King of Scars by Leigh BardugoPublished: January 29, 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 528
Synopsis: Face your demons... or feed them.
The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war--and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka's coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.
Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried--and some wounds aren't meant to heal.
Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried--and some wounds aren't meant to heal.
Thoughts: I was a big fan of both the Shadow and Bone and the Six of Crows series (though I think I would give Six of Crows a higher ranking), so I was going into this new duology with high hopes. Like some of the previous books, King of Scars is told from multiple different third-person perspectives, with each chapter coming from a different character, namely Nikolai, Zoya, Nina, who we've all met in previous books, and a new character, Isaak.
Books from multiple points of view usually always leave me wanting to hear more from a particular person rather than swapping around, and this was again the case here. I really just wanted to hear the whole thing from Nikolai's perspective, but things happen in such separate places, it wasn't really possible. You'd think I would have a greater affection for Nina given her involvement in past books, but I just didn't find her story quite as interesting.
It took me quite a while to get into this book, I even stopped reading it for a time and considered stopping completely, to be honest. But, after reading some other opinions online about how it gets better as it goes, I decided to stick it out. And, yes, it does get better, but I still wouldn't say it lives up to the other books in the Grishaverse world. That said, I've heard the second book is more gripping, so let's hope that's true.
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