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A review by sleepysamreads
To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo
5.0
You can find this review and others on my blog SleepySamReads!
I had seen quite a few reviews for this book, so going into it I had pretty high expectations. I love books that center around mythology, and especially mermaids/sirens. To Kill A Kingdom completely lived up to the hype! I loved it SO much.
The main reason I loved it: Lira. She's one of the best characters I've read this year. It's hard to say that because this year has been chock-full of amazing female characters. But something about Lira is even better than most of them. When we meet her in the beginning we see how ruthless she has been made. She rips out a prince's heart without a second thought, and appears to enjoy it. Perhaps a bit too much. But as the story goes on we learn that she doesn't necessarily like having to be a savage murderer. There was something extremely beautiful about watching Lira's story line and progression. She grew so much and it was definitely one of the best villain to hero stories I've seen.
I also completely adored Elian. How can you not fall a little bit in love with the prince who's family wants him to step up and be king, but his heart seems to belong to a ship and the sea? I also love when books are diverse and I can't remember reading a fantasy story where the royal family was anything other than white. This book has heavy references to a lot of different mythology, but Elian's family are said to be descendants of King Midas. His palace is shaped like a gold pyramid and he is said to bleed gold.
Another thing I really loved is that there were a lot of female characters. So often in fantasy there's only a token female and the rest are guys. This book seems to do a pretty good job of balancing out the two, if not having a couple more women then men. Which is totally okay in my book.
I will die defending the enemy to lovers trope and that's exactly what this book is. And it does it SO well. Elian and Lira's banter is everything I want. There's one part toward the end of the book that was so beautiful that I was almost in tears. That doesn't happen very often.
Read this book! You won't regret it at all!!
I had seen quite a few reviews for this book, so going into it I had pretty high expectations. I love books that center around mythology, and especially mermaids/sirens. To Kill A Kingdom completely lived up to the hype! I loved it SO much.
The main reason I loved it: Lira. She's one of the best characters I've read this year. It's hard to say that because this year has been chock-full of amazing female characters. But something about Lira is even better than most of them. When we meet her in the beginning we see how ruthless she has been made. She rips out a prince's heart without a second thought, and appears to enjoy it. Perhaps a bit too much. But as the story goes on we learn that she doesn't necessarily like having to be a savage murderer. There was something extremely beautiful about watching Lira's story line and progression. She grew so much and it was definitely one of the best villain to hero stories I've seen.
I also completely adored Elian. How can you not fall a little bit in love with the prince who's family wants him to step up and be king, but his heart seems to belong to a ship and the sea? I also love when books are diverse and I can't remember reading a fantasy story where the royal family was anything other than white. This book has heavy references to a lot of different mythology, but Elian's family are said to be descendants of King Midas. His palace is shaped like a gold pyramid and he is said to bleed gold.
Another thing I really loved is that there were a lot of female characters. So often in fantasy there's only a token female and the rest are guys. This book seems to do a pretty good job of balancing out the two, if not having a couple more women then men. Which is totally okay in my book.
I will die defending the enemy to lovers trope and that's exactly what this book is. And it does it SO well. Elian and Lira's banter is everything I want. There's one part toward the end of the book that was so beautiful that I was almost in tears. That doesn't happen very often.
Read this book! You won't regret it at all!!