eloise_bradbooks's reviews
765 reviews

What can I say ? I love these characters so much I can't even understand it myself.
I will now lay in bed and won't get up until the brilliant Leigh Bardugo writes another book with these characters.

THIS REVIEW IS IN FRENCH AND IN ENGLISH.

FR : Je suis tombée amoureuse.
Une histoire très originale et des personnages que tout le monde peut adorer !
J'ai rencontré mes nouveaux personnages préférés de tous les temps avec Six of Crows et je ne suis pas prête de les oublier.
DONNEZ MOI LA SUITE MAINTENANT.

EN : I have fallen in love.
The story is new, and the characters so loveable.
I met some of my favourite characters of all time with Six Of Crows so I am not ready to forget about them.
GIVE ME CROOKED KINGDOM NOW.

I'm sad to say I was disappointed by this book.
Santino Hassel's characters are always soooo interesting, and these ones weren't an exception. For some reason I feel drawn to these dysfunctional drug dealers and (almost)heartless assassins. And of course I love the world it's set in*.

But everything else sadly just didn't do anything for me.
I got half way through and realised nothing had happened. There was a background plot but it was so poorly developed... and I keep saying this, I know, I'm sorry, but I'm really sad about it. I'm sad because it was potentially very interesting.
If only we got a little more into the action of the fights, the Agency business. Basically, if Adam had more than two chapters, most of my issues could have been solved.
I understand that we were focused on Gordon's struggles, and I did appreciate that aspect, but there was so much more going on which was impossible to care about even though it could have given us such strong sequences.

As much as I love the characters individually, I'm not sure I'm completely on board with their relationship. I know the author had written it a little differently at first, and this one does seem better than the original, but it still didn't work for me. Insta-infatuation on one side, and only really sexual attraction on the other (until he realises the other is infatuated).

So... I'm disappointed. So much potential to be great. Great world, interesting characters, but the development just didn't go with the expectations.


*yes, After Midnight is a stand alone companion novel from In The Company of Shadows. This is why I know the world and love it.
I have only read the first novel from that series so far, desperately waiting for the author to release the director's cut for the next one... (question to those who have read ICoS, can I read the full version of After Image without having read the full v of Evenfall?)

Meh.
Yeah, the guys were sweet, both of them, especially Kyle. Sweet and relatable. But there was also a bunch of things that just made my eyes roll :

- Not a fan of this writing where the first person narrative from different characters feels like they're lying out all their teen - drama - thoughts onto me.
- Why did we get Ezra's POV? Not any use at all. And Ruby's? Not much use either...
- Didn't like the stereotype of the head cheerleader being the most popular girl in school, loves herself and is pretty ego-centrical. Oh but that's fine because life at home is difficult and she wants to redeam herself ... nope. And her superficial friends. And the stupid teen drama that comes from them.
- 100% predictable.

I mean I guess other than that it was fine. But it just seems fine to me. Maybe it's too short : with more development could have been build a better evolving story, less straight-forward and 'easy'.

Only reason I've finally read this is cause I could have it read to me and because King of Scars is out tomorrow.
As expected from having read the previous books ages ago, I didn't care for much.. but it wasn't as "bad" as I was expecting it to be either.
Excited to see what else we're getting of Nikolai.

Please don’t hurt me ?
I absolutely get how some people will love this book. I... did not. Here are my four main reasons:

1. As you may have read from many other reviews, it took ages to get going. Actually, it only started getting interesting around 70% of the way through for me. I honestly forced myself through 300 pages hoping to get that UMPF I was expecting from the writer of my favourite book (Six of Crows). But this made me realise what my main issue was:

2. King of Scars isn’t just another book set in the Grishaverse. It’s the continuation of the Grisha / Shadow and Bone trilogy. We follow the aftermath of that series and what’s going on with those characters today. It felt very info-dumpy and kinda like we should be content with just having the characters from the trilogy interact once more, without any plot actually being developed…
And don't get me wrong, I am interested in Nikolai, but clearly not as much as many others are. I did not succumb to his charm but i was interested in the dark part of his storyline.
Zoya stole the show for me, she was absolutely amazing and definitely the most fleshed out character (probably because we didn't get all the info about her in the other Grishaverse series).
It also felt like Nina was added in so that the people who weren’t as into the Grisha trilogy but loved Six of Crows stayed on board. As much as I enjoyed her part of the story, anyone else could have done it. It is so detached from the rest of the book that it almost deserves its own one (yes, I bet things will come together eventually but I’m judging this one book rn). And she repeats the same thoughts over and over for the first half of the book. It gets annoying.
A fourth character starts getting his own POV around 70% in which once again proves when the actual story starts.

3. And during those last 30% ? Well it turned out to be a veeeeeery similar plot to… Harry Potter. Here’s why (hidden cause may be a little too much info:

Spoiler

it’s basically the story of a horcrux. Nikolai has part of the bad guy inside him (not even on purpose, oh “the horcrux he never meant to create”!) and there were even talks of “neither one can live while the other one survives” like…. SOUNDS FAMILIAR!? + that ending…

)

4. And of course, that ending has got everyone shook (or not so much), which I understand, again, if you loved the original Grisha trilogy… I didn’t. I almost find it cheap…

Final note: Trassel gave me all the feels and he and Hanne deserve at least one of these stars all to themselves.

3.5 - Damn it. Why did it take me so long to get into this book? Cause that last quarter was bloody epic.

Maybe i wasn't in the right mood, maybe listening to it on audio wasn't the best way to consume this book, i don't know. All i know is i wasn't getting anything out of the first 3/4 of the book... I wasn't feeling much for characters and I couldn't quite find a plot to hang on to.
That all changed by the end though.
It was dark and gritty and punched me in the gut when I clearly wasn't exepcting it to.
The relationship between the characters got super interesting, and I think i started getting interested in the world and its way of existing. Sadly, because i almost don't remember anything from the first 70% of the book, I'm not sure what all of it means but now i feel like looking into it more so i can continue on with the series.

Look, I'm stubborn. You make me fall in love with an new world and the characters in it, I'm gonna want to follow them in the next books too.
It kinda felt like many second-book-in-a-trilogy where I'm still interested, I appreciate the characters and find everything very well thought through, but nothing much happened in this particular book. I mean... things DID happen but nothing extremely entertaining, and most importantly, not much of Lyra. Loads of things ABOUT Lyra, but we didn't see actual my bad ass stubborn Lyra DO THINGS.
All in all, it's setting up a big revolution and I can't wait to find out how it ends. I'm also not ready to say goodbye to these characters and this world...

I kept hearing people say how brilliant this story was but it was even greater than that. It was phenomenal.