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av0c8d0to3st's review
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ryatwilight's review
3.0
2.5 ⭐️. This was, unfortunately, my least favorite in this series so far. The pregnancy/baby trope is totally not my jam and that comprised a large portion of this book. If you enjoy that trope, you will love this book. I did, however, really enjoy the side stories that we’re taking place with Assail and Sola, Trez and Selena, and Xcor and Layla.
I also enjoyed seeing Wrath come into his own as king and become more involved and invested in his people and realizing that the things he thought were shortcomings about himself are not shortcomings at all.
I also enjoyed seeing Wrath come into his own as king and become more involved and invested in his people and realizing that the things he thought were shortcomings about himself are not shortcomings at all.
thenovelcourt's review against another edition
5.0
I can’t get enough of my boys at this point. They’re so precious to me and their life journey is mine as well at this point.
12 books in and I’ve loved every single word, page, and chapter. There could be 50 more books in this series and I would read all of them.
All Hail King Wrath, Beth and L. W. ❤️
12 books in and I’ve loved every single word, page, and chapter. There could be 50 more books in this series and I would read all of them.
All Hail King Wrath, Beth and L. W. ❤️
libraryandtea's review
3.0
Not the best in the series. There is a lot going on, as there is in all the books, but it didn't seem as focused as the others. Some things were very obvious, while other parts just made you look confused at the book.
I am looking forward to seeing where the Shadow Brothers book goes, however.
All in all, not bad - I do like that the next couple of stories are starting to be set up, but it could have been a little more focused on what was happening between Beth and Wrath.
I am looking forward to seeing where the Shadow Brothers book goes, however.
All in all, not bad - I do like that the next couple of stories are starting to be set up, but it could have been a little more focused on what was happening between Beth and Wrath.
bel_saturnreads's review against another edition
4.0
Bueno aunque un poco largo porque ya no soy la que era y me cuesta mucho ponerme con libros largos jaja pero me ha gustado mucho Wrath al final ha sido amor y la nuevas otps que ya conociamos pero que han profundizado un poquito mas que ganas de leer sus libros!! aunque me tendré que echar al inglés si quiero saberlas porque vamos despues del 12 todos los libros que han salido ya de la daga y aqui nada :(
sidekicka7x's review against another edition
5.0
This might be my favorite book in the series so far. Beth and Wrath are two phenomenal people and I love them both so much. This story was fantastic.
ihateprozac's review against another edition
5.0
This book goes to show that spoilers don’t have to ruin your reading experience! By virtue of being so behind when it comes to these books, I was spoiled about the birth of Little Wrath and Wrath’s continued kingship, having stumbled across the tagline “Long live the King”. However, this book still managed to rip my heart out, stomp all over it, and shove it back into my chest.
The King is the culmination of several questions I had in the back of my head but never truly articulated. I always wondered how the Brotherhood kept the Glymera in check when Wrath never actually deals with them in person. I’d always wondered what the structure of vampire society was like, and how commoners interact (or if they ever interact) with the upper echelons. And I always wondered what public perception was of the warrior vampires living in their Mhis-covered McMansion.
Turns out it’s all a bit shit. The Glymera fucking hate Wrath, the commoners have never even seen Wrath, and public perception is lower than Donald Trump’s polls. While Wrath has always been a character we can empathise with due to his disability and being saddled with a job he hates, the Caldwell vampires know none of this. As far as they know, Wrath is this arrogant rich guy who rules from afar, never deigning to bless the commoners with his presence. And in all honesty, it was about time that people started to bite back.
Where Lover Mine and Love Reborn were tough reads because they were dull or awkwardly written, The King is a tough read because I just didn’t want any harm to befall Wrath. The Band of Bastards are a fantastic threat and very well written, but I was basically wrapped up in a giant ball of feels and terror the whole time, hoping our beloved Wrath would be okay! When he’s wrapped up behind closed doors in other novels I tend to forget that he’s actually one of my fave characters, and that he has so much pain in his life that we just don’t see unless we’re hearing directly from Wrath, V, or Tohr.
I really enjoyed the pacing of this novel. I was worried how it would play out, given the Herculean feat it took me to even finish Tohr’s dull book, but it’s well paced and JR Ward did well to build the dissent up over several novels. The “dethroning of Wrath mission” takes place over a couple of years, and I’m glad it wasn’t all hurriedly built up within the space of a few months. There are some nice twists and turns as you learn who in the glymera is actually behind it all. It takes a while for the tension to reach fever pitch, so that when Rehvenge waltzes in in what is the best mic drop scene I have ever witnessed, you can practically feel the air be sucked out of the room and see the building blocks fall.
