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A review by denali_epub
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
2.0
So, as we can all tell by the reading date, it took me a hot minute to get my thoughts in enough order to actually write this review.
A three star (updated to two stars upon further reflection) review is low for me, and honestly pretty uncommon. Yet I feel the need to clarify, this was by no means a bad book. In fact, if I hadn’t read any of Leigh Bardugo’s other books before reading King of Scars, I likely would have rated it a lot higher.
So here’s the tea.
All around, this was an interesting storyline. The problem was this: for a book about Nikolai Lantsov, we spent a surprising amount of time hearing about everything but Nikolai. Out of 39 chapters, Nikolai only narrates 10 (yes, I counted). I want to say that that worked, because switching POVs worked spectacularly for the progression of the storyline when I read Six of Crows. However, the sad truth is I think King of Scars really would have benefited from one point of view, or even just less of everyone else’s points of view.
That is, however, not my only bone to pick. Without revealing any major spoilers, there were just some things that were implied or stated in King of Scars that invalidated a lot of what was set up in The Grisha Trilogy. I understand the characters and Leigh herself grew with time and as the story progressed, but it made it hard for me to be attracted to the novel when I felt like the characters I’d grown to love were almost... less themselves.
I suppose the honest truth is that I, among many others, it seems, just expected more. Maybe we overhyped it for ourselves. Maybe our taste has changed. Maybe this really just wasn’t the best book of the Grishaverse (spoiler alert: it’s not). I can’t really say for certain, and anything I say is, of course, opinion based.
For anyone who follows the Grishaverse series, I’d still encourage you to read it. It’s still an interesting story, it still expands upon characters that honestly got slept on in TGT, and it’s still a good book. Whether you’ll be satisfied, well that’s just up to you.
A three star (updated to two stars upon further reflection) review is low for me, and honestly pretty uncommon. Yet I feel the need to clarify, this was by no means a bad book. In fact, if I hadn’t read any of Leigh Bardugo’s other books before reading King of Scars, I likely would have rated it a lot higher.
So here’s the tea.
All around, this was an interesting storyline. The problem was this: for a book about Nikolai Lantsov, we spent a surprising amount of time hearing about everything but Nikolai. Out of 39 chapters, Nikolai only narrates 10 (yes, I counted). I want to say that that worked, because switching POVs worked spectacularly for the progression of the storyline when I read Six of Crows. However, the sad truth is I think King of Scars really would have benefited from one point of view, or even just less of everyone else’s points of view.
That is, however, not my only bone to pick. Without revealing any major spoilers, there were just some things that were implied or stated in King of Scars that invalidated a lot of what was set up in The Grisha Trilogy. I understand the characters and Leigh herself grew with time and as the story progressed, but it made it hard for me to be attracted to the novel when I felt like the characters I’d grown to love were almost... less themselves.
I suppose the honest truth is that I, among many others, it seems, just expected more. Maybe we overhyped it for ourselves. Maybe our taste has changed. Maybe this really just wasn’t the best book of the Grishaverse (spoiler alert: it’s not). I can’t really say for certain, and anything I say is, of course, opinion based.
For anyone who follows the Grishaverse series, I’d still encourage you to read it. It’s still an interesting story, it still expands upon characters that honestly got slept on in TGT, and it’s still a good book. Whether you’ll be satisfied, well that’s just up to you.