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A review by syllareads
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Ah, yes, my first endeavor into a new High Fantasy series, complete with a set of "WHAT" and "Who are you again" and the ever-present "oh my god what is happening".
The Ruin of Kings is the first book in the 5-book series "A Chorus of Dragons" by Jenn Lyons. It's fabulously red, nice and thicc and there are more names with T and K in it than I care to count (they have their reasons to be this many, but there's still so many, help my soul). The story-telling format itself is also rather unique - the entire story is two stories within a story, narrated by two individuals more or less after almost the entire events of book one have taken place. This makes for an intriguing premise since we already know what the end result will be - we just have no idea how things went tits-up in the first place. Also, has anyone ever told you they know your own life story better than you, and then played fetch with you and a recording stone? Because it's also quite amusing for that to happen on the sidelines.
The book itself (and its 3, yes you heard me correctly, 3 narrators) tackles a lot of heavy topics in the span of almost 700 pages, including but not limited to a character telling another one off on-page about how murder is okay but incest is where they draw the line because what will the children think (this is a direct quote and that is all I'm saying). There's much to explore in this world, anyway; slavery? Sure! Prostitution? Absolutely! Shackling someone's soul so you can have absolute control over them, why not. And most of this is achieved in the first few chapters no less!
As much as I enjoyed and snorted at the shenanigans, I have to say that this book lacked a bit of emotional depth for me. This might partially be because the character name situation wasn't just your usual High Fantasy hijinks but the author actively made it worse for beginners by including a lot of resurrection and soul shenanigans that I, for the life of me, couldn't accurately follow. This means that every conclusion characters arrived at had to be spelled out for me to understand why which in turn made it really difficult to connect emotionally with a lot of scenes. The snarky sass most of these adorable assholes possess didn't help; it might have been a coping mechanism, it might have been something else, but most of the time, emotional scenes didn't do it for me because the characters themselves weren't "convincingly" emotional to me.
(It was pretty damn funny most of the time tho).
TL;DR: Ruin of Kings is a great first book to a series that highly intrigues me (yes, partly because it is gay, and partly because all of my favorite characters so far are little shits) and I do recommend it; I can understand, however, if the unfamiliar narration style or the general lack of a lot of heartache turns some people off. I'll definitely be continuining on with the series, and I'm looking forward to more little shit moments, particularly by Teraeth - he's my son okay!!
The Ruin of Kings is the first book in the 5-book series "A Chorus of Dragons" by Jenn Lyons. It's fabulously red, nice and thicc and there are more names with T and K in it than I care to count (they have their reasons to be this many, but there's still so many, help my soul). The story-telling format itself is also rather unique - the entire story is two stories within a story, narrated by two individuals more or less after almost the entire events of book one have taken place. This makes for an intriguing premise since we already know what the end result will be - we just have no idea how things went tits-up in the first place. Also, has anyone ever told you they know your own life story better than you, and then played fetch with you and a recording stone? Because it's also quite amusing for that to happen on the sidelines.
The book itself (and its 3, yes you heard me correctly, 3 narrators) tackles a lot of heavy topics in the span of almost 700 pages, including but not limited to a character telling another one off on-page about how murder is okay but incest is where they draw the line because what will the children think (this is a direct quote and that is all I'm saying). There's much to explore in this world, anyway; slavery? Sure! Prostitution? Absolutely! Shackling someone's soul so you can have absolute control over them, why not. And most of this is achieved in the first few chapters no less!
As much as I enjoyed and snorted at the shenanigans, I have to say that this book lacked a bit of emotional depth for me. This might partially be because the character name situation wasn't just your usual High Fantasy hijinks but the author actively made it worse for beginners by including a lot of resurrection and soul shenanigans that I, for the life of me, couldn't accurately follow. This means that every conclusion characters arrived at had to be spelled out for me to understand why which in turn made it really difficult to connect emotionally with a lot of scenes. The snarky sass most of these adorable assholes possess didn't help; it might have been a coping mechanism, it might have been something else, but most of the time, emotional scenes didn't do it for me because the characters themselves weren't "convincingly" emotional to me.
(It was pretty damn funny most of the time tho).
TL;DR: Ruin of Kings is a great first book to a series that highly intrigues me (yes, partly because it is gay, and partly because all of my favorite characters so far are little shits) and I do recommend it; I can understand, however, if the unfamiliar narration style or the general lack of a lot of heartache turns some people off. I'll definitely be continuining on with the series, and I'm looking forward to more little shit moments, particularly by Teraeth - he's my son okay!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Child abuse, Incest, Sexual assault, and Sexual content