Review by wild_avalon_lass - The Radiant King

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wild_avalon_lass 's review for:

The Radiant King by David Dalglish

4.0

dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

“I am no creature, no beast, no monster.” It was a confession he might have once denied, or made begrudgingly, but now he clung to it with all his heart.

“I am Human.”

This book wrecked me. It was wonderful.

Contained within these 500+ pages was a heart-wrenching exploration of how familial bonds pull us together and rip us apart, of how our own human nature finds us all - no matter how we run from it, of the consequences of immortality, and the disaster of religious obsession when coupled with complete power.

Dalglish wrote a cast of characters that didn’t just feel real, for the briefest of moments, they were real; the way he created a world and spun it around the reader, it was easy to slip into Kaus, to want to rally along with it’s people, and to feel terror as, inevitably, the horrors came for the people of Kaus.

Sariel was my darling throughout the whole book.

The moment I realized he was going to be the stabby dark emo prince, I was so ready to follow him through the 532 pages. But all the narrators (Sariel, Faron, Aylah, Calluna, and Edar) all eventually worked their way under my skin and into my heart. Seeing each of the siblings’ thoughts that accompanied their - sometimes horrific - actions made it hard to see certain characters as ‘just’ another immortal, or ‘just’ the antagonist.

At some point, I even commented to a friend (my TRK co-reader) that “I don’t think Edar realizes he is the antagonist.”

And despite that ending (David Dalglish, how dare you), I am decided that Edar was never the antagonist…simply a starry-eyed immortal who truly believed his actions would be the betterment of humanity, even if it was their destruction.

Walking the story with each sibling meant that by the time the final chapter came, I cried over the inevitable.

It was heartbreaking because there was no way out: these siblings who love each other and would die for each other are on a collision course that can only end in killing each other.

And what could be more immortally tragic than that?

Content Warnings