A review by laurenandradee
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book was on par with Shadow and Bone but definitely not as good as six of crows (but maybe I just love a heist with a solid found family plot). But if you liked shadow and bone (which I definitely did) you will like this as well ! I do highly recommend that you read both series - shadow and bone followed by six of crows - first since there are multiple returned characters and some context is assumed knowledge. Also there are huge spoilers for both series in this book so you will be ruining the previous series if you read this before those. 

This book has a slow start (similar to shadow and bone and six of crows) since this is multiple POV book and not only that but there are also multiple plots
(three to be exact)
happening simultaneously (it's never confusing or hard to remember what is happening) but at about the halfway point once the stories really kick off this book is SO engaging and its fast paced, like chapter to chapter I am on the edge of my seat and Leigh Bardugo does the classic end of chapter cliffhanger followed by a POV change - there was a lot of "Oh nonono don't end here....wait never mind, thank god we are back to this POV" happening for me towards the end.
The slow build ends up being really nice since you really get an understanding of the plot and each of the characters are well fleshed out for me.

Overall I just love Leigh Bardugo's imagery, the horrible horrible things that happens within this book
like the women in what is essentially a human factory farm being forced to breed children under the influence of highly addictive drugs that they are originally force fed with the sole purpose of keeping the women addicted and therefore pliable, and to keep them breeding more addicted children even though the women clearly don't want to but need to, to continue to have access to this impossible to get drug otherwise they die from withdrawal. So essentially these women are slaves kept in a single windowless room, they are starved, live in squallor and forced to endure rape and forced pregnancy because they are so addicted for the sole purpose of breeding more grisha. and one women was unable to conceive but was still raped and forced give birth multiple times only to hold her multiple still born children after each pregnancy and then having to do it again and again or die - yeah that is BIG nightmare fuel. Also the imagery of Elizaveta flying at Zoya with locusts spilling from her mouth is not exactly the same brand of nightmare fuel but still pretty gross
are handled in a way that is still appropriate and are not overly gruesome or horrific for the shock factor which I liked. It was just enough that you got the horror of the situation but it wasn't drawn out and horrible to read. 

Overall, I really enjoyed being back in the grishaverse and who doesn't love a whole books worth of Nikolai-wit. 
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