Reviews with content warning for Rape - La guardia del rey

This was definitely the most enjoyable of the trilogy. It felt anticlimactic and rushed, which is why I rated it the way I did, but I absolutely adored Andrew and Neil.

Content Warnings

sophia_pearl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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magicshop's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

before anything else, please read my or anyone's content warnings for this series before picking it up. i'm serious. there is some hella triggering stuff in there. take good care of yourself.

this isn't what i'd call a good or well-written series. my overall rating for each book is pretty much about that, as is usually the case. the enjoyment rating, though, which can often be wildly different for me, is a fucking doozy of a 4.5-5 star. i consumed these books so fast i'm pretty sure i wormholed into another dimension for a while there. (there were aliens. they also enjoyed it.)

keeping it simple: the good, the reaaaaally good, in summary, is basically all of the character writing and eventual relationship development. nora sakavic could wrestle an interesting inner monologue and/or dialogue/banter out of every single ancient spartan citizen if pressed. that's the key, and why these books (aside from the first) have such high ratings, i'd say.

a few more goods or good-ishs:
- relationships. you may know this as a romance series, but it's actually mostly romance-less contemporary for about 2/3rds of the way through. despite that, or maybe because of it, i have enjoyed the relationships immensely, including but not limited to the romantic ones.

you can't tell what's going to be endgame until the end of the first book, in my opinion, and even then the tells are quite subtle. and before that, 99% of readers will be wrong about the endgame ship for quite some time.

things are developed so slowly in the romance department that i wondered if i would get bored, but then i remembered i actually like slow burn so slow and subtle it makes you feel stupid for waiting so long. it's not a bad kind of stupid. it's investment and payoff, and nora gives us the latter in spades.
- half the main cast is at least bilingual, and while it's quite unbelievable or at least confusingly questionable for some characters

(why do the minyards speak german? did they just learn from hanging out with nicky??)

, for most of them it makes sense just from their background, and it does make me happy as a bilingual person myself. the one thing that rubs me wrong is having nicky know no spanish even though his mom is mexican. in a book with so many people speaking multiple different european languages, that the one language nonsensically excluded from the mix is the only one spoken mainly in less developed areas of the world is a dubious writing choice at best.

now......... the bad (and sometimes reaaaaally bad, and sometimes actually not entirely bad at all and more complex but potentially ok than anything else):
- exy makes no sense. the rules don't make sense. the equipment doesn't make sense. i'm not even sure whether i can say nora tried her best to make it make sense or wrote every exy scene letting out villain laughs one after the other for several hours while ingesting copious amount of wine. either way, it's a mess, but it kinda doesn't try to be anything else so it's very easy to forgive.
- this book was written in the early 2010s and it shows. it has that typical early YA try-hardness going on, but i'd say as far as the ya i've read goes, it doesn't take itself too seriously. the way it's written makes it look like it's being taken very seriously, but there's something about it (similar to the lack of exy pretentiousness) that keeps it humble and grounded. you can tell nora didn't think this would be the next raven cycle or anything like that (though as a cult favorite it came almost close in the end??), she just sort of had fun with it. i can vibe with that.
- going along with the 2010s YA predicament, there isn't much political correctness involved, and certain slurs are thrown around semi-freely (mostly the r-word) by people who should know better. not a dealbreaker for me personally, but be aware.
- plot is neither here nor there. it's really just there to prop the characters and their develoment up and i wouldn't say it has anything particularly interesting or unique about it in itself. it's not what you'll care about. the people and relationships are.
- the stakes are so ridiculously high it's not even funny. everything is life or death for no reason, and everyone's been abused within an inch of their lives for most of their lives, no exceptions. these books are the definition of the "epic highs and lows of high school ~~football~~ exy" meme. now, this isn't exactly a bad thing in itself, because all of this abuse does happen, sometimes to the same person all at once, in real life, and people who share trauma do often flock together and take care of each other. that's a good thing to depict and i think nora did well. but it's also really overwhelming on the reader at times. there is very rarely any downtime for characters to relax and be themselves outside of a horrible or downright traumatizing situation, and they all desperately need that time. i don't know how exactly i would write this into the story as it stands, but i think it would've been a welcome change of pace to pepper in.
- everything about andrew's condition and his medicine is a grade-a disaster. that's not how medicine works, that's not how psychiatry works, and the message that only sobriety from psychiatric medication (which, by the way, is not supposed to make you "high" and "manic" - you are taking the wrong medicine and you need to stop! adults should know AND enforce this!) can bring forth someone's "real self" was frankly insane even back in 2014. andrew needs better medical care, not to be forced to

choose between his manic, borderline psychotic self and his apathetic, suicidal unmedicated self.

there is a middle ground, i promise. just. it's by far the most disappointing thing in these books to me.

phew, so! i can definitely say nora sakavic seems like a madman and a genius trying to decide which side to give into any given day, much like some of her characters, and i'd read just about anything she decided to write. and i hope she keeps deciding!

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andmingmingtoo's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted sad tense fast-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

When I started this series I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it, and now I'm actively crying happy tears over the ending. Nora is a wizard I think

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trintrin's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful 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

Satisfaction.

One word to sum up this whole book.

Andreil being endgame? Satisfaction. Nathan's death? Satisfaction. Foxes on vacay? Satisfaction. Jean out of the Nest? Satisfaction. Neil's deal with Ichirou? Satisfaction. Kevin stepping on court left-handed and with a new tattoo? Satisfaction. Andrew taking Exy seriously? Satisfaction. Foxes winning the NCAA championship? Satisfaction. Riko's arm broken? Satisfaction. Riko's death? Satisfaction. Satisfaction. Satisfaction.</spoilers>

I could go on and on about how exponentially the writing has improved, the beauty of circular endings, intricate and well-developed characters and such, but we're gonna be here for a super long time, then.

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pjthom's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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mint_frog's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Inarguably the best part of the trilogy. Andrew and Neil's relationship, which has been slowly but steadily evolving over the course of the first two books, at last reaches its final form. It is one the most important fictional relationships to me - the respect of boundaries, focus on consent, and on top of that Neil's undeniable demisexuality (even if it's not named in text) all make it very dear to my heart.

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