Unfortunately I could not engage with this story and will not leave a review. I thank you for the opportunity to read The Ruin of Kings. I did try more than once to read this book but each time I drifted away in favour of another title. I feel this this one just wasn't for me.

I very sadly just cannot get into this one no matter how much I try, I've given it a few goes now but don't think it's for me, might give it another go in future as I have heard such good things but for now it's got to be put aside

Thanks very much to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. Many thanks, Dave

The story is narrated by Talon and Kihrin who have their own chapters. Kihrin tells his story from the time when he was auctioned and Talon also tells Kihrin’s story. I have to admit that it took me a while to get used to the format of the narrations because I couldn’t place when each narration’s timeline was set which confused me. I went with the flow of what was happening in each until the pieces fit together.

Metaphysical concepts are relatable as is the ecology (although this world is far more advanced with the impact of not taking care of the planet). Settings are mind blowing (loved being on the island Ynisthana and the scene where Kihrin meets his Goddess).

The Old Man is magnificent – I couldn’t help but give him John Hurt’s voice as I was reminded of Merlin the TV series!

There are a host of characters – all brutal, egotistical and flawed. I felt a kinship with Kihrin who became my anchor through the story. There is a lot of action with different characters in different settings so you do need to be fully focused to stay on track. A glossary is provided and I was thankful for my notes.

I felt that in this story, the author’s focus was on world building. And what a world it is!

Unfortunately I did struggle with the format of this book and therefore I could not really sink into the world and the characters. From what I did read the story sounded promising and this seems to be well loved ok booktube and book twitter but it is a shame that I was unable to become gripped. Since requesting it has admittedly been sat on my shelf for a while and therefore I will not be picking it up now.

Enjoyed the premise, good world building and solid plot. Would recommend to people who enjoy high fantasy

The Ruin of Kings is an exciting new debut from Jenn Lyons (review copy from Tor) and the first in her A Chorus of Dragons series.  This is the story of Kihrin, an orphan raised in a brothel by a musician.  A chance encounter with a demon on the streets of the city leads Kihrin to discover that he's actually the bastard son of one of the city's powerful ruling families.  At the same time, the story follows a slightly older Kihrin who has been sold into slavery.  Kihrin owns a mysterious necklace which was the only thing recovered from his mother's body when she was murdered and Kihrin was rescued from her dying arms.  Unbeknownst to Kihrin, the necklace is not just magical, but it holds the key to destroying and remaking the world. 


This is a story told in braided narratives.  Chapters of each phase of Kihrin's life alternate, until at last the two storylines meet and the climax of the novel happens.  It's an ambitious approach, and one that would fail in the hands of a different writer.  I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, as I really dislike authors artificially creating suspense by witholding relevant information from the reader that their characters know.  But in this novel there are a pleasing series of reveals as Kihrin's early life starts to fill in the context for things happening in his later time line. 


The worldbuilding is extremely rich.  There are gods, monsters, elder races, magical artifacts, death cults, powerful families, and other races.  Lying behind and running through Kihrin's story is a conflict between the gods that threatens to tear the world apart if it can't be stopped.  And it's clear that Kihrin and his mother's necklace will end up playing a key role in it. 


Kihrin himself is cocky, charming and can be infuriating.  He's not always the most reliable of narrators in the first person sections of the book, but he's a pleasure to spend time with.  Lyons has developed a character with a strong voice and clear personality.  I am really looking forward to the next books in this series. 


Goodreads rating: 4*

I didn't enjoy tis book as much as I had hoped.I thought the world building was great but I wantedmore from it.

I finally got a hard copy of this book after being unable to read it on my Kindle. It was delightfully complex, and I really enjoyed it. I will need to read it again to understand the various relationships. Even with the family trees in the back of the book, it can be hard to follow. However, the complexity did not detract from the excellent story. I truly enjoyed following Kihrin on his journey, and I am looking forward to reading more in the future.

