Leigh Bardugho: King of Scars (Nikolai Duilogy #1) | Lara
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, the young king 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 Squaller, 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.
"No mourners,” she whispered, and launched herself through the broken glass.
Three years after the events of Ruin and Rising and Ravka is still nowhere near good. Once powerful country and homeland of Grisha is now on verge of civil war. Young king Nikolai is giving his best to bring it back to its own glory, but drawbacks keep appearing from all sides. Meanwhile, Nina Zenik is on a secret mission in Fjerda rescuing emigrating Grisha. Many countries have pretensions on Ravka and want to see the young king fall. Nikolai has to save his country, but will he be able to do it without saving himself from a monster that has remained all the way from Darkling’s reign.
That’s it for the intro in this book, I’d write more but I’m afraid I am unable to do it without any spoilers because plot kicks right in from the beginning. This book could not get less than 3 stars in any way you put it. I’m serious, if this was 400 pages of Nikolai sitting in a chair and talking about his hair, it would have been GOOD because of Leigh Bardugho’s spectacular writing. It just makes me want to cry, the fact that there is such a book I could read without stopping because it is so damn fluid, easy to read, full of action and really really really well paced. Bardugho was really one of my favorite authors, but King of Scars is a work of art in its true form; from first to the last page there wasn’t one part I wished to skip or go faster, nor there were any unnecessary descriptions, exhausting paragraphs or tiresome dialogues. *sobs in Fjerdan* It was so refreshing to read this book and no matter which PoV it was I enjoyed the story.
King of Scar’s storyline is told from the perspective of four characters: Nikolai, Zoya, Nina and Isaak. I liked each PoV because Leigh has written them really well. Their constant switches contributed to the dynamics and pacing of the plot and it was easy to catch everything important for the story. My favorite was probably Zoya, I can’t believe I haven’t seen her potential in the Grisha trilogy. I can never get enough of a badass strong female character who decided to bring the world down. Nikolai’s PoV was really fun to read because we get to see something else than clever and humorous king who always has a solution for everything. His “monster” background gave an interesting note to his character and it made me like him even more.
The other two perspectives from which the story was told did not make any particular impression on me. Isaac was pretty mediocre and not-interesting character and I felt he was only there to fill some hole Bardugho needed to continue the story on the court. I loved Nina Zenik all the way from Six of Crows and couldn’t wait to see where her character was going after the events of Crooked Kingdom. I wasn’t disappointed with it, but I just didn’t like her chapters as much as I liked Zoya’s.
"She wished she had Inej’s gift for spywork or Kaz’s gift for scheming, but she only seemed to have Jesper’s gift for bad decisions."
The part I liked the most in this book was romance. I can say this now, after reading all of her books - Leigh Bardugho knows how to write a romance in series. There is always tension in the air, but some kind of casual development between two characters that enables them to grow individually as well as a couple. She just gives her readers the right amount of feelings and hesitation to make things interesting.
So, after reading this you are probably asking (as was I) why did I give this book a 4-star rating. Well, I really liked this book, but it just was not on that level that are books I usually give a 5-star rating. The hype surrounding it was big enough even before its release, but I expected it to be something like this so I didn’t raise my expectations. First I thought, well, if I loved Six of Crows THAT much, this is going to be even better, but the more I thought about it I realized those characters and the storyline Leigh announced just can’t be on that level.
What bothered me the most were some things in the plot so I’ll go through them in this paragraph. The plot itself was dynamic and well developed with the right amount of action at the right time. In previous Grisha books, there wasn’t as much politics and court intrigue, but those were some pretty important factors in King of Scars and I just love reading about it xd Nikolai had a whole lot going on with Ravka and not to mention the other countries in the world that are preparing for the war. Nina’s part of the story was intriguing as well and it was cool reading about Fjerda and Girsha in such surroundings. *from now until the end of the paragraph spoilers* Things just kept getting more interesting after Zoya and Nikolai’s disappearance and that ending was pretty a sweet cliffhanger leaving us with an interesting intro in the second book. But, I am seriously vexed (yes I said that) by all that saints something. I still don’t get what has happened when Zoya and Nikolai entered some kind of ?parallel universe-secret realm-heaven-what?, but that was probably because I wasn’t interested in following that part. I just know I hated that whole part of the story, except maybe for Zoya’s powers, and I didn’t like how things turned out with Nikolai’s curse. It was weird and it ruined some great things Bardugho was building from the beginning of the book.
So my second most anticipated book of 2019 was really good, but not the best read, but I still recommend it especially if you are familiar with Grishaverse from before.
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