Kingdom of the Cursed (Kingdom of the Wicked, #2)

by Kerri Maniscalco

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


Well, it’s been a hot minute since I read the first part of this series. I couldn’t remember anything to the degree that I actually had to google a summary and read through that first before tackling this book. That is something that doesn’t usually happen. I mean, yes I tend to forget about things I read in the past but at least things start coming back at some point when you get to the new part. In this case, my memory remained mostly blank which I’d say is not necessarily a good sign.

As I don’t recall pretty much anything about the first novel, I can’t say whether this was an issue with book #1, but I have one giant, glaring complaint with this one. Why is this book – for a lack of a better way to describe it – so horny on main? The amount of pining and seducing and lusting is quite frankly annoying. I’m pretty sure if we would cut that out the novel wouldn’t be longer than 100 pages. The main reason this irritates me so much is because the idea behind the story is amazing. This could be great if we could – for fucks sake – please just get back to the story. I swear for literally half the book nothing happens except for Emilia and wrath almost getting down and dirty. I mean, good for them, but could I have some more plot, please? And then when things actually start to get moving, it all gets crammed into the last third of the book and it feels rushed. I hope the third and final part of the series will be better on that front.

Also, because everything seems to be happening all at once towards the end, it’s quite difficult to entangle whether things actually make sense. It always feels like the amount of stuff going on was deliberate to detract from any flaws in the logic. As it is right now, I still have a lot of unanswered questions. One reason so many questions remain unanswered is because Emilia certainly is a bit daft. This novel is partially just idiot plot and nothing else. She knows fuck all about fuck all yet thinks she can solve all the mysteries alone. Pretty everything she does is half-baked and not really thought through. If she were as smart as she thinks she’d enlist some help under the guise of something else. She just does soooo many stupid things. For example, she steals something from a prince of hell and what? Thought it would go unnoticed? Thought nothing would happen? Are you for real?