This one was a pretty slow burn for me, but once I got used to the structure and sank into the world, I really enjoyed it. It tells the story of Khirin, a foundling boy who has made his living as a bard's apprentice, only to be whisked away by the royal family and installed as the heir. The narrative is split into 2 perspectives; that of Khirin in the present day and that of Talon as she fills in the back story. This swapping between timelines took a little bit of getting to grips with and I really didn't like the conceit that the whole book was an interrogation/ conversation between our two narrators - it just seemed like an unnecessary gimmick to me and didn't serve the plot in any way. Having said that, I found the world building to be top notch and the fantasy elements are really well integrated into what is predominantly, a political power struggle. All in all, I thought this was an intelligent and absorbing read and I will definitely carry on with the series.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

ARC provided by the publisher—Tor Books—in exchange for an honest review.

Convoluted and complex are probably understatements, but I don’t have any other words to describe the main attributes of this debut.

For those of you who don’t know, The Ruin of Kings has been the fantasy debut that Tor has been promoting heavily for several months now. This novel has been advertised as the debut of the year that’s targeted “For fans of George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Joe Abercrombie, Brent Weeks, Brandon Sanderson, and Patrick Rothfuss”. I’ll be completely honest here, if any publisher or author decides to put all of these giants, super high profile fantasy authors’ references into a debut work by an unknown author, it seriously better be a masterpiece. I’m one of those readers who had their interest for this book sparked by that bold claim, and I jumped at the chance of reading and reviewing it early; expecting it to be a debut that will go down into my ‘best of all time’ lists. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

“A hero who has never had a bad thing happen to him isn’t a hero—he’s just spoiled.”

The Ruin of Kings is Jenn Lyon’s debut and it’s the first out of five books in A Chorus of Dragons series. The main story revolves around Kihrin, who in the present timeline is in jail retelling all the events that have happened to him which eventually led to his capture. Now, here’s where it immediately started to get complicated. Kihrin’s narration doesn’t begin from his actual beginning but halfway through his journey; the first half of Kihrin’s story is instead being narrated by his jailor—Talon. This means there are three main timeframes to follow. First is the present timeline in which Kihrin is in jail telling his story to Talon. Then, the second and third timelines—where the majority of the book takes place in—deal with Kihrin’s past. These chapters are told in a see-saw method, consecutively switching back and forth with each chapter progression in the first person (Kihrin’s narration) and third person (Talon’s narration) perspectives. There are also a lot of footnotes added by another character, because everything you read about Kihrin—in both timelines—was actually done in written format by this character. Not only the unconventional storytelling makes it very easy to lose focus on who’s who or what, many of the characters—and believe me, there are a lot of names to remember—have multiple nicknames, and also similar-sounding names. For example: Teraeth, Terindel, Therin, Tyentso, Kelindel, and Kelinos, just to name a few. To add even more confusion, there were also elements of body swapping, which meant some of the characters you encounter may not be who you think they are.

My main problem with all these is that even after finishing the whole story, it all feels like it was unnecessarily convoluted. I truly believe The Ruin of Kings would’ve been an amazing debut if it was told in a linear and chronological structure. Talon’s narration which began from Kihrin’s true beginning was so much more engaging than Kihrin’s narration due to its natural sense of story progression and characters’ development. Kihrin’s narration began halfway throughout his flashback. Think of it like this. When you’re reading a book, you start reading from the first page and flip through it one at a time. In The Ruin of Kings, not only do you start from the first page, but at the same time you also have to start from the 50% mark; then you continue your progress from each starting point by switching back and forth between two different time frames. I thought there would be a good reason for using this unconventional storytelling style that will result in a huge impact, but there was none. There was no epic convergence or anything like that at all. In the end, it all seems like this unconventional style was included for the sake of making things more complex than necessary. Every chapter became a constant battle of readjusting information gathered in your head due to the different timeframes. Plus, Kihrin in all timeframes sounded like totally different characters due to this storytelling method – the main character’s development became disjointed and abstract rather than natural. When a chapter was great and I was interested to find out what happened next, the narrative forced me to read another chapter from a different timeframe first. And this happened regularly.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy complex epic fantasy, I’ve read and utterly loved Malazan Book of the Fallen and other massive fantasy series. However, The Ruin of Kings didn’t really work out for me, as I felt it was deliberately more complex than it needed to be. I strongly advise readers to check out the preview chapters kindly provided by Tor on their website, or NetGalley before getting this book. For the reasons I mentioned above, I truly believe that you have to truly know what kind of storytelling style you’re getting into here; you can’t rely only on the blurbs and advertisements. I’m saying this so that the book will attract the right audience too. I always try my best to read a book that has my interest with as little information as possible. Most of the time it worked absolutely well, but sadly this was one of those rare cases where it didn’t; I should’ve read at least a few chapters before requesting for the ARC.

