The Ruin of Kings

Epic, multibook fantasy seems a lot less common these days, but Jenn Lyon's A Chorus of Dragons is an intriguing new entry into this niche subgenre. The Ruin of Kings is an impressive setup. Told through two narrators of questionable reliability an impressive amount of world building and character development is achieved. We have some dubious prophecy, gods walking around as men and a deep history of conflict and conquest across multiple species. There is plenty to keep a fantasy nut interested!

Even though we have two narrators, the story follows a single character (one of the narrators) and is told from their perspective or from the jailor's perspective in alternating chapters, with their story tending to be more current compared to the jailor's telling of the older parts of their history. With roots in both the criminal underworld and the ruling upper classes we have an insight into all parts of the society we are witness to.

This was a fun read - plenty of swashbuckling action, myth building and general epicness. Whilst it falls into a few tropes in places, these do not feel to tired and the general sense of story is carried impressively through the alternating story telling. The voice of the narrators is clear enough too.

An impressive start to what is slated to be a 5 book arc. I look forward to seeing where this one goes!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have already ordered book 2, but damn if I'm not also very overwhelmed and confused by it.

It immediately throws you in the deep end, because a lot of things are talked about (places, people, things), but never explained until you start figuring (some) things out by context clues later. I also think I got whiplash from the amount of things happening in part 2. Everything happened so quick I felt like I barely got the chance to process any part of it before the next big thing happened. Which, while probably realistic for the situation, does take away some of the emotional impact for me.

Kihrin dying, being in the realm of the demons(or something? Everything that happened there was super confusing), remembering all his past lives, being alive again, going to stop Dead man, killing him, the whole geashes being gone, immediately leaving, leaving Tereath and other person behind, I'm still kinda confused why he had to leave, not to mention all the other perspectives in between. I'm also sad about Galen's dead, especially because he died thinking Kihrin didn't care for him, but who knows maybe he'll come back. I also don't quite get where his shift in character came from or why he thinks Kihrin just left him).

I quite liked the characters, all of them were very interesting. I especially liked Kihrin and Tereath, I really liked their interactions, would have loved more scenes with them together (also totally shipping them).

The pacing was a bit off for me, I thought the way the story was told in part one, with the switching perspectives and timelines was nice, both were intriguing and while I was sometimes annoyed with the switch, the other storyline usually pulled me in again quickly enough. But overall the pacing was a bit too fast for my liking, I would have liked some more moments to sit with the characters, get their thoughts on current events, before the next big thing swept them away. I hope this changes in the rest of the series, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment too much.

Overall I very much enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to reading the next one soon!