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A review by romantasyandtea
Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco
2.0
I personally... hated this book so much 😂
The two stars are for Wrath, and maybe Nonna, because that grandmother is awesome. (How is she related to Emilia?)
First off, I will say that the only reason this book didn't drag was because I was constantly waiting for Wrath, so if turning the page because you're waiting for another character to show up is worth it to you, then this book is definitely worth the read. It was not worth it to me. With every page that we had to focus more on this useless, pretentious, stupid main character, I felt more and more of my sanity being chipped away at.
Aside from the fact that everything conveniently worked out for Emilia, her motivations were very, very poor. How do I open my sister’s diary? Oh, I know! I’ll summon a demon!
Now, you might be thinking, Okay, so is she going to summon a demon to ask who the killer is? To give her power to find the killer herself? To summon her sister so that she could tell Emilia who her killer was?
Nope! She just wants to summon a demon so that he could open the diary for her! Which he doesn’t even end up doing! That’s so smart, right? I’ll get a demon to open the diary that might have some information that could potentially lead me to someone or something that may or may not help me maybe find out who might have killed my sister! No? Okay, well what about her lunging at the demon after discovering he’s got to be a Prince of Hell and has the power to kill her with one flick of his wrist?
Oh? Is that unbelievably stupid, too? No kidding.
There were millions of easier, less risky solutions to her problems that when she constantly chose the most outlandish, it came off as dumb on her part.
There is so much telling and not showing, so much cataloguing details and focusing on the wrong things at the wrong times, so much of the narrative trying to convince us that Emilia had no choice but to do this very stupid thing and that this danger couldn’t have been avoided and that other characters were the selfish, cruel ones while she was this intelligent, innocent gem. OH PLEASE.
Emilia comes off as very arrogant when she constantly assumes Wrath is protecting her for any reason other than being, you know, eternally bound to protecting her? I’m not saying he didn’t protect her for that reason, but to have her say it instead of him, it’s just so egotistical, especially considering there had been no reason for him to want to protect her at all. All she’d done was trap and insult him. She’d shown no kindness, no strength, no intelligence, and yet the story constantly tries to make you think she’d done something terribly heroic.
Phrasing a question differently so that you ask Greed more than one thing isn’t that impressive or clever, it’s really not. There’s a part in the book where she gives herself all the credit for escaping these horrible demons that were on the verge of killing her for her stupid mistakes, but only ended up surviving because Wrath showed up at the last second and sacrificed something of himself to save her.
Vittoria’s death was not written in any way that tugged at my heartstrings, and Emilia’s flat reaction was even worse. I felt no love between those siblings, and I think the reason was because the blurb tells you that Vittoria’s going to die, so during her scenes, I’m just waiting for her to die. There was no point, in my opinion, to showing any scenes with her after the prologue at all as it added nothing to the story.
Speaking of added nothing; the little excerpts from the di Carlo grimoire served no purpose and the remedies brought up never had any value.
Wrath was a fascinating character, but we get so little of him because the story constantly shuns him out. He doesn’t act like a prince of war so many times, he’s not ruthless or rough or smart when he lets Emilia take the lead on things she knows nothing about, and it comes off a disservice to his character because he has so much potential.
Characters showed up for no reason other than to info-dump for a page, then left, other supernatural creatures were introduced with only fifty pages left of the book, the romance in this was laughable, nothing was resolved by the end, and Emilia’s entire investigation was ridiculous. She kept talking about wanting revenge (and I’m thinking, How, bitch, YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING BUT COOK??!), and then moments would come when she’d act like her entire quest was to save others from being harmed. Umm no?? That wasn’t your motivation two chapters ago??
The writing is just very poor, Emilia doesn’t react like a real person to anything, and she has a complete 180 in every aspect of her personality after Vittoria’s death. (I get the angry or stubborn part, but she was a shy and anxious person beforehand. Suddenly, she’s the type of cliché who says she wants to push Wrath off a cliff just for being handsome? Seriously?) Antonio’s complete 180 when she threatens him was ridiculous. (Yeah, the man that believes he’s a godsend here to murder witches is going to beg one for mercy? Sure.) And the narrative just keeps contradicting itself.
Emilia outwardly tells Wrath that she risked death to get her sister’s amulet, then she says he doesn’t know what she went to get. She does nothing but insult and hate on Wrath, and then acts betrayed when he doesn’t tell her certain things that she’d either caused herself or has no reason to know. She says near the end that she’d met four Princes of Hell when she’d met five.
I don’t see myself picking up the second book in the trilogy. I might end up having more patience to deal with Emilia at some point again, but for now, I think I’ll get my tall, dark, and handsome quota from something else. I sincerely hope others enjoyed this book more than I did, and if that’s the case, I really envy you. And no, no Prince of Hell is having me raise a dagger to my own heart for that one.
