To Kill A Kingdom
Author: Alexandra Christo
Published by:Hot Key Books
Pages:358
Format Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
I have a heart for every year I’ve been alive. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. Every so often, I claw through the shingle just to check they’re still there. Buried deep and bloody.
Princess Lira is siren royalty and revered across the sea until she is cursed into humanity by the ruthless Sea Queen. Now Lira must deliver the heart of the infamous siren killer or remain a human forever.
Prince Elian is heir to the mist powerful kingdom in the world, and captain to a deadly crew of siren hunters. When he rescues a drowning woman from the ocean, she promises to help him destroy sirenkind for good. But he has no way of knowing whether he can trust her…
My thoughts:
As soon as I started reading I was completely swept up in the story of To Kill A Kingdom. The book has been described as a kind of little mermaid retelling, but it is also much more than that. There are lots of creative elements that pull from other folklore as well, which made it an even more interesting and entertaining read.
To Kill a Kingdom is a dark and slightly twisted fairytale. It tells a compelling, vicious story without falling into the mistake of a boring or typical lacklustre love story. I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting each of the lead characters are. In fact, for much of the book both the siren princess and human prince want to cut each other’s throats if that’s the last thing they do.
Lira is a siren princess whose ruthless Sea Queen mother teaches her to steal power and the futures of kingdoms by taking the hearts of many royal princes. The two leads are both anti heroes with really intriguing backstories and kind of a hate-to-love romance that built slowly throughout the book. I’m not generally a big fan of romance thrown into fantasy stories like this, but in this case I felt it actually was really successful and important to the plot.
This story was truly just so much fun to read! The world, characters, and plot were established very well and the story just unfolded naturally. The writing was extremely atmospheric, and really drew me in to the dark world of this fantasy novel, holding my attention from start to finish.
To Kill A Kingdom is ultimately a book involving mythology, sirens and pirates, and I simply couldn’t resist. I loved reading it, the pacing was great, the writing was strong and the story was highly original, imaginative and memorable. I’m hoping for Alexandra Christo to (hopefully) write a sequel very soon!
Overall, I really enjoyed this one, it was a very strong debut novel and I highly recommend it for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Sarah J. Maas and Madeline Miller.
Overall reaction:
Published by:Hot Key Books
Pages:358
Format Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
I have a heart for every year I’ve been alive. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. Every so often, I claw through the shingle just to check they’re still there. Buried deep and bloody.
Princess Lira is siren royalty and revered across the sea until she is cursed into humanity by the ruthless Sea Queen. Now Lira must deliver the heart of the infamous siren killer or remain a human forever.
Prince Elian is heir to the mist powerful kingdom in the world, and captain to a deadly crew of siren hunters. When he rescues a drowning woman from the ocean, she promises to help him destroy sirenkind for good. But he has no way of knowing whether he can trust her…
My thoughts:
As soon as I started reading I was completely swept up in the story of To Kill A Kingdom. The book has been described as a kind of little mermaid retelling, but it is also much more than that. There are lots of creative elements that pull from other folklore as well, which made it an even more interesting and entertaining read.
To Kill a Kingdom is a dark and slightly twisted fairytale. It tells a compelling, vicious story without falling into the mistake of a boring or typical lacklustre love story. I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting each of the lead characters are. In fact, for much of the book both the siren princess and human prince want to cut each other’s throats if that’s the last thing they do.
Lira is a siren princess whose ruthless Sea Queen mother teaches her to steal power and the futures of kingdoms by taking the hearts of many royal princes. The two leads are both anti heroes with really intriguing backstories and kind of a hate-to-love romance that built slowly throughout the book. I’m not generally a big fan of romance thrown into fantasy stories like this, but in this case I felt it actually was really successful and important to the plot.
This story was truly just so much fun to read! The world, characters, and plot were established very well and the story just unfolded naturally. The writing was extremely atmospheric, and really drew me in to the dark world of this fantasy novel, holding my attention from start to finish.
To Kill A Kingdom is ultimately a book involving mythology, sirens and pirates, and I simply couldn’t resist. I loved reading it, the pacing was great, the writing was strong and the story was highly original, imaginative and memorable. I’m hoping for Alexandra Christo to (hopefully) write a sequel very soon!
Overall, I really enjoyed this one, it was a very strong debut novel and I highly recommend it for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Sarah J. Maas and Madeline Miller.
Overall reaction: