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A review by jazminrose
Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron
4.0
This book was really good BUT ohhh boy did it take a while to get going. I almost stopped reading it on more than one occasion, the first third or so is very slow-moving. I am a fan of world-building, but I just couldn’t seem to get interested for the longest time.
All that said, if you can persevere through the start (or even better, perhaps you’ll be enthralled the whole time), the payoff is worth it. The characters are really great and it’s such an intricate world to explore. The plot was a good balance of surprises, with just the right amount of predictability/expectation. I’ll definitely be checking out more from this author too – her middle-grade series looks so intriguing!
On a related note: I do wonder if this book is wrongly classified as YA. Other than the protagonist and her friends being teenaged, it didn’t really read like YA. I say this as someone who reads both YA and adult fantasy, so I was not disappointed, only pondering.
All that said, if you can persevere through the start (or even better, perhaps you’ll be enthralled the whole time), the payoff is worth it. The characters are really great and it’s such an intricate world to explore. The plot was a good balance of surprises, with just the right amount of predictability/expectation. I’ll definitely be checking out more from this author too – her middle-grade series looks so intriguing!
On a related note: I do wonder if this book is wrongly classified as YA. Other than the protagonist and her friends being teenaged, it didn’t really read like YA. I say this as someone who reads both YA and adult fantasy, so I was not disappointed, only pondering.