Review: King of Scars

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disappointingly average, but a stronger second half.

Thank the saints for Nina and Zoya.

For a little background info, I LOVED Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. They were both 5 star reads for me. It led me to the Grisha trilogy, which was sadly not quite as entertaining. I enjoyed the story and some of the characters, but it wasn't on the same level as SoC. I figured it was because that series was written BEFORE.

So I guess with that in mind, and having loved Nikolai from the first, I was expecting this to be a lot more entertaining than it was.

I'M SORRY.

I wanted to like this so much more than I did. But it spends so much of the start talking about boring political problems etc and Nikolai is weary and possessed instead of sassy and mischievous and it's depressingly DULL.

Good:
-Zoya, murderous queen of death and sass
-Nina, goddess of badassery and waffles
-Oh hi helloooooo my furry friend
-Most of Part 2

Bad:
-Too much political yawn fest
-Not nearly enough sass
-Nikolai the flirt has been replaced with Nikolai the Just Ruler
-Nina has boring friends
-Most of part 1
-Was not feeling lil Isaak's feelings

I'm struggling to make my thoughts coherent here and a lot of the stuff I liked is SPOILERS so I'm not gonna mention those. But in general the plot was just unexpectedly UGH. Draining. Nothing new here. It also felt like nothing was really accomplished in the entire 500+ pages so that's kinda frustrating.

It just wasn't the level of fun I was hoping it would be. It was okay, because the characters are still pretty great and the magic is cool, but overall it was pretty disappointing.

I do have high hopes for the next one though.

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