Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Thron aus Gold und Asche

I wanted to read this book because everyone said that this series was better than Shadow & Bone. I really struggled with the Shadow & Bone series, but I didn’t struggle with this book fortunately.

The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he has endured in his country’s bloody civil war, and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, ands top a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army. Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried, and some wounds aren’t meant to heal.

I think I ended up enjoying this book more because the characters were already built and were traumatized with the war that it felt like the third book in the Crooked Kingdom series rather than a brand-new series. The world has already been fully developed and the characters have been developed. I love the multiple points of view and how they are all got their own storyline, but you can tell it’s building up to something so much bigger. I loved and hated the cliffhanger and was absolutely gobsmacked and it makes you want to read the next one. I loved Zoya as well and if anything happens to her, I will riot and fight everyone.

I think the only reason that stopped it from being five star is because the middle bit was a bit slow, and I was wanting more action and wanting everyone to kick ass and sometimes it just didn’t happen. I would have loved for Hanna to been able to stand up for her father and kick his ass himself.

This book ending on a cliffhanger with how big the book was felt cruel. I wanted more and I can see why it ended on a cliffhanger and now I'm dying to read the next book.

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nmfolkman's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional tense

5.0

This is a reread from 2019. I haven't read the second one yet, and I knew I'd need to review before I could do it. I loved it just as much if not more this time. I read it as a physical copy the 1st time and as an audiobook this time. I knew what to expect from Nikolai this time, so I wasn't disappointed at all and enjoyed seeing him as a more complete character.

Here is my review from 2019
4.5
This took me a disappointingly long time. It took me a bit to get into it, and I didn't like Nikolai as much. We see more of his uncertainty-- his battling with demons-- and much less his suave, cocky, hilarious self. It's much more real in this aspect, but it was not as fun.

I loved all the little mentions, here and there, of other characters we've loved. It doesn't feel forced the way it does when they bring back a beloved tv show for one more season, but natural. We occasionally think of people who have been important from our past, these characters do, too.

I'm really looking forward to the next one. I want to see where this is going and there are so many wonderful paths to follow.

Quotes and notes I saved https://quotesforteaching.blogspot.com/2019/06/king-of-scars-by-leigh-bardugo.html

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david_slack110507's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious 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

3.75

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.

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