Reviews - Плетёный король

2.12k reviews for:

Плетёный король

Кайла Анкрум, K. Ancrum

4.0 AVERAGE

lmendy1's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

i really am the easiest person to please because you make main characters codependently homoerotic and i will like it

pink_triangle_club's review against another edition

5.0

I couldn't put this down. I have a lot of complex feelings about it, but it was pretty fantastic.

mypaperworld's review against another edition

4.0

First of all, thank you to the person who recommended this book to me through Goodreads. Not only did I now discover a really fun feature of Goodreads, I also discovered this amazing book which I wouldn’t have otherwise. So yay you!

I might write a whole review of this later. But for now. This book grabs you and doesn’t let you go. I had to know what would happen. So it’s 1 am now and I’m tired, but I finished the book in one go 👌🏻

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FULL REVIEW
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This book was written in a completely different way than I was expecting. The writing style is very similar to books like Everything Everything from Nicola Yoon. It has very short chapters, usually only 1 to 3 pages long mixed with multimedia that add to the story (though they aren't game changing). This fluffy way of writing clashes with the growing darkness in this book.

The first chapter starts off with August who is being arrested for starting a fire and he is put in a mental hospital. You start feeling of feeling extremely sorry for him, it feels unfair that he is there, as you are being told that he just did what Jack told him.

The rest of the book shows you what had to happen to get it to that point, your pov starts to shift from pro-August to this comfortable yet uncomfortable middle point. All the characters have massive flaws in this book, they all make bad choices and even the ending isn't the perfect ending you maybe hoped for.

Unlike the fluffiness of the writing style which stays constant through the whole book, the darkness of this book definitely grows with each page. Not only figuratively, but also literally.

Slowly but surely the pages of this book grow darker and eventually pitch black. The cover is also absolutely gorgeous! This is a book layout gone very, very right. The pages were also really motivating while reading the book because I just really wanted to get to the dark pages and discover what was going on!

For someone, like me, who is a bit hesitant about picking it up because of the "psychological thriller" stamp it has on it. Don't worry, I'm a baby chicken who can't deal with anything and I could handle it with ease. It has suspense, you can feel that things are going wrong and that mistakes are being made, but it doesn't take it overboard in my opinion. I found A List of Cages a million times harder to bear than this book, and that book is just a contemporary. I do want to mention the trigger warning for some (mild) physical abuse and unhealthy friendship/relationships.

Both the easy writing style, the motivation of the dark pages and the suspension of where the hell Jack and August would end up, resulted in me finishing this book in one sitting. I just couldn't stop reading!

Now why, after all of this praise, did I go for 4 stars? It's hard to put it into words, but I felt a bit uneasy about some of the choices towards the ending in combination with the author's letter in the end. I felt like I disagreed on some minor things with the author, this made it not entirely perfect for me, but I would still really recommend this book!

Check out my blog for more reviews and discussions!

alanis's review against another edition

5.0

Well, first of all its 1 am and I'm a little incoherent but I need to capture my feelings rigth after finishing this master piece.

When I tell you the author put their whole K. Ancrumbadussy into this I fucking mean it. This was one of the best pieces of fiction I have read in my life. I would go as far as to compare it to the writing and hurtfulness of "all for the game" and the amazing world building of the "raven boys cycle" .

First, we have August, the sad boy with the sad mother that loves him but is way too sad to even care for him. Later, we have Jack, the boy with too much money and little love, whose parents leave abandoned for months at a time and has a brain filed with hallucinations to keep him company. These two are neighbors and have been friends since they were little.
Since the beginning of the book, you can notice how their relationship is faulty and odd. August and Jack are each other’s abusers, but they can also be each other’s hero or nightmare. August is an 18-year-old that has been taking care of himself and his mom since he was a kid. He is used to being in control, his demeanor is pristine but practiced. From the food he makes to the clothes he wears and all the decisions he must make while being a kid that was forced to adult before his time, he is always in control. Then enters Jack. August knows that Jack is unwell, but he does everything he says because jack is a break from the real world where he must handle everything, have all the answers be the adult. With Jack he can just let go because he doesn’t know the answer to the things in Jacks brain. But also likes being needed and Jacks mental problems make him vulnerable and appeal to August caring nature. All this forms a weird bond between the two that neither of them can escape from. They are each other all and nothing all at the same time.

