Now, wasn’t that just the most pleasant surprise!! I went into this book without any prior knowledge about the wider League of Legends universe (aside from having watched and loved Arcane), so I had no idea what to expect here. Well, I am happy to say that I was completely hooked by the engaging epic fantasy story that I got!

RUINATION mainly follows the story of Kalista, the niece and close advisor of the narcissistic young king, Viego, of Camavor. She wants nothing more than to relieve Camavor of its bloody legacy, but her plans are hindered when the king’s beloved wife falls ill to the poisoned blade of an assassin. Viego takes this hit very poorly and quickly descends into madness, so Kalista takes it upon herself to do anything to heal the queen and keep her country safe. She fares out to the fabled and mysterious Blessed Isles to seek a cure, but her quest soon proves to be more dangerous than anyone could ever have expected.

Now, I think you can definitely feel that this story is set in an existing universe, because the worldbuilding was absolutely tantalising and I was completely immersed. This might be a relatively short fantasy novel, with it being under 500 pages, but it is filled to the brim with rich worldbuilding and intriguing lore.
There was a constant feeling of suspense and intrigue, especially surrounding the mysterious Blessed Isles, which kept me glued to the page. And the story itself is full of interesting revelations and unexpected twists and turns, which made this a super compelling and engaging read.

The character work was also really well done. Kalista was an extremely interesting character to follow and I immediately latched onto her. She is strong, curious, independent, and willing to do anything to save her country. Her relationship to the king was one of my favourite aspects of the book, because it was just so complex, as Viego is the type of character that straddles the line between villain and hero. She clearly cares deeply for him, yet she can’t deny that he is becoming a threat to his own kingdom as his mental state is deteriorating.

We also follow another POV from someone on the Blessed Isles, but I don’t want to say too much about that, because part of the fun was seeing the mysteries surrounding this character unravel. All I will say is that I loved this additional POV and I think it added a nice layer of intrigue to the story. Also, this character is a lot more morally gray than Kalista, which gave the story a bit of a darker tone that I really enjoyed!
I loved reading from both of these perspectives and seeing their storylines converge was extremely satisfying. Really effective and suspenseful storytelling, in my opinion!

Now, while I liked the ending of this story, I do have to say that I felt like it was a bit rushed. This book is fairly fast-paced the entire way through, but the final resolution happened at such a breakneck speed that supposedly hard hitting and emotional moments completely lost their impact for me.
I wish there had been another 25-50 or so pages to dive deeper and to see the fall-out, because in theory this conclusion was very satisfying, but the execution just wasn’t my favourite.

So, overall I really enjoyed this book and I am so glad I just took a leap of faith and went into this blind. RUINATION was an incredibly engaging and intriguing fantasy adventure and I am really looking forward to more stories set in this universe.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.