EBookObsessed
SPOILER ALERT:
There are some mentions of the prior stories but no more than you would get reading the book description.
This series started with a Beast and the Beast plot of two completely different humanoids falling in love. In the Ippos King, we start with two characters which we have grown to love and admire in the first two books and while they are the same mixed race dynamic as Brishen (Kai) and Ildiko (human) in Book 1 and 2, in The Ippos King, Serovek Pangion (human), the Margrave of High Salure, has had his eye on sha-Anhuset (Kai), Brishan’s cousin and leader of his army, since they first met. As a long-time friend of his Kai neighbors, Serovek admires the Kai for their many strengths and he isn’t put off by their shockingly different appearance. Anhuset starts out believing that Serovek and his flirtations are shallow at best, but as the story progresses and she realizes how noble a man and a warrior that he is and that his flirtations are heart-felt, she shocks herself when she acknowledges that she has come to see this human as handsome. So the romance factor of this series is already well underway at the start of the story which I really liked.
That left us with over 400 pages crammed full of excitement as Serovek and Anhuset travel a great distance into dangerous country to return the Monk Megiddo to his order of heretic, one-god loving worshipers. The Jeden Order are warrior monks who have managed to battle back a warlord who wants to take over the valley where the monk’s order is located. If they can’t find an alternate route to bring Megiddo home, Anhuset and Serovek will need to risk a possible ambush by the warlord and go through the Valley. Hint: Things aren’t going to be easy for them.
They travel past the now abandoned Kai capital of Haradis and find it to be worse than a ghost town. Their attempt to avoid the warlord takes them through another abandoned, or not quite abandoned, city no longer on any map and of course, they can’t avoid the warlord completely (how boring would that be?) which leads to a survivor island kind of encounter.
After surviving all these deadly encounters so far (not really a spoiler since it is their story and they don’t escape unscathed) , they find that someone is plotting against Serovek and has convinced the Beladine King that Serovek is a traitor against the crown. Since Serovek has become so popular among the Baladine people after joining Brishen in the battle as a Wraith King against the galla, they didn’t have to work too hard to convince the King to arrest Serovek on treason to the crown. Anhuset has never been in love before but regardless of her feelings for him, Anhuset won’t allow such a noble warrior to be killed by a jealous king but how can she do it without dragging Brishen and the recovering Kai nation into a war with the neighoring Beladine nation?
As much as I loved the first two stories, they were more love story; and The Ippos King would absolutely fall into the category of adventure with a little romance thrown in to spice it up. There is definitely more story to tell and while I am uncertain who will tell the next part, I am certainly going to be awaiting it. There was a five year gap between Book 2 and Book 3 and I hope we don’t have to wait that long for the continuation.
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