dark jokes, murder, violence, gore, death, slavery, child abuse(both emotional and physical), masochism, sexual assault/nonconsensual kissing, prejudice. (didn’t finish the book so there might be more)
My Review:
I’ve seen this book everywhere, so when I found it at one of my favourite bookstores I decided to snatch it up.
Long story short, this book caused me to spiral into a full-blown book slump.
I went into this book with high hopes. I mean, I had seen so many people raving about it that I assumed it was going to be amazing — the kind of book I’d never forget and would be on here raving about the moment I finished it. Sadly, I was wrong.
Now don’t misunderstand what I’m putting down, this book has a lot of potential. But for some reason I found it extremely boring. It sat on my side table, half read and abandoned for a solid week as I forced myself to read a few pages a day, until I decided that I would officially send it to the DNF graveyard (and I do not send books to that sad, lonely place without much consideration).
I love books that take place on the water, something about them draws me in long before I even flip through the first chapter. Not to mention that this book was advertised as having great banter and even better enemies-to-lovers vibes. That mix of some of my favorite book elements made me so excited to start reading, but that excitement was buried before I’d even finished the first two chapters.
Both of the main characters were villains, or at least had villain vibes, and I don’t know if that was exactly the reason, or if it was because I knew they were both going to die at the end (yes, that was not-so-subtly spoiled in the acknowledgements), but I could not invest in these characters for the life of me. I tried and I tried and I tried some more, but their selfish motives and villainous tendencies got rid of all the love I had at the beginning. There’s something about an unlovable villain that sets me on edge, and that made it even harder to root for either of them.
Now, the banter. I was expecting something similar to Powerless (best book of all time, best banter of ALL TIME), but honestly, it wasn’t filled with the tension and chemistry I was looking for. It fell flat, leaving me wishing for so much more. Which, of course, was the final nail in the coffin for my excitement. Honestly, I have trouble even calling this a romance or romantasy book, since I got more than halfway through and there was almost no romance to speak of.
The only place I felt this book upheld its promised bargain was the fact that there was no explicit sexual content (probably because there was basically no romance), nor was there excessive strong language. There was, however, an uncomfortable amount of innuendo and crude jokes, along with some dark humor that I found slightly disturbing, though that was to be expected since the main characters are villains with a darker worldview. There were common themes of murder, violence, gore, prejudice, drinking, abuse, and piracy. I only made it a bit over halfway through, so I’m not 100% sure of the content as a whole — I pride myself on reading everything I suggest cover to cover, so not finishing this one means I can’t speak to it with complete certainty. But from what I did read and skim through later, I was at least happy to see it was free of sexually explicit content. So if you want to give this book a try, I can give you hope that it’ll be a clean read, though some of the content still felt disturbing or sexualized.
In closing, this book reminded me that just because a book is popular or highly suggested doesn’t necessarily make it good. It pains me to say it, but I’d suggest skipping this one. There are many other great fantasy reads out there with much better banter, worldbuilding, and characters.
Happy Reading,
Ava
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