Kingdom of Souls (Kingdom of Souls, #1)

by Rena Barron

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I really, really wanted to love Kingdom of Souls. I wanted to love it because I absolutely adore the African-inspired magical setting of Children of Blood and Bone and because Twitter is right – epic fantasy is far too whitewashed. But I can’t good conscience say that this was an amazing fantasy story or that it answers Children of Blood and Bone and that I love it because… I didn’t. I struggled through Kingdom of Souls. I appreciate the diversity and I want ALL of the different cultures in fantasy novels because to me… fantasy is fantasy and I want to devour it all. But I can’t in good conscience say “this book was amazing!” because… for me, it wasn’t.

I will admit that Kingdom of Souls had its moments.

The prologue itself was incredibly aesthetic. Arrah’s time in the tribal lands was unique and well written. In fact, there are a lot of good things going for the novel. I’ve been trying to think of the best way to explain it, and what I’ve come up with is that it’s like baking. Rena Barron has all the highest quality ingredients and they’re all there to make an amazing, tantalizing batch of cookies. But in baking, you must do things a certain way and in a certain order, or your cookies won’t come out quite right. Instead of following the recipe, Barron’s thrown all her ingredients in a bowl at the same time and is mixing them on high power. Batter’s splatting everywhere. There are too many chocolate chips. Things have gone awry. The end result will still taste good, but it won’t taste great.

It’s not about the characters, or the setting. The magic system she’s created is interesting and has consequences (yes!) but it’s also whimsical in its delivery. I’ve concluded that all the faults of this novel fall back to the writing style, and in turn, affect the pacing. Kingdom of Souls feels more like an early draft than a finished novel. There are too many extended asides to justify plot directions or character development. And there are far too many convenient events.

Take the pacing for example. It jumped all over the place. Sometimes it was incredibly slow and dragged on and on. Other times, months passed between chapters. Barron explained away these awkward transitions at one point by putting Arrah and her family in a city where time did whatever it wanted. There were many moments where I had finally gotten used to the pacing only to suddenly be in the middle of something and be unsure how I got there. I’d flip back and reread, certain I’d missed a page – but no. That’s just how the book works.

So that’s one minor example of convenience? Another would be the development of both Arti and Rudjek’s characters. Events happened to both of these characters that were supposedly instrumental to the plot, but from a (jaded) reader’s perspective, I didn’t buy it. To avoid spoilers, I can’t say precisely want it was about Rudjek that drove me crazy, but I’m never a fan of casually twisting characters’ fates for story advancement when there are many other more sensible (if less dramatic) paths. And Arti completely broke character at the end of the book and I believe Barron was trying to give her some sort of redemption moment, but it was so out of the blue and uncharacteristic that it simply didn’t work.

I should also mention that there are chapters from the POV of supernatural beings. This is fine, but stylistically these chapters are jarring. They’re written in italics (again, fine) and without proper punctuation in dialogue. Not all the supernatural asides had dialogue, but the asides that did made me cringe because of the chosen style and definitely took me out of the world. Also, none of these chapters helped or advanced the story – early ones distracted – and could have been cut to help tighten the novel.

It was things like that which made me struggle through the book. I’m objective enough to see deep down there’s an excellent story here. Unfortunately, the unrealistic conveniences gave it a fan fiction feel, and the telling nature of world building and backstory made pacing inconsistent and felt like unnecessary threads that distracted from the story. Kingdom of Souls read to me like a middle draft… it’s definitely edited and generally good in its bones, but it really needed to be tightened up before publication because while there’s a dark fantasy in there, it’s covered in random flashbacks and moments where Barron decided not to follow through on the consequences of some of her in-story choices.

Just… generally… this isn’t the worst fantasy I’ve read and like I said in the intro paragraph, seeing other cultures represented in fantasy was great. I always have a difficult time giving diverse books a low rating because I want to support these authors in a world that seems dead set on putting them down. But taking aside the culture that inspired the fantasy (which was wonderful, honestly) and the characters’/author’s ethnicity, this book was a bit of a mess as far as style and technique goes. I am not inspired to pick up the next in the series.

But! It is a diverse fantasy and many people are enjoying it, so if you’re curious, it’s worth a read. I read a LOT of fantasy – it’s sort of my thing – so I’m particular about the rules of universes and what I like to see in these novels. Many of my pet peeves from Kingdom of Souls may not be apparent to a less frantic reader, so therefore, it’s worth a go.