Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Thron aus Gold und Asche

I don't know what it has been about this year so far but I have been really struggling with reading slumps and I feel like that has majorly affected my reading, particularly for certain aspects of this book as I feel mainly positive about this but I also do have my criticisms with it. For starters, this really does feel like a set-up book at times which makes sense given that it starts a new duology but it also means that at times it feels like there is a lot of new exposition being dumped at us and it can feel like a bit too much to handle. Another issue I have is that due to my reading slump whilst reading, the pacing felt really off and at times it felt quite slow and like not much was happening which didn't always help with making me come back to it.

However, I didn't absolutely hate this book and I actually quite enjoyed it as the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, especially in terms of the characters. This book follows Nikolai, Zoya, and Nina, the first two from the original Shadow and Bone series and Nina being from the Six of Crows duology meaning that those two series within the overall Grishaverse all collide and I love all 3 of them and each of them get to flourish in many different ways in this book. Nikolai was one of my favourite characters from the original Shadow and Bone books and here we get to see him 3 years removed from the ending of Ruin and Rising as well as dealing with the monster inside of him which is a remnant of the Darkling's power that he got in the aforementioned book. He's still effortlessly charming and he continues to have such character and screen presence that he is easily identifiable and his interactions/relationship with Zoya was enjoyable to read which speaking of: Zoya. I think Zoya is the character that gets the most growth in this book because we finally get to see more of her as well as also getting to see her perspective of the events of the Shadow and Bone trilogy and how that links to her past which was really interesting yet sad to learn about. I did quite like Zoya near the end of the original trilogy but this book managed to make her a standout character as well as properly establish her as one of the many victims of The Darkling whilst also allowing her to not be squeaky clean either as she admits her faults and the role she played in his evil.

Then, there is also Nina who I'm splitting up from the other two because she is the exact same in the actual book, split up from Nikolai and Zoya as well as most of the supporting cast in Ravka as Nina is in Fjerda following the events of Crooked Kingdom as I found her perspective to be the most mixed for me. On one hand, I loved getting more Nina content and I love how she continues her story from Crooked Kingdom in dealing with Matthias' death as well as her bout with Parem and how that makes her so resolute on helping the young women and girls kept in Fjerda that are secretly Grisha and being dosed on Parem. I loved these elements of her story and I found them to be really interesting, especially with the implicit commentary on the treatment of women and victims but I also found the middle part of her story to be quite uninteresting with Hanne as she just didn't really seem to jump out at me, especially when she's sharing the page with Nina, and so I feel like Nina's plot is the most obvious example of this feeling more like a set up than anything else.

There is also a new character that we follow for half of the book called Isaak who is called in to replace and pretend to be Nikolai after Nikolai and Zoya's disappearance and I found him to be a fine character but I did feel like he was more there for plot reasons than anything else and so I didn't find his story to be all that interesting though I feel like, with Nina's, the ending of his is going to hopefully be something much more interesting if it is carried into the second book and this was merely the setup. I also wasn't the biggest fan of where the plot turns in this book as while I'm not too upset with the 'resurrection' of The Darkling as he's not really resurrected but brought back to life in an interesting way, I'm not the biggest fan of how the book treats the rules of Grisha power as there are some choices made that did have me feeling like the previously established rules were being bent because they needed to be for the plot moreso than anything else.

I feel like my review is mostly negative but I did have a really fun time when reading the book and I really enjoyed it when I was reading it despite the slump I had that made my sit downs for it dispersed for far longer than I would have wanted them to be. I really do hope that not only will this be the last book to be affected by whatever reading slump it is that I'm in right know but that I also appreciate it more once I see what it is building towards when I read Rule of Wolves.

Content Warnings

ladygetslit's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

It took me too long to get into the story, but once I did, I was hooked! King of Scars starts off with two storylines that pick up where Crooked Kingdom left off: Nina Zenik and a crew of disguised Grisha are trying to gather intel and rescue Grisha in Fjierda; meanwhile, King Nikolai Lantzov and the inimitable Zoya Nazyalenski navigate the tribulations of running a war-torn country while coping with Nikolai’s teensy little demon problem.

The strength of this book lies in the world itself and the complexity of the characters. In the Shadow and Bone books, Zoya is… kind of a b****, but here we see that it’s her coping mechanism for all the nasty stuff she’s been through. Nina’s dealing with her grief

from losing Matthias

and trying to find her purpose now that her powers have changed forever. In a way, every character is confronting their demons in this book, but the heaviness is broken up by the hilarious banter between Nikolai and Zoya that has me dying for more.

Where the book falls short for me is in the pacing. Even though I was invested in the characters, the pacing in the beginning felt too slow, and I wasn’t able to feel intrigued until about 1/3 of the way into the book. Perhaps this is just the nature of a story that relies a lot on political intrigue, which requires a lot of exposition. That being said, the payoff was well worth waiting to get really into this. I read the last 2/3 of the book in 3 days because I could hardly put it down! Overall, this is one of the best books in the Grishaverse and I would read anything Leigh Bardugo writes at this point.

Content Warnings

readwithsophsx's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

laurenandradee's review against another edition

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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

4.25

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.

Content Warnings

royr__'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

emilywemily6's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I adored this book. While I like the idea of the multiple POV’s, I didn’t like Isaak’s perspective because I knew something bad would happen (call it foreshadowing). I also didn’t feel like Nina’s perspective was as needed in the entire plot. I still enjoyed all of the perspectives and seeing where the story went- lots of twists and turns so I didn’t know where the story was going, which was fun. And man, that cliffhanger!!

Content Warnings

soph22's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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