Kingdom of the Feared (Kingdom of the Wicked, #3)

by Kerri Maniscalco

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


For fucks sake. How many stupid things can you put into one book? Why is this story *so* horny? Literally to the degree where it becomes ridiculous. I could give you several examples but in the interest of time and spoilers let’s just say I rolled my eyes a great many times while reading this. As I said in my review of the second part in this trilogy if you cut down some of the unnecessary sex scenes (I feel like there was one in almost every other chapter) you could probably squeeze the entire trilogy into one book and the story wouldn’t suffer in the slightest.

I think the main reason why this annoyed me so much is because the story is actually interesting and I wanted to get on with it. This book featured many interesting revelations but there are so many things that never get properly addressed or explained. Take for example the goddesses. We learn about the crone, but what about the mother and the maiden? There is only very limited background information on the witches, on Sursea. Where did she come from, and what was her agenda? I don’t need an entire novel on her backstory, but something before the curse would be nice. Back when reviewing the first novel I mentioned that I had a hard time pinpointing what time this is supposed to be set in. Well, there is a revelation in this book that might explain why that was the case but I have *a lot* of questions about the logic of that. It barely gets explained apart from like three sentences and I swear that is because it simply does not make sense. It’s like, let’s just go over this quickly and hope nobody takes too close a look and starts asking too many questions. I honestly don’t know if Maniscalco has more substance for that part, if it just got cut or whatever, but as it is it’s not giving me a good impression.

While there are interesting things going on in this book, the last few chapters were a bit underwhelming. No big surprises, no more grand revelations, not even any interesting resolutions for a bunch of side-plots. I was hoping for more. It really felt like Maniscalco just tossed in one or two big things at the end to gloss over all the smaller stuff that just never gets covered or resolved, or maybe just barely. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the worst of books. I’ve definitely read way worse things. But I’m just really disappointed because the story had so much promise. The idea behind everything was amazing and this just could have been a lot better. The story just feels weak and lacking in pretty much any regard that is not EMILIA herself. Yes, she is the main character but a lot of things that I’m criticizing are directly tied to her. And maybe some aren’t but those would have been important for world-building.