The Demon King (Seven Realms Universe, #1) (The Seven Realms, #1)

by Cinda Williams Chima

[sa090]

I actually wanted to read Flamecaster but then I learned that it was apart of a sequel series to the Seven Realms series which put this book in my TBR... regardless of my kind of unimpressed view on this first book, I'm still interested in Flamecaster.

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This is the Blade Itself all over again, 80% of the book feels pointless tbh but the remaining 20% makes me interested enough to carry on to the rest of the story. I don't understand the need for a prologue to be this long, just from reading the beginning chapters and then the last few chapters it's obvious that Cinda Williams Chima can write an engaging story about politics, deceit, danger and make it interesting despite the cliche-ness of the setting but that still doesn't excuse the unneeded and unnecessary stretching of everything leading up to that point, especially if the book doesn't need it at all. It's a pretty basic plot line.

The world building despite not being there in abundance, still made the slow progress in the book somewhat tolerable. If the main characters were actually amazing to read about, then I'm sure this book would've been a much better experience but alas, for me, that's wasn't the case. If we take Han as an example then without his cuffs he's not exactly that interesting to read about, the book builds him up as this reformed thief with an insane reputation but honestly the events he experiences show otherwise. Of course I know that because he's the protagonist and the-easy-to-figure-out-secret about him will make him interesting later on but that doesn't change how somewhat underwhelming it is to read his chapters.

Then we move onto the other bane of this book and its main female protagonist, Raisa. The spoiled little princess who wants to rebel and be her own person, I have zero problems with girls wanting to do this but not like this. She doesn't think about the consequences of her actions, almost every decision she makes is insanely stupid and the worst thing ever is how accessible she is to everyone. She's the heir to a millennium of Queens but with the abundance of stupid romance in this book, she's like a piece of candy covered in ants, how is this even possible? My goodness, have a little bit of respect for yourself and your position. If I had to choose one thing that made this book extra disappointing it'll be how much of a slut the romance in this book made her out to be.

Does Han suffer from that? Well, if anything the romance in this book makes him out to be the stereotypical male who only wants one thing of every girl he's in close quarters with so I'm not sure if that's a worthy thing to mention but even then, it's not the same just based on their positions in this story, this gives me another very glaring image on how boring it is to have my least favourite genre as the focus in a fantasy story. There were other interesting characters in this book and since we were doing perspective chapters I honestly hoped that others like Dancer for example would get the spotlight as well, since to me the inclusion of the before mentioned would've surely given this an interesting twist just based on his location.

The world building in this book is my favourite part of it, despite not being excessive or actually abundant like I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed it. Learning about the clans, the different types, the importance of name days in them and outside of them, how magic worked in the series, the lifestyles depending on where you are, Hanalea's legend and most importantly the interdependence between clans and wizards with its very interesting, yet ironic outtake on the situation. The last 20% of the book were really interesting, it's just a shame that I had to go through hundreds of pages of a seemingly pointless prologue to get there.

Would I continue the series? Maybe and most likely, I've read complaints from some people that were exactly like mine but the second book according to them was better so hopefully. Whatever happens, I hope the romance is minuscule.

Final rating: 2/5