I know I have sounded really negative and critical so far but believe me that it wasn’t all bad. The world-building, in particular, was spectacular. Lyons implemented her world-building gradually and there wasn’t any info-dump. The world that Lyons has built in The Ruin of Kings was huge in scope, full of rich history, brimming with dangers, politics, gods, demons, and massive dragon. Lyons also has a superbly engaging prose that even when the story became too convoluted, I was never bored with it and was still intrigued to continue. Finally, the side characters were incredibly well-written. I didn’t find myself invested with Kihrin, but his interaction and banter with the side characters were humorous and entertaining to read. Every side character have their personality well fleshed-out and their own distinct voices. Galen and Doc were two of my favorite characters from the book. I do want to say though, that this book is not for YA. It deals with a lot of heavy and dark topics like rape, incest, slavery, and prejudice that I think is not suitable for a younger audience.

“Real evil is an empire like Quur, a society that feeds on its poor and its oppressed like a mother eating her own children. Demons and monsters are obvious; we’ll always band together to fight them off. But real evil, insidious evil, is what lets us just walk away from another person’s pain and say, well, that’s none of my business.”

My rating speaks for itself; that I liked The Ruin of Kings and I think this was a good debut. Overall, I just didn’t find the book to reach the level of grandeur promised by the very high claims. In my opinion, The Ruin of Kings was a good debut that could’ve been amazing if it follows a more linear and chronological storytelling style. Although in the end this didn’t really work out as much as I hoped, I recommend The Ruin of Kings to readers who are looking for complex epic fantasy with an unconventional storytelling method.

Sidenote:
The e-ARC I got was so awfully formatted that it might've affect my reading enjoyment and immersion. There's a chance that I'm going to enjoy the book more on a reread with a finished and well-polished copy. When will that happen, I can't say for sure yet.

Official release date: February 5th, 2019 (US), February 7th, 2019 (UK)

You can pre-order the book from: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Book Depository (Free shipping)

The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.

I was invited to review this title by the publisher - many thanks.

I really enjoyed this. It harked back to a slightly more traditional form of fantasy but the way the narrative was divided up and presented made me think of the long Irish and Celtic cycles of myth.. The pace is a slow unwind through the journey of the story but that often works for me if the story calls for it, which it does here. Perhaps the best part of the book though, is the way that there is no clear villain or clear hero. The roles get swapped between the main characters as Lyons expertly plays with our sympathies. I really appreciate this in the fantasy - I enjoy a grey narrative that allows for greater growth of character. Overall an excellent debut.

This book starts with our main character, Kihrin and his jailer, Talon getting ready to tell the story of how Kihrin got into his current situation. This is where the book becomes quite different as we follow two parallel storylines telling Kihrin's story from different starting points. Talon tells us Kihrin's story right from the beginning in 3rd person and Kihrin tells us his story starting up about halfway through in the 1st person. Along with these two stories in alternating chapters the book is also interspersed with footnotes from a 3rd character, the one who is supposedly writing down Kihrin's story. Now I know this sounds confusing and at times it could be but the story is not only complex but compelling, I needed to know what happened and therefore had to keep reading. Personally I preferred Kihrin's POV but they both provided us with key aspects of his story.