While I was admittedly a little bored by the chapters of Papa Wrath, JR Ward did a fantastic job in bringing it full circle and showing the parallels between Wrath and his father. Wrath was led to believe that his father's job was easy and he was adored by everyone at court - y’know, in spite of having been murdered when Wrath was 7.
It turns out that Papa Wrath never had it so easy. He too was constantly living under the threat of death and mutiny with a wife who wasn’t accepted by the glymera, and he took pains to transform himself from sheltered royal to Warrior King. It was awesome to see how Papa Abalone was able to turn things around with Papa Wrath in the Old Country, coming full circle with Abe serving as an advisor to Wrath in the present.
FYI this book is a giant hurricane of feels. Wrath drama aside, we have trouble in paradise with Assail and Sola and I’ll positively cry if we don’t get Sola back soon. We have Layla struggling with her feelings for traitorous Xcor, and we have Xcor struggling with the idea that a Chosen could actually fall for someone like him. We have some beautiful father moments with Zsadist, and Trez gets a love interest who just might die before they can be together. We have commoners with heartbreaking histories, and we have Throe generally being a beautiful bleeding heart who needs to hurry up and get his own damn story.
I need JR Ward to do a few things in her next few novels:
1) Smack Havers for being a revolting misogynistic, homophobic, ass backwards pig of a doctor
2) Tell me that Boo is or isn’t a familiar who’s gonna transform and help our boys
3) Make Tohr interesting, because he’s got such an interesting story and yet is actually dull as a post
4) Help me figure out what place Assail and Sola can actually have in the vampire world that won’t result in their deaths
5) Have Xhex and Sola be BFFs because they’d kick ass together
6) Have Assail be some sort of sassypants advisor to Wrath and use his drug business to actually bring down the lessers
7) Show me more of the s’Hisbe and s’Ex because I am heeeeeeere for that man!
8) Help iAm find a lovely lady
9) Not utterly destroy Trez’ heart by killing his love
10) Hurry up and get John to figure out he’s a reincarnation of Darius because that mystery is moving too damn slowly for my liking!
Overall: This was a fabulous instalment in the series and I need to power through The Shadows and have The Beast released already! When these book are bad they’re pretty damn dull, but when these books are good they’re like goddamn crack cocaine. I feel like the next few books are gonna rip my heart out and I’m completely and entirely okay with that.
The King is the culmination of several questions I had in the back of my head but never truly articulated. I always wondered how the Brotherhood kept the Glymera in check when Wrath never actually deals with them in person. I’d always wondered what the structure of vampire society was like, and how commoners interact (or if they ever interact) with the upper echelons. And I always wondered what public perception was of the warrior vampires living in their Mhis-covered McMansion.
Turns out it’s all a bit shit. The Glymera fucking hate Wrath, the commoners have never even seen Wrath, and public perception is lower than Donald Trump’s polls. While Wrath has always been a character we can empathise with due to his disability and being saddled with a job he hates, the Caldwell vampires know none of this. As far as they know, Wrath is this arrogant rich guy who rules from afar, never deigning to bless the commoners with his presence. And in all honesty, it was about time that people started to bite back.
Where Lover Mine and Love Reborn were tough reads because they were dull or awkwardly written, The King is a tough read because I just didn’t want any harm to befall Wrath. The Band of Bastards are a fantastic threat and very well written, but I was basically wrapped up in a giant ball of feels and terror the whole time, hoping our beloved Wrath would be okay! When he’s wrapped up behind closed doors in other novels I tend to forget that he’s actually one of my fave characters, and that he has so much pain in his life that we just don’t see unless we’re hearing directly from Wrath, V, or Tohr.
I really enjoyed the pacing of this novel. I was worried how it would play out, given the Herculean feat it took me to even finish Tohr’s dull book, but it’s well paced and JR Ward did well to build the dissent up over several novels. The “dethroning of Wrath mission” takes place over a couple of years, and I’m glad it wasn’t all hurriedly built up within the space of a few months. There are some nice twists and turns as you learn who in the glymera is actually behind it all. It takes a while for the tension to reach fever pitch, so that when Rehvenge waltzes in in what is the best mic drop scene I have ever witnessed, you can practically feel the air be sucked out of the room and see the building blocks fall.
While I was admittedly a little bored by the chapters of Papa Wrath, JR Ward did a fantastic job in bringing it full circle and showing the parallels between Wrath and his father. Wrath was led to believe that his father's job was easy and he was adored by everyone at court - y’know, in spite of having been murdered when Wrath was 7.
