Reviews - The Grace of Kings

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This is another 3.5 star book that is just well-written enough to bump it up to 4 stars. I'd rather do that now since I can already tell the sequel installments might only pull 3 stars, because, while the style and storytelling are solid and the cast of characters is fairly endearing, the major theme of the book is that power corrupts even the most well-intentioned people (even the endearing ones) which invariably causes history to repeat itself, and as such, the story follows a course that makes it hard to root for or trust ANY of the characters or to expect any surprising outcomes, and since the trilogy spans several generations, the stage is set for the sequels to offer a thousand or so additional pages of a status quo that is established fairly early in the very first book.

sinecure's review

DID NOT FINISH

The beauty of a novel that reimagines a real historical era is that the novel will show you things while a history text will just tell you things. The Grace of Kings just tells you what's happening like a textbook. It rarely show you anything.

Since we're told who the characters are instead of being shown, I don't care about the characters. Added to that, characters just randomly disappear or get their agency taken away by meddling gods. There's so many names being thrown at me I can't remember which action is attributed to which person, although it doesn't seem to matter much since people's actions aren't that important. Even when actions are important, I'm only told they happened.

I was bored the whole time reading this book and after 1/2 of the book I just stopped. I'd have a much better time reading the history of the Qin Dynasty which this novel pulls most of its inspiration from. At least in a history textbook I expect to be told what happens instead of shown it.