When destiny calls, there's no fighting back.
Kihrin grew up in the slums of Quur, a thief and a minstrel's son raised on tales of long-lost princes and magnificent quests. When he is claimed against his will as the missing son of a treasonous prince, Kihrin finds himself at the mercy of his new family's ruthless power plays and political ambitions.
Practically a prisoner, Kihrin discovers that being a long-lost prince is nothing like what the storybooks promised. The storybooks have lied about a lot of other things, too: dragons, demons, gods, prophecies, and how the hero always wins.
Then again, maybe he isn't the hero after all. For Kihrin is not destined to save the world.
He's destined to destroy it.
Title : The Ruin of Kings
Author : Jenn Lyons
Series : A Chorus of Dragons (book one)
Format : eBook (overdrive)
Page Count : 560
Genre : fantasy
Publisher : Tor Books
Release Date : February 5, 2019
Reviewer : Hollis
Rating : ★ ★ ★
Hollis' 3 star review
Remember that feeling you had when you first watched season one of The Witcher? How nothing made sense and things seemed out of order and confusing? Yeah. This is that times a bajillion. It also has that Tamsyn Muir Harrow the Ninth kind of wtf'ery going on but because this was book one, and I hadn't already fallen in love with the characters, and understood (a tiny tiny bit of) the worldbuilding, it was.. hard. I almost gave up many many times in the first 30%. And bearing in mind the length of this novel, that's a lot of pages. Every percent (throughout the whole reading, not just the beginning) was hard earned.
But here we are. I made it. And I am definitely reading on.
"Demons and monsters are obvious; we'll always band together to fight them off. But real evil, insidious evil, is what lets us just walk away from another person's pain and say, well, that's none of my business."
It's hard to say if the battles would be worth the war for another reader because the series is far (if you consider the upcoming page lengths in my future, far far far far x a lot) from over. And I still do not have a handle on all the things going on. Not only is this a dense fantasy and told in alternating timelines but it is so complex. Not just politically either it's.. there are so many confusions with who is really who, when they were those people, who they are now, the origins of the bloody world which definitely still play a part, the gods, the various races, the.. yeah. There were many a time I just had to stop and close my eyes because my brain was crying out in pain. But the more you read, the more you trick yourself into thinking maybe you're following things. Or, rather, when you finally get to where the narration catches up with the plot, it's very action packed, and you have been distracted by the new bit of shiny that is a different narrative style and also, well, in theory you will be able to follow the climax better. And it's true, you will.
But also so many people die at the end of this book that there's hope some of the details won't hold as much relevance for future plots. Though I'm sure that's a vain hope because there'll be more things to keep track of, and more people and new conflicts arising from said things and people, as we go on.
So, yes, this was a weird experience. It felt like I was reading it for an eternity and not in a great way. But there's still a lot to be interested in and a lot that was interesting and clever and it's hopefully all going to be worth it in the end. Having said that, I had thought to binge this series buy hahahah no. I cannot. That might very well break me. But I do hope to continue soon before too many details fade.
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