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maedbetweenthepages 's review for:
The Kingdom of Liars
by Nick Martell
2.5 stars.
I SO wanted to love this book, I bought it last year as half a cover buy and half whisperings of people who really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the main word I can use to describe this book is potential. Potential never fully realized. The world building that IS there is extremely intriguing -I mean a shattered moon that has pieces fall to earth like asteroid? Different elemental magic that has a cost of memories??? Sounds so amazing. unfortunately, even though I've read the whole book, I don't know much more about those things than you do after reading those sentences. The elaboration just never happened so the world never really came alive to me.
One thing I will say is this book is definitely action packed. The characters almost never even sit down...they're always doing something so if you like fast paced books, I think you'd really enjoy that aspect of this. My personal taste is a bit slower where we can take time to truly get to know the world our plot is taking place in. Show me that marketplace. Those taverns. How the slums and city royalty live and breathe. I, personally, am much more likely to be sucked in if you take the time to do that.
The other main issue for me was the characters. Oh my god I hate our main character Michael so much. I think part of this is on purpose as he starts off the book as a selfish immature brat (as is pointed out my other characters in the book). He is also OBSSESSED with being a Kingman. To the point where I started tabbing every single time it was mentioned unnecessarily. I get it. Your family did some epic things in the past and you share their last name. Trust me I remember it from when you said it two pages ago. I assume the point of this is to provide a lot of space for character growth, but the problem is that the payoff took wayyyy too long for me. I had to spend about 450 pages from Michael's perspective with no growth in sight and my hatred of him just continued to deepen. And since I was experiencing all of his relationships with other characters through his perspective, I couldn't feel a connection to the other characters either. I felt no stress during fight scenes at all and that's not a good sign.
The final issue I had was there were some plot twists that seemed a bit convenient of convoluted. There's one plot point that I still don't fully think I understand. What the hell was Domet even doing the whole time? The reveals about him in the end made all of his earlier actions make no sense to me. I can't call specifics to keep this spoiler free, but I was left wanting for a lot of plot points.
The thing that was the saving grace for me in this book was the ending. The development we've been waiting for finally hits and the places the characters seem to be going in the next installment have me really interested. I feel like the next book could be everything I was hoping to get for this one. Enough that I very may well pick up the next one.
Overall, I found a quote from the book that ironically describes what I felt was missing form this story for me: "It was all about the small details in stories, the ones that no one paid attention to but made everything feel whole." I wish this book had taken on more of that energy.
I SO wanted to love this book, I bought it last year as half a cover buy and half whisperings of people who really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the main word I can use to describe this book is potential. Potential never fully realized. The world building that IS there is extremely intriguing -I mean a shattered moon that has pieces fall to earth like asteroid? Different elemental magic that has a cost of memories??? Sounds so amazing. unfortunately, even though I've read the whole book, I don't know much more about those things than you do after reading those sentences. The elaboration just never happened so the world never really came alive to me.
One thing I will say is this book is definitely action packed. The characters almost never even sit down...they're always doing something so if you like fast paced books, I think you'd really enjoy that aspect of this. My personal taste is a bit slower where we can take time to truly get to know the world our plot is taking place in. Show me that marketplace. Those taverns. How the slums and city royalty live and breathe. I, personally, am much more likely to be sucked in if you take the time to do that.
The other main issue for me was the characters. Oh my god I hate our main character Michael so much. I think part of this is on purpose as he starts off the book as a selfish immature brat (as is pointed out my other characters in the book). He is also OBSSESSED with being a Kingman. To the point where I started tabbing every single time it was mentioned unnecessarily. I get it. Your family did some epic things in the past and you share their last name. Trust me I remember it from when you said it two pages ago. I assume the point of this is to provide a lot of space for character growth, but the problem is that the payoff took wayyyy too long for me. I had to spend about 450 pages from Michael's perspective with no growth in sight and my hatred of him just continued to deepen. And since I was experiencing all of his relationships with other characters through his perspective, I couldn't feel a connection to the other characters either. I felt no stress during fight scenes at all and that's not a good sign.
The final issue I had was there were some plot twists that seemed a bit convenient of convoluted. There's one plot point that I still don't fully think I understand. What the hell was Domet even doing the whole time? The reveals about him in the end made all of his earlier actions make no sense to me. I can't call specifics to keep this spoiler free, but I was left wanting for a lot of plot points.
The thing that was the saving grace for me in this book was the ending. The development we've been waiting for finally hits and the places the characters seem to be going in the next installment have me really interested. I feel like the next book could be everything I was hoping to get for this one. Enough that I very may well pick up the next one.
Overall, I found a quote from the book that ironically describes what I felt was missing form this story for me: "It was all about the small details in stories, the ones that no one paid attention to but made everything feel whole." I wish this book had taken on more of that energy.