Their relationship was severely toxic at the end because August wanted to be able to handle things alone like everything else in his life. He is not used to seeking help and he is less used to getting it. So, when Jacks hallucination spiral out of control, he does what he has always done with things; take care of it himself. He loves Jack but the level of worship and need to care for him makes august mad doing stuff beyond his scope of sanity just to apace to jack’s needs. I think how they loved each other was sick. it was painful seeing August tolerating abuse and violence from Jack just to feel something, just to feel like someone else was in control...

Just like I point out the bad I must acknowledge the good. These boys loved each other. They aren’t bad intentioned when they cause the other pain, because it’s what they think the other needs at the moment. It was really sweet seeing how August tried to held Jack, but it was heartbreaking the disappointment as everything slipped form his fingers. And beyond their fucked-up relationship was a love darked by neglect and need. It’s palpable the way they care for each other when in Jacks private hallucinations August was still the hero. They were trying their best but the things they craved weren’t always what they needed. And you see it again and again with the way August conducts all his relationships. With jack he seeked violence and worship and with Goldie painful sex and disdain.

Eventually in the book we see Jack struggling with being August everything. It’s like he thinks "if I’m so mentally ill or unfitting to be with him, for him to not even consider me, well, at least I want him to have someone" and that’s when he introduces Rina to the mixt. I think Jack had always been in love with August, but August was so far-gone seeing Jack as his hero and his problem that it didn’t even occur to him to love him as anything else. Their relationship with Rina was a little strange because none of them formed bonds with her deep enough for me to consider this polyamory. In my opinion they were all lonely and Rina even says it herself at one point, she knows that Jack sees her as a way to make August less lonely and she’s willing to partake in the narrative knowing that she’s going to come in as a replacement for something August wants but doesn’t know he can have. So basically, her purpose was: be August #2 because he can’t have his #1 (Jack). Rina was a survival tool someone build to occupy Jacks place because August was too consumed by their toxic relationship to even think something like a relationship between him and jack was a possibility. In my mind she’s their friends at best and a victim of collateral damage at worst.
(Don’t get me wrong I still like her she was very good to them and knew when to set her foot down but yeah... I can’t see it was a three-way relationship...)

It was really frustrating seeing how the situation got so out of control \because the adults where being useless and the teens were trying to manage a situation that was too big for them. It was even worst seeing the unhealthy copying mechanism that were developed from these types of situations. One time my therapist told me something that I think could be applied here “ when you experience some type of trauma and you do something right after to cope with it and then every time the same feeling pops up you seek the same kind of relieve in the that behavior that help you cope the first time( no matter how bad it its) your brain develops a kind of addiction to that . Because without it you start to feel like you can’t gain control, nothing else clams you the same way, you always go back to what helped you the first time because your brain sees it as the escape route.” And that’s what happens when you have kid without guidance to develop healthy copying mechanisms. In the book its clear with August arson problem. Every time he had an argument with Jack, or he felt control slip away he found shelter in the flames and the ashes that followed the destruction. So, when jack mixed August’s need to do wherever he asks with his favorited copying mechanism well...hell was due.
At the end, it was heartbreaking to see them end up in the mental hospital and apart for so long I feel like August really needed treatment but a place like that does you more bad than good if you’re not crazy enough for it and the feeling of being away but close to the one he wanted most had to have been crazy. But still, I’m sad that the nature of their relationship improved but didn’t change. Because while some of it was due to a tumor that was extracted from Jacks brain the real root of it was the situation and lives, they habited. I think more work should be done in their relationship, so their codependency disappears. It melted my heart to know that jack loved august all along. Even without the kingdom in Jacks mind August still wore his crown as the men he loved!

Special mention to Jacks poem in the mental hospital. If I ever get anything tattooed on me it’s going to be this:
“They send a word on the wing of a bird
But faces are my currency
And till I’m paid in full, they may as well send nothing”
Basically “their giving me things you wrote and saying things you said but I won’t be happy until I see your face”
WHEN I TELL YOU I MELTED!

great I’m going to kill myself I lost all the shit I had written... so I had to rewrite half of that.

katie_west's review against another edition

4.0

I loved that this book was a quick, easy read. It kept me on the edge of me seat the whole time. It was interesting to see how dependent some people can be with others. The ending was a twist that I didn’t really see coming but yet knew was coming. Loved it!