Now, there were times when I found the story a little bit difficult to follow, specifically the family trees and timelines as there's an aspect in this book that means people can body swap but I found this didn't necessary hinder me from the main story. I also didn't really understand where the prophecies came into the story but this may be something that becomes clearer as we progress through the series. Going back to the families and the characters, I did find that I struggled to find myself rooting for Kihrin, he was just kind of average to me but I loved a lot of the side characters and all of their witter banter and interactions. A couple of my favourite characters included Teraeth and Tyentso.

One of the things I do have to mention is the world building. The author did a fantastic job of creating this complex world. She gradually built it up throughout the story, adding on bits of information that were relevant without becoming at all info-dumpy. There were so many interesting aspects of the world that she created and I feel like we've only just touched the surface with so much more left to explore as we continue further in the series.

Overall I really enjoyed this one. As my first adult fantasy book this really hasn't put me off the genre, in fact it's made me really want to pick up some more. For me, this is one of those books that I think would really benefit from a re-read. It's so complex that I feel like you would pick up a lot more information that you may have missed the first time round and I know that's what I'll be doing before the next one comes out.

DNF at 100 pages

After a lot of consideration, I decided to set this book aside. It may be one I pick up in a few years time, but for now it is not quite my cup of tea. I gave it my customary 100 pages and I just felt like it didn't hit the mark.

While I loved the concept of the book, the execution didn't work for me. The dual time lines, dealing with the same character at different points in his life, are fascinating and I really enjoyed the storytelling aspect. However, the worldbuilding was messy and interfered with the actual plot and story. I would begin to be pulled in, then a heap on information fell on my head and I was snapped right back out. The rhythm of the writing was off and just didn't quite work for me. I just couldn't get into this book!

I'd like to read more from this author in the future and I had insanely high expectations for The Ruin of Kings, but I just didn't quite "get" it.

This book was one you have to commit to being a tome but the read just flies by because it is utterly fantastic. In fact I wouldn’t have minded a bit more…

A good fantasy novel lives and dies on its world building and characters and Jenn Lyons has an intricately imaginative eye for both – a rich tapestry that offers up new insight every time you look at it – a complex and highly intriguing setting with multiple levels that inform and affect the characters you meet there.

The story is told over different periods of time by our possible hero or possible reluctant villain Kihrin and by Talon, who I’ll leave you to meet for yourselves. It is impossible to describe in review the intelligent plotting and extraordinarily fascinating tale that unfolds so I won’t even try but it was completely gripping and the writing is beautifully immersive first page to last.

Also it has dragon’s, sea monsters, demons and magic, heroes and villains that are occasionally interchangeable and an addictive quality that is second to none.

Loved it. Highly Recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. The world building and structure of the writing really pulled me in. Its told in a flashback/bardic way and I loved that! It added a real authenticity to the plot that supported and propped up the action. The characters were believable and well developed and oh ny gosh! This world! I want to travel here.
The storytelling really is first class and it had everything in it to keep you hooked till the last page! Cannot wait for more from this author. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“What if you weren't the hero?

As a bard’s apprentice, Kihrin grew up with tales of legendary deeds. He also steals, desperate to buy a way out of Quur’s slums. Then he raids the wrong house, he’s marked by a demon and life will never be the same again.

Kihrin’s plight brings him to the attention of royalty, who claim him as the lost son of their immoral prince. But far from living the dream, Kihrin’s at the mercy of his new family’s ruthless ambitions. However, escaping his jewelled cage just makes matters worse. Kihrin is horrified to learn he’s at the centre of an ancient prophecy. And every side – from gods and demons to dragons and mages – want him as their pawn. Those old stories lied about many things too, especially the myth that the hero always wins.

Then again, maybe Kihrin isn’t the hero, for he’s not destined to save the empire. He’s destined to destroy it.”

Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons was one wild ride! This first book in the series follows a Frankenstenian nested story format. Almost the entire story is a flashback, told by two people who recorded the telling. What we hold is mostly the transcription of that recording, presented by Thurvishar D'Lorus, who adds footnotes as he feels are necessary. We also get a third, present day, timeline, which is rejoined by the end of book, closing the nested format. Kihrin tells his story starting from when he was enslaved and sold in auction. Talon, his jailer, thinks Kihrin's story should begin further back, when he first ended up at House D'Mon. The shifting back and forth in time was a bit confusing at first. Each section is clearly labelled, and the narrators speak in different voices. Kihrin's parts are first person, and Talon speaks in third person. This was very helpful for keeping the timelines straight, and it gives two different views of Kihrin and his personality. Seeing these different perspectives was pretty neat. It was the time-jumping that was the confusing part.