It turns out that Papa Wrath never had it so easy. He too was constantly living under the threat of death and mutiny with a wife who wasn’t accepted by the glymera, and he took pains to transform himself from sheltered royal to Warrior King. It was awesome to see how Papa Abalone was able to turn things around with Papa Wrath in the Old Country, coming full circle with Abe serving as an advisor to Wrath in the present.
FYI this book is a giant hurricane of feels. Wrath drama aside, we have trouble in paradise with Assail and Sola and I’ll positively cry if we don’t get Sola back soon. We have Layla struggling with her feelings for traitorous Xcor, and we have Xcor struggling with the idea that a Chosen could actually fall for someone like him. We have some beautiful father moments with Zsadist, and Trez gets a love interest who just might die before they can be together. We have commoners with heartbreaking histories, and we have Throe generally being a beautiful bleeding heart who needs to hurry up and get his own damn story.
I need JR Ward to do a few things in her next few novels:
1) Smack Havers for being a revolting misogynistic, homophobic, ass backwards pig of a doctor
2) Tell me that Boo is or isn’t a familiar who’s gonna transform and help our boys
3) Make Tohr interesting, because he’s got such an interesting story and yet is actually dull as a post
4) Help me figure out what place Assail and Sola can actually have in the vampire world that won’t result in their deaths
5) Have Xhex and Sola be BFFs because they’d kick ass together
6) Have Assail be some sort of sassypants advisor to Wrath and use his drug business to actually bring down the lessers
7) Show me more of the s’Hisbe and s’Ex because I am heeeeeeere for that man!
8) Help iAm find a lovely lady
9) Not utterly destroy Trez’ heart by killing his love
10) Hurry up and get John to figure out he’s a reincarnation of Darius because that mystery is moving too damn slowly for my liking!
Overall: This was a fabulous instalment in the series and I need to power through The Shadows and have The Beast released already! When these book are bad they’re pretty damn dull, but when these books are good they’re like goddamn crack cocaine. I feel like the next few books are gonna rip my heart out and I’m completely and entirely okay with that.
arcanewolf's review
4.0
despite being hit by a reading slump during the middle of this, I did enjoy it thoroughly.
I started to feel that the books were going a bit downhill before this came out, I thought there were too many characters to keep up with and the pacing was getting a bit slow. I still enjoyed them but I thought it was going downhill a bit.
but this book gave the series a good comeback. I liked how we went back to Wrath and Beth and saw more of the pressures of being King to the vampire race. We got a more intimate look into the strains that were forming between Wrath and Beth and I think that was refreshing than from all these new characters popping up.
I think J R Ward needs to return to the previous brothers every now and then with her books so we can get a catch up and how their relationships are going. Like going back to Z and Bella now Nalla is a lot older, or Rhage and Mary, who have shown hints that they want a child (though I don't know if their novella is still in the works).
I am looking forward to Trez and iAm in the next book. But I would to love see future books going back to the previous brothers and their shellans as the main focus, like what happened in this book.
I also have to say that Assail and Sola have now grown on me. I hope we get a lot of them in the next book since their story ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.
I started to feel that the books were going a bit downhill before this came out, I thought there were too many characters to keep up with and the pacing was getting a bit slow. I still enjoyed them but I thought it was going downhill a bit.
but this book gave the series a good comeback. I liked how we went back to Wrath and Beth and saw more of the pressures of being King to the vampire race. We got a more intimate look into the strains that were forming between Wrath and Beth and I think that was refreshing than from all these new characters popping up.
I think J R Ward needs to return to the previous brothers every now and then with her books so we can get a catch up and how their relationships are going. Like going back to Z and Bella now Nalla is a lot older, or Rhage and Mary, who have shown hints that they want a child (though I don't know if their novella is still in the works).
I am looking forward to Trez and iAm in the next book. But I would to love see future books going back to the previous brothers and their shellans as the main focus, like what happened in this book.
I also have to say that Assail and Sola have now grown on me. I hope we get a lot of them in the next book since their story ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.
piggy327's review against another edition
5.0
J.R. Ward has done it again. She has blown me away. I cried, I laughed, and cried again. I have always loved Wrath and Beth from the beginning in Dark Lover. They have always been my favorite, and to have their story come full circle was the icing on the cake for me with this series. I love the set up for potential books, the feeling of wanting more but so overjoyed with what was just read. Just the full package.
linyarai's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5