A review by readingwithsydney_
Lord of Ruin by K.M. Enright

dark slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

DISAPPOINTED!!

I LOVED Mistress of Lies, like so so much. It was such a treat and so amazing, but everything that gave Mistress its strength seems to fizzle out in Lord of Ruin leaving me so empty and frustrated.

The characters that I adored were like caricatures of themselves from the first book. Shan was so flip floppy and I honestly would have much rather she just went full evil. She follows the Eternal King up until the last 10% of the book and only changes her mind when her ex-fiancé (Samuel) gets hurt by the King. Genuinely, her chemistry with the King was 1000 times better than with either Samuel or Isaac.

Samuel was described as an innocent golden retriever boyfriend as he’s actively helping the rebellion and setting up the murder of his political rivals. He’s literally a huge whiner the whole time and serves only as a sex toy for both Shan and Isaac. I genuinely cannot believe that either of them actually liked him.

ACTUALLY I can’t believe any of the threesome loved each other. Their relationship was solely lust based and they constantly SAID they loved each other but genuinely didn’t ever show it outside of the sex scenes. Also the amount of random smut in this book (especially compared to the first book) is ramped up an insane amount and I found a lot of it cringy but again that’s because I didn’t believe the relationships one bit.

I came for the political vampires, which does deliver, but it just wasn’t the forefront like I wanted. The politics almost get shoved to the side but the vampire lore (especially the Filipino inspired lore) was SOOO cool. I wanted to just live in the vampire scenes, they were gory and insane. 

I felt like I was pulling teeth to get through this and that is such a major disappointment to me. Thank you to Orbit and Hachette Audio for the eARC and ALC!
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