This is a complex story, with brilliant world-building. It’s full of intrigue, action and introspection that spans millennia and involves gods, demons, and dragons! When I say intrigue, I mean a lot of intrigue. Honestly, it might even put GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire to shame. There are layers upon layers, which sometimes got confusing trying to keep things straight. I kinda feel like this entire book was prologue for the rest of the series and that's when the meat of the story will come out. I'm hoping future books keep a more linear timeline, while keeping the multiple perspectives. I'd really like a book that focuses more on Terindel and Teraeth. I liked Kihrin well enough, but these two were just fascinating. And the dragons!! We mostly interact with Sharanakal, nicknamed the Old Man. These dragons are massive. They are primal forces of nature, yet their origins are rather humble. From what I gathered, there are eight dragons, just as there are eight Immortals, deities tied to cosmic constants like luck, or death. I wanna see the other dragons!

Just don't get too attached to characters. Like the aforementioned A Song of Ice and Fire, characters are not guaranteed to stick around. The story reminded me more of Michael J Sullivan's Age of Myth series, though Quur itself, especially the Court of Gems, reminded me so much of the drow city Menzoberranzan, from RA Salvatore's Legend of Drizzt series, set in the world of Forgotten Realms.

I will certainly continue this series, it's wonderful in its own right, but I feel it didn't quite live up to the hype heaped upon it. I think the author certainly has the potential to reach the caliber of Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Patrick Rothfuss, and the other current heavy-hitters of fantasy, but Ruin of Kings itself isn't quite up there. Recommended if you enjoy fantasy, epic world-building, rich myth, and lots of intrigue. Oh yes, and DRAGONS!

***Many thanks to Netgalley/ Pan Macmillan for providing an ecopy in exchange for a fair and honest review. Reviewed for the San Francisco Book Review.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had high hopes for this novel, as it had been compared to the writing of big hitters in fantasy, such as Robin Hobb, Brent Weeks, and Patrick Rothfuss. And some elements of the novel were excellent, but some didn't quite live up to my hopes. The world-building is one of the standout features of the book; it's dense, crisp and complicated in all the best ways. We're given a bold, detailed history of the world, gods and monsters, and political machinations. And, of course, as the cover would suggest, dragons.

The narrative is well written, but hindered by the movement between timelines. There are three separate timelines, and it's in two of them (in the past) where we spend most of the story, making the first one (in the present) somewhat redundant. At times, I found myself disappointed to have to come back to the present tense chapters, after the excitement of those told in past tense. The characters were well-developed, but I didn't feel invested in them, likely due to the constant timeline switching. Talon was far more engaging than Kihrin, but their conversations were enjoyable and the dialogue in general was great. The actions scenes were some of the highlights of the novel, but the pacing had a tendency to slow right down afterwards, Overall, though, this was a good read, but if written more chronologically, with slightly fewer characters, it could have been a fantastic one.

Apprentice to a musician, Kihrin had a profitable side line as a highly-skilled thief largely due to his ability to render himself invisible and pick locks. But his nascent magical skills had only been partly trained, leaving him wide open to those whose abilities reached deep and dark.

When Kihrin ends up being pursued by a demon, he comes to the attention of the nobility, a social group he has always craved to belong to. But it is a case of be careful what you wish for, as Kihrin becomes embroiled in epic events which began long before his birth.

Kihrin is a flawed hero in the epic sense. His mere existence appears to presage death and destruction. The Ruin of Kings sets up and interesting premise, not of the usual youth going on a journey of discovery guided by kindly mentors in which he becomes a hero, but the complete opposite. Potential mentors may have nothing more than their own interests at heart, leaving the question of who can he trust? This is where living by his wits all his life has the