Reviews - The Phoenix King

1.08k reviews for:

The Phoenix King

Aparna Verma

3.72 AVERAGE

conniesbeans's review

3.75

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

johely's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous 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

This book had potential, but it just dragged on for soooo long. The last 6 hrs I’d say is when it picked up and then it went back to slow. By the end of the book, the revelation of the prophet’s identity was just an “about dang time 🙄” reaction. I zoned out so many times listening to this bc it just took forever. Really wish there was more love triangle drama. Not really interested in continuing to read the series if it’s all this slowly paced.

lady_oreads's review

2.5

slow-paced

I’ll come back later yall. I’m tired. Just know if any book should have had a map, it was this one. 🤷🏾‍♀️😵‍💫

Update: I’m forcing this book 2.5 stars but definitely go back and forth between that
And a solid 2 stars.

It took me quite a while to get going with this book, full of starts and stops over about 2 months . Then I decided maybe this is one of those books where you have to really give it all your attention and get going. Plus I was DETERMINED to not take this book into another month. That DID help but not as much as I’d want. I want my fantasy books to take me away. This didn’t do that for me. I worked very hard to finish this book.

I spent the first 50 percent trying to hone in and remember the names of the groups of people , and the countries and who was bad bs good. I just could NOT sort it out. Tried to take notes but I still mixed my self up somewhere.

Ravence, Ravani people. Jantar, jantarians.

Was Rysanti just a city IN Jantar? I sorted through most of it but it was work. I’m a fantasy fanatic and haven’t really had this hard of a time before. And why did we/she keep calling the dad Leo?

The characters backgrounds were semi interesting but it never really got going. And honestly, the main princess (I Forgot her name now) was the least interesting to me. As a story made up on the fly to tell a kid really quick, this would be fine. But overall it was just really lacking for me. I can see where the author tried really hard to build a world though. So as always, I respect the hard work they put in to their project. It just didn’t land well.

I enjoyed some new creative mythology being thrown my way. And the dessert being the backdrop. I just wish the lore and history of the prophicies sprinkled through out were a bit more clear. That said, the idea of the Yumi was really cool! That could be its own series to be honest.

The book picks up around 70 percent . So it’s a very slow burn. However I didn’t feel the end was worth all of that wait. I was super glad when it was finished.