Year: 2020
Pages: 447
Series: Kingdom of Cards #1
Genre: YA Fantasy
Blurb:
In a city covered in ice and ruin, a group of magicians face off in a daring game of magical feats to find the next headliner of the Conquering Circus, only to find themselves under the threat of a unseen danger striking behind the scenes.
As each act becomes more and more risky and the number of missing magicians piles up, three are forced to reckon with their secrets before the darkness comes for them next.
Review:
My Owlcrate edition of this book is simply gorgeous. The contents didn't match up to the cover for me.
I'm still not entirely sure of the setting. We begin in a house hidden in a forest, great start to a fantasy, right? The majority of our story takes place in a cold city that seems to have a life of its own. There's definitely a lot to be explained about it in the future and I wish we'd had just a bit more in this book. Magic is present in this world and would appear to be something you can be born to or try to obtain. That's not explained and we only see a bit of hinting that magic is used for labour as well as entertainment. We're focusing on showmasters and to be perfectly honest I think a more interesting story would follow the labourers. I didn't find the show magic all that impressive, at least not to read about.
We've got a small range of characters here and three points of view:
Kallia is our main female lead, a powerful magician with no real understanding of her history or idea of how she's going to maintain any kind of future. She's clueless of the world and everything is stacked against her in this patriarchal and misogynistic setting. But she's feisty and proud and likes to wear all forms of shocking and inappropriate clothing that makes others uncomfortable. I feel like we've heard this story a lot.
Demarco is a far more interesting character, powerful and in a position of authority yet very private. There's a lot of mystery surrounding him and it takes so long for use to get information I eventually got a bit bored of him.
Jack is so shrouded in mystery of a dark nature that he was easily the most entertaining. We didn't get nearly enough of him.
Other characters include Aaros, the quirky sidekick that is introduced and completely rusted far too quickly. A reporter that reeks of Rita Skeeter, a show presenter that reminds me of Caesar Flickerman, a Mayor that cause me some confusion when he and she was switched between in their first few chapters and a ton of circus troops that are entirely forgettable.
This book has a good setting and mystery elements plugged for later will be interesting to uncover. But the pacing of this book was so slow I wonder how many books it's going to take. I thought we were in for fast pacing given the opening chapters and then it all slowed right down. Unbearably so, I'd even have preferred the beginning to be drawn out longer.
All in all, I'm not sure I'll be joining in on the future books.
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