The two stars are for Wrath, and maybe Nonna, because that grandmother is awesome. (How is she related to Emilia?)
First off, I will say that the only reason this book didn't drag was because I was constantly waiting for Wrath, so if turning the page because you're waiting for another character to show up is worth it to you, then this book is definitely worth the read. It was not worth it to me. With every page that we had to focus more on this useless, pretentious, stupid main character, I felt more and more of my sanity being chipped away at.
Aside from the fact that everything conveniently worked out for Emilia, her motivations were very, very poor. How do I open my sister’s diary? Oh, I know! I’ll summon a demon!
Now, you might be thinking, Okay, so is she going to summon a demon to ask who the killer is? To give her power to find the killer herself? To summon her sister so that she could tell Emilia who her killer was?
Nope! She just wants to summon a demon so that he could open the diary for her! Which he doesn’t even end up doing! That’s so smart, right? I’ll get a demon to open the diary that might have some information that could potentially lead me to someone or something that may or may not help me maybe find out who might have killed my sister! No? Okay, well what about her lunging at the demon after discovering he’s got to be a Prince of Hell and has the power to kill her with one flick of his wrist?
Oh? Is that unbelievably stupid, too? No kidding.
There were millions of easier, less risky solutions to her problems that when she constantly chose the most outlandish, it came off as dumb on her part.
There is so much telling and not showing, so much cataloguing details and focusing on the wrong things at the wrong times, so much of the narrative trying to convince us that Emilia had no choice but to do this very stupid thing and that this danger couldn’t have been avoided and that other characters were the selfish, cruel ones while she was this intelligent, innocent gem. OH PLEASE.
Emilia comes off as very arrogant when she constantly assumes Wrath is protecting her for any reason other than being, you know, eternally bound to protecting her? I’m not saying he didn’t protect her for that reason, but to have her say it instead of him, it’s just so egotistical, especially considering there had been no reason for him to want to protect her at all. All she’d done was trap and insult him. She’d shown no kindness, no strength, no intelligence, and yet the story constantly tries to make you think she’d done something terribly heroic.
Phrasing a question differently so that you ask Greed more than one thing isn’t that impressive or clever, it’s really not. There’s a part in the book where she gives herself all the credit for escaping these horrible demons that were on the verge of killing her for her stupid mistakes, but only ended up surviving because Wrath showed up at the last second and sacrificed something of himself to save her.
Vittoria’s death was not written in any way that tugged at my heartstrings, and Emilia’s flat reaction was even worse. I felt no love between those siblings, and I think the reason was because the blurb tells you that Vittoria’s going to die, so during her scenes, I’m just waiting for her to die. There was no point, in my opinion, to showing any scenes with her after the prologue at all as it added nothing to the story.
Speaking of added nothing; the little excerpts from the di Carlo grimoire served no purpose and the remedies brought up never had any value.
Wrath was a fascinating character, but we get so little of him because the story constantly shuns him out. He doesn’t act like a prince of war so many times, he’s not ruthless or rough or smart when he lets Emilia take the lead on things she knows nothing about, and it comes off a disservice to his character because he has so much potential.
Characters showed up for no reason other than to info-dump for a page, then left, other supernatural creatures were introduced with only fifty pages left of the book, the romance in this was laughable, nothing was resolved by the end, and Emilia’s entire investigation was ridiculous. She kept talking about wanting revenge (and I’m thinking, How, bitch, YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING BUT COOK??!), and then moments would come when she’d act like her entire quest was to save others from being harmed. Umm no?? That wasn’t your motivation two chapters ago??
The writing is just very poor, Emilia doesn’t react like a real person to anything, and she has a complete 180 in every aspect of her personality after Vittoria’s death. (I get the angry or stubborn part, but she was a shy and anxious person beforehand. Suddenly, she’s the type of cliché who says she wants to push Wrath off a cliff just for being handsome? Seriously?) Antonio’s complete 180 when she threatens him was ridiculous. (Yeah, the man that believes he’s a godsend here to murder witches is going to beg one for mercy? Sure.) And the narrative just keeps contradicting itself.
Emilia outwardly tells Wrath that she risked death to get her sister’s amulet, then she says he doesn’t know what she went to get. She does nothing but insult and hate on Wrath, and then acts betrayed when he doesn’t tell her certain things that she’d either caused herself or has no reason to know. She says near the end that she’d met four Princes of Hell when she’d met five.
I don’t see myself picking up the second book in the trilogy. I might end up having more patience to deal with Emilia at some point again, but for now, I think I’ll get my tall, dark, and handsome quota from something else. I sincerely hope others enjoyed this book more than I did, and if that’s the case, I really envy you. And no, no Prince of Hell is having me raise a dagger to my own heart for that one.