Review: The Ruin of Kings

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Look.

I cannot count the number of times this book had me feeling confused.

There are so many names and most are hard to pronounce and often similar so it was incredibly difficult to keep track of who was who and what was what. Then you throw in the genealogy and the adultery and the body snatching and the illusions and I DON'T KNOW WHO ANYONE IS.

There's a boy.
There's a witch.
There's a flirty magic boy.
There's an old sorcerer dude.
There's a tyrant. (Actually several).
There's a wimp.
There's a dragon.

There's also X who is secretly Y but is actually secretly Z and that is the case for, like, half the characters. Basically, no one is who they seem to be.

But you know what? Despite regularly having no clue what was happening, I still really enjoyed this book. It's a rare occasion that I get invested in the story when I don't really care for the characters. I didn't start warming up to this band of misfits until about 350 or so pages in so props to the story for keeping me entertained that far.

There's a lot of variety and magic here, making the whole thing pretty epic. I DID want more dinosaurs, though. I got so excited when they showed up, but they didn't hang around nearly long enough for me. Sigh. But there's lots about gods and demons and monsters and magic and reincarnation and it all gets so messy but who the heck cares because it's SO MUCH FUN.

So I'm gonna keep it brief for now and just say that I really enjoyed the crazy ride this book took me on. It was so bizarre to just be so out of it and yet so thoroughly entertained all the same.

Fingers crossed the next installment has some more detailed family trees though. The one at the back here really did not help in the slightest.

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