Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Queen of Myth and Monsters

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Queen of Myth and Monsters by Scarlett St. Clair

17 reviews

i_love_b00ks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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oruairc's review

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

We always fight and fuck.

That's the plot. There are some reveals in there, somewhere. Somewhere...

But that's mostly it. Isolde and Adrian fight and fuck. And do it again. And again.

I was quite angry reading it, but anger that drives me to read the next one. I'm disappointed in myself, truly, but I'm committed to the end.

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starberry's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

well, disappointed but no surprised. i found the first book interesting enough but this was insufferable. i cannot stand adrian as a character and i felt like so much of this book was pointless.

the smut was so repetitive and at times, distasteful. immediate smut after a seemingly important character death made me want to slam my head against a wall.

another issue i have with this book is the odd transitions from past memories to present. i get that we are supposed to be sorta experiencing the past memories as isolde is but there was no indication that the time had changed often times and i had to reread multiple paragraphs to understand what was going on.

also i felt that as soon as the plot started moving we got another smut scene for literally no reason.

also cannot understand nearly any of adrian’s motivations…

ngl perhaps ana and sorin are right that adrian dying would be the best thing that could happen for the world at large.

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ka_ke's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Hmmm. I feel like it was missing something, it could be that there was not much going on for a large part of the book. It could also be that plot twist at the end too.

Queen of Myth & Monsters is a unique idea. Isolde’s development of her abilities is a smooth transition, however I wish her relationship with Adrian would move beyond miserable communication. He’s an asshole, she’s a bitch. We get it.

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ariellesbookreviews's review

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Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

This book really took a left turn. What Scarlet St. Clair started out in King of Battle of Blood has disappeared. Readers are shown entirely different characters with completely new backstories.

In book one, the reader is led to believe that the kingdom of Redvak is misunderstood and is not filled with brutal monsters. However, what has developed in Queen of the Myth and Monsters seems to show some truth to the rumors. King Adrian has essentially become an ineffective and terrible ruler. He continuously murders his people for disagreeing with him and continues his quest to conquer; however, the reader is never given a definitive reason. Adrian is shown to place his motives above those of his people and Isolde.

Isolde continually makes excuses for Adrian and his abhorrent behavior, but she has no real power. Isolde is overlooked by both Adrian and the court during court decisions despite having better leadership skills and care for the people. Since King of Battle and Blood, Adrian says he wants more than a wife; he wants a queen, but he continually dismisses Isolde’s thoughts and feelings. I cannot see a way forward in this series for me to continue to root for this relationship, and at this point in time, I believe Adrian is becoming the villain. Perhaps he always was.

A Queen of Myth and Monsters is a lot darker than its predecessor. While there were some darker aspects to the story in the first book, the amount of graphic and horrendous backstories readers are getting has dramatically increased. St. Clair intersects trauma with smut scenes, and it is very discombobulating and can feel inappropriate. Going from reading about someone who is being assaulted to getting a sex scene between the two main characters is jarring and uncomfortable.

It sometimes feels like the author is just adding trauma to the story for trauma's sake. For example, you learned that Yesenia was assaulted before she was murdered by Dragos, but that has no effect on the story. Isolde does not remember the trauma of the assault, so why it is brought up to the reader does not make sense. Dragos has already been villainized in the story, so adding these assaults seems almost redundant. St. Clair may be trying to create a narrative of anti-misogyny, does not develop soon enough in the storyline to better the plot.

Some of the finer details of this book also do not make sense. At one point in the story, hundreds of thousands of humans are turned into vampires over maybe a week or two. The timing and logistics do not make sense, and it seems like an easy plot hole to pick out. How did just a couple of people turn so many into vampires so quickly? Where were these newly turned vampires getting food? Why would all of these vampires agree to fight in an army? Many other aspects of the ending were not developed, including Isolde's transformation into a vampire. Isolde was turned, and nothing changed, and a separate pivotal part of the book lasted only a page and a half.

At this point in the story, it feels like scarlet St. Clair has absolutely no idea what is going on and did not plot out the storyline. She appears just as confused as the reader. The book has no structure and seems to develop on a whim. Queen of Myth and Monsters was a disappointment compared to the first book, and I do not know if I will continue this series.

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thewiserslone's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Honestly I didn’t love the first book, so idk why I thought I would love the second. I never thought I would say this about a fantasy romance, but there was TOO MUCH spice. Towards the end I found myself skimming past the sex scenes. They were literally almost every other chapter, but it was like the same sec scene over and over. Any “tension” between the two MCs was because they were keeping secrets from each other, which I also loathe as a trope. I think I’m done with this series.

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toffishay's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I was disappointed by this sequel. I think that this book cranks up a lot of the messy and problematic pieces that were in the first book with less of the fun and intrigue. The pacing was also pretty crazy! Things were happening all over the place and major events were just being thrown in at the end of a chapter and then we all move on from it right away. It made it hard to care about anything that was happening. <SPOILER> I really don't know how I feel about Adrian and Isolde's characters after this book either. The pull and push and lack of trust maybe makes a lot of sense, but it was giving me whiplash to be constantly going back and forth with them fighting and fucking. I also found myself more uncomfortable with the presentation of Isolde's body and experience in this book. It was beginning to feel a bit fetishistic the way that her body and sexuality was being treated. Her backstory as coming from other dark-skinned people who are currently enslaved and the white man that she is with being unable or unwilling to understand her desire to free them felt gross. And the depictions of sexual assault in this book felt unnecessary to me. The magic stuff really came out of nowhere too and felt like a very surface level show of "women are destined for magic" "women are all witches deep down" online discourse. <END SPOILER> The smut it fun, but I just with that the rest of the book was as fun.

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