To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo - Book Review

"Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all. With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one thing they loathe most—a human. Robbed of her song, Lira has until the winter solstice to deliver Prince Elian’s heart to the Sea Queen or remain a human forever.

The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby—it’s his calling. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good—But can he trust her? And just how many deals will Elian have to barter to eliminate mankind’s greatest enemy?"

3.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐✨

I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it either. It was like any generic fantasy book, but fun to read. Some parts were kind of cringe though, and the romance was average. Thankfully, there were no long descriptions of muscular body parts, and as such their love didn't seem as shallow as I'd suspected. The climax was drawn out and expected, and I would have liked for there to be some plot twists.

There are minor spoilers in this review.

Everything felt very simple and straightforward. The destination of the Saad was always fixed, and they always docked there, did the business they had come to do, and sailed off. There were no surprises or introduction of new characters, or sudden deaths. We all knew what would happen, and exactly that did. I was sort of hoping for everyone to die at the end, even though that would've been anti-climatic because it would've made the book at least a little exciting.

There was no flow to the writing at all. The book felt like a collection of hastily put-together scenes, with the setting changing abruptly. I don't mean that I wanted filler scenes, but the characters suddenly going from their ship to a palace to a mountain felt very random. The author should have put some more work into making everything connect. There were no references to previous chapters either, except for the one dialogue "Be the queen we need you to be" that Lira kept thinking about. It showed that the author had written each chapter in a different sitting, so maybe some more editing might've helped.

Lira

"I've never been accused of kindness before".

I had liked Lira in the beginning, but she was not developed at all, and I felt like she was very disconnected from the story. She was always thinking about something else- either her underwater memories or silently hating on her mother. The only time it felt like she was really there was when she was looking at Elian's amazingly green eyes or his amazingly lopsided smile or his amazingly amazing- well, you get the gist.

I don't understand how Lira knows what chocolate and honey and pastries are. The only time she comes to the surface is when she enchants the princes sailing on their ships, and I doubt they stand on the deck eating chocolate cake. Yet the first time she entered a city, she knew was alleys, bakeries, and streets were. It seemed she knew everything about the land despite being from a race of underwater creatures.

The whole conflict in the story was supposed to be how Lira was forced to betray Elian and his crew by murdering him, but I saw no need for that. She could've just as easily revealed her identity and intention of using the Second Eye of Keto to defeat her mother, and Elian would've let her stay. In the end, when he finds out who she is, I couldn't have been the only one who found their "fight" annoying. He was quite obviously not going to kill her, and it was just six or seven pages of them trading blows with no intention of harming each other. And then he lets her go and she runs somewhere? If she was on his side, she could've told him that she had power over the jewel and together they could've defeated the Sea Queen. Really, Lira was a master of making things more complicated for herself.

Elian

"I have to be cautious and clever, which is lucky because I like to think I’m always both of those things at any given time."

See, that's where you're wrong.

This dude, I did not like at all. He thought he was too cool with all his gold and swagger and pirate crew, but really he was just a smol prince who wanted to spite daddy by floating around at sea. The way he called his only three friends his "inner circle" was hysterical. He thought he was this great big man who was super skilled at everything he did, and his arrogance got on my nerves. Everyone looked up to him and was at his beck and call.

He kept flaunting his few magical items, and after a few pages, I'd had enough. The author kept shoving descriptions of his blood-drinking sword and truth-discerning compass down my throat every few pages. If anything, that only served to make him more pathetic, as it displayed how little he had achieved in life despite having so many resources at his fingertips. He was also overly proud of the Saad and after all the praising it didn't sound so great.

That brings me to my fifth problem (yes, I'm counting)- How many crew members were there? Elian says that the Saad had two hundred crew members, and he takes half that many on his voyage, yet there only ever seemed to be five people on their ship. Apart from Torik, Kye, and Madrid, Elian seemed to have no crew. He supposedly thought of the whole crew as his family despite the fact that he didn't even seem to know their names.

I'm not sure if this was supposed to be EnEmIeS tO LoVeRs or not, but if you're going into this book thinking that, as I did, don't. It's probably my mistake for assuming that so I'm not faulting the book for it.

Writing this review has made me realise that I didn't like this book as much as I'd thought, but I'm feeling generous, so I'll stick with my 3.5-star rating. Thank you for reading my review.