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A review by thegreatnoodles
A Kingdom This Cursed and Empty by Stacia Stark
adventurous
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was such a drop in quality from the first book, ahh…
I don’t think I have ever read a book where the protagonist whinges and whines even half as much as Prisca does. Almost every single chapter has multiple paragraphs of her just lamenting everything, and it’s the same lamentations each time. ‘Oh no I’m the heir, I’m not good enough, I failed these people, I hate Lorain, I love Lorain, I hate Lorain, I’m so weak, I hate men, I won’t let this that anything control me’. The book was about 500 pages, I reckon easily 100 of those could be filled with the whinings if we cut them out and stuck them all together.
Prisca makes many internal remarks about hating men in this book, yet the themes and actions in this book heavily reinforce and promote toxic patriarchal narratives. The pornification of the romance scenes certainly didn’t help, with their blow jobs, constant demeaning of Prisca, ‘dominating her’ (Prisca even remarks about loving to feel dominated and powerless), Prisca moaning loudly, the use of porn terms like ‘pussy’, choking her, etc. etc. etc.
It’s like the author decided to further worsen the already red flag romance of book 1 by basing their entire sex lives on porn. And these sex scenes were CONSTANT in the book. I was reading the book in chunks of 50–75 pages and it felt like each day there was another sex scene.
Lorian showed more actual emotion this time around, but his possessiveness was upped even further. Apparently we’re meant to think it romantic he wants to gut every male who happens to glance at Prisca. The back-forth-back-forth of them being together or not for the first possibly half of the book was soooo boring.
Characterisation of returning characters were consistent (except Prisca who only whinges), and I felt like even some of the samey feeling people were more distinct this time. (Such as Lorian’s crew)
Although it was really weird how it handled new characters at times. When the book wanted you to dislike someone prior to meeting them, it was already fully biased against them. And there were times the book has Prisca (and assumedly wants us to agree with her) taking complete offence to nothing at all, or had her constantly being “manipulated” by “old men” but her being too smart for it.
The biggest example is with Conreth, spoiled as this is about 200 pages in:
<blockquote>”I wanted to apologise for my actions while you were at the castle.”
“Excuse me?”
“When Lorian told me of your power, I instantly knew who you were. I asked him to bring you to me. I should have communicated with you directly.”
My chest tightened, and I forged myself not to shift in my chair. Because I knew exactly what Conreth was doing.
With a few sentence, he had reminded everyone here that just weeks ago, I had been a sheltered villager, completely unaware of her heritage…</blockquote>
Clearly the author is trying to portray this as Prisca resisting and being savvy to manipulation… but the author is so biased against her own characters the manipulation doesn't even really exist. Like yes, in other dialogues Conreth is manipulating her, but her most extreme reactions are to his most basic lines. One can easily tell whether someone’s going to be good or not based off how the author introduces them.
In book 1 I had theorised that Lorian maybe had some sort of mind reading powers, and whilst this book does disprove this (by means of more Lorian POVs) it uncannily makes almost every single person seem to be mind readers. Sooo many times throughout the book Prisca will be thinking some internal monologue as she looks at someone, only for them to correctly respond as if she spoke this aloud. Not just Lorian, but Asinia, Tribis, Demos, the other fae, literally everyone (except the wicked manipulative men she outsmarts).
This felt like weak writing, not needing to have the characters actually talk. (On that note I was often disappointed by how the book would not commit to having characters explain stuff to other ones, just ‘I then explained to [person] what we knew’. We don’t see their reactions to learning life changing info, or see how Prisca and co. attempt to convince them)
Overall, disappointing. The story at large <b>is interesting</b>, which is why I keep reading, but it is being bogged down by all of the above. And the above sure takes up a lot of the book. I suspect the author had all these great ideas, and knew where they wanted things to go, but not enough about filling in the gaps between major parts, which is why the pacing is so slow at times.
I don’t think I have ever read a book where the protagonist whinges and whines even half as much as Prisca does. Almost every single chapter has multiple paragraphs of her just lamenting everything, and it’s the same lamentations each time. ‘Oh no I’m the heir, I’m not good enough, I failed these people, I hate Lorain, I love Lorain, I hate Lorain, I’m so weak, I hate men, I won’t let this that anything control me’. The book was about 500 pages, I reckon easily 100 of those could be filled with the whinings if we cut them out and stuck them all together.
Prisca makes many internal remarks about hating men in this book, yet the themes and actions in this book heavily reinforce and promote toxic patriarchal narratives. The pornification of the romance scenes certainly didn’t help, with their blow jobs, constant demeaning of Prisca, ‘dominating her’ (Prisca even remarks about loving to feel dominated and powerless), Prisca moaning loudly, the use of porn terms like ‘pussy’, choking her, etc. etc. etc.
It’s like the author decided to further worsen the already red flag romance of book 1 by basing their entire sex lives on porn. And these sex scenes were CONSTANT in the book. I was reading the book in chunks of 50–75 pages and it felt like each day there was another sex scene.
Lorian showed more actual emotion this time around, but his possessiveness was upped even further. Apparently we’re meant to think it romantic he wants to gut every male who happens to glance at Prisca. The back-forth-back-forth of them being together or not for the first possibly half of the book was soooo boring.
Characterisation of returning characters were consistent (except Prisca who only whinges), and I felt like even some of the samey feeling people were more distinct this time. (Such as Lorian’s crew)
Although it was really weird how it handled new characters at times. When the book wanted you to dislike someone prior to meeting them, it was already fully biased against them. And there were times the book has Prisca (and assumedly wants us to agree with her) taking complete offence to nothing at all, or had her constantly being “manipulated” by “old men” but her being too smart for it.
The biggest example is with Conreth, spoiled as this is about 200 pages in:
“Excuse me?”
“When Lorian told me of your power, I instantly knew who you were. I asked him to bring you to me. I should have communicated with you directly.”
My chest tightened, and I forged myself not to shift in my chair. Because I knew exactly what Conreth was doing.
With a few sentence, he had reminded everyone here that just weeks ago, I had been a sheltered villager, completely unaware of her heritage…</blockquote>
Clearly the author is trying to portray this as Prisca resisting and being savvy to manipulation… but the author is so biased against her own characters the manipulation doesn't even really exist. Like yes, in other dialogues Conreth is manipulating her, but her most extreme reactions are to his most basic lines. One can easily tell whether someone’s going to be good or not based off how the author introduces them.
In book 1 I had theorised that Lorian maybe had some sort of mind reading powers, and whilst this book does disprove this (by means of more Lorian POVs) it uncannily makes almost every single person seem to be mind readers. Sooo many times throughout the book Prisca will be thinking some internal monologue as she looks at someone, only for them to correctly respond as if she spoke this aloud. Not just Lorian, but Asinia, Tribis, Demos, the other fae, literally everyone (except the wicked manipulative men she outsmarts).
This felt like weak writing, not needing to have the characters actually talk. (On that note I was often disappointed by how the book would not commit to having characters explain stuff to other ones, just ‘I then explained to [person] what we knew’. We don’t see their reactions to learning life changing info, or see how Prisca and co. attempt to convince them)
Overall, disappointing. The story at large <b>is interesting</b>, which is why I keep reading, but it is being bogged down by all of the above. And the above sure takes up a lot of the book. I suspect the author had all these great ideas, and knew where they wanted things to go, but not enough about filling in the gaps between major parts, which is why the pacing is so slow at times.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Deadnaming, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Infertility, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Minor: Animal death, Bullying, Torture, Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Stalking, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War