2 min to read
To Kill a Kingdom
- Title
- To Kill a Kingdom
- Author
- Alexandra Christo
- Published date
- 06/03/2018
- Pages
- 352
- Publisher
- Hot Key Books
To Kill the Kingdom by Alexandra Christo is a retelling of little mermaid story. Of course it’s much darker and more complicated.
We have two main protagonists here. First is Lira - the daughter of Sea Queen herself, the one who got for herself another name that everyone else fear, Princes’ Bane. The sirens collect human’s hearts to gain more power, and Lira, the most powerful of them all, only hunt for princes. She’s wild, cruel and brutal - her only goal is to please her mother and one day to take her place. But she’s also too confident and one day she made a mistake that will cost her dearly. The Sea Queen curses her into a human form, a weak shell compering to her siren self, and tasks her with killing the prince.
The other protagonist is targeted prince Elian, heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. He also happen to be famous siren killer. He loves the sea and his ship so he is not in any hurry to become a proper king heir as his father expects him to be. He would prefer to live as a pirate and help the world by getting rid of all sirens and other monsters. Unexpectedly the chance to do just that present itself in form of ancient artefact. But to get it Elian would have to deal with a lot of people and struck unfavourable deals. When he’s on his way to complete his quest he stumbles upon drowning young woman in the middle of the ocean.
Lira and Elian are both very interesting characters. And even though they are adversaries, they are very similar. They are both from royalty and try to please their parents against their on wish. But can they find this connection? Their dialogues are full of sarcasm and witty reprises, so it is very fun to read. They are both self confident and stubborn, determined to realise their own goals.
I even liked the romance (and I’m usually very picky!), it was developing slowly and wasn’t rushed. And it was portraited beautifully, as love is it’s own, powerful kind of magic. The book has a heavy fairy tale feeling and it’s easy to fully dive into the story. I also like that it’s a stand alone. There are so many never ending series nowadays, that it was a nice change for me to read a well written short story. It is a debut of Alexanda Christo, so I’m hoping she’s going to write more books like that!
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