Kings Rising

This book was like a 3rd serving of chips. It's still salty and crunchy and you want to continue munching, but it's not as satisfying as the first serving. It's also calory dense and lacks valuable nutrients. You enjoy the chips but they also leave you feeling kind of empty at the end.

In theory, this had a good ending, but the journey was quite disappointing.

Just as with the first two books, I was compelled to keep reading so I would see how it would all wrap up. But so many things didn't make any sense in this book. The plot is disjointed or poorly planned. The way Laurent gets captured at Fortaine but manages to free himself was too easy. It just took me out of the story. But I thought it must be a blip so I managed to suspend my disbelief to move along with the story. But when Jokaste made an appearance I couldn't ignore the glaring inconsistencies and it went downhill from there. So many other plot points were wrapped up too glaringly convenient:- the troop strolling through Akeilos like they were headed for a picnic, them not being caught up in the cloth merchant lie;- Jokaste doing a 180 and saying the child was Kator's;- Laurent not telling Damen about this and moving forward with the "exchange" at Kingsmeet;- implying they could actually know for sure who's kid it was when it could have been either Damen's or Kastor's because Jokaste was sleeping with both brothers during the same period of time;- the Regent not killing Damen on the spot because Laurent had "surrendered" himself. The Regent could literally kill Damen and arrest Laurent for Council trial, it's not like Laurent had any leverage or the Regent any scruples. - the trial was also the most anticlimatic ever with the Regent accusing Laurent and Damen and the other way around. And the resolution is someone's wife's testimony and a healer keeping a critical piece of info for himself until the very last second, after which the council does a 180 and is like "Laurent, our bad, you are our true King." What?The entire plot felt pretty low stakes compared to the first two. The whole I-killed-your-brother-but-we're-sleeping-together felt also pretty much unresolved. I still didn't buy Damen and Laurent being in love and it's the finale. Also, the book ends before they are instated as Kings so we could not see them banning slavery or how they dealt with their relationship outside of the conflict that brought them together. I know this wasn't the main purpose of the book but since I still wasn't that into "Daurent", the story just lost its shine.