Reviewed by Amber (The Literary Phoenix) on
In Ace Of Shades, Erienne Salta liked dresses and devoured cookies like they were oxygen. She was naive and interesting and determined and had grit. I miss that Enne. Because in King Of Fools, our protagonists seem like entirely different people. Levi is all over the place, and the charm that made me enjoy him in the first book seems to be lost now because Levi’s just a hot mess. The darling bite of his personality seem to have shifted to Jac. And Lola, so full of promise? She faded to the background. We have a lot of new faces – Sophia and Grace are my favorites – but everything feels spread to thin and people start to blend together. The quirks are lost to the politics, but those are all over the place. There are secrets and suspense, but asking a lot of questions and only answering half of them left me numb to the suspense and bored.
That’s the problem with King of Fools. It’s not bad. It’s just not memorable. Every chapter starts with a legend of the North Side, but they aren’t relevant to the following chapter. In fact, we’re continually teased with the past street lord Veil, but as a specter and a memory alone. Amanda Foody seems to be trying to tell a lot of stories in this one – for a lot of characters from the past, present, and future – but she’s overextending herself. In stead of telling one really good story, she’s halfway telling five different ones.
Time feels like it passes too quickly – I thought we had been cramming everything into a couple days until a line of dialogue mentioned two weeks. I think the point of this book was that the gangs assert their place and the protagonists step up, only I never felt that solidified. Also, we were left with the Shadow Game at the end of Ace Of Shades and I expected, given the ending, that the action would ramp up here. It never happened – the world got bigger, the action stayed slow and the plot dragged while the timing felt jagged. This was definitely filler and we’re still waiting for a resolution to the Shadow Game.
I think this is largely my problem with Amanda Foody’s writing. I like it, or rather, I want so very much to like it. Even Daughter of the Burning City, which I adored, left me wanting more. I keep trying these books, certain that this time she’s going to wow me, but I’m constantly left but unsatisfied. Another example – there’s a major death near the end here, but it’s so sudden and the story moved on so fast, you don’t really feel the full impact as the reader. The character deserved better.
Fans of Ace Of Shades are going to devour King of Fools. Amanda is an enthusiastic writer and a lovely person, and I’m going to continue to support her work even when I’m not in love with it… so if you’re like me and come in hoping Ace would build the story and things were going to get incredible and intense, it looks like we’ll have to wait again until the last book in the trilogy.
All that said, I really appreciated that Amanda’s cat, Jellybean, got a shout out in the acknowledgements. That made me smile.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 10 March, 2019: Finished reading
- 10 March, 2019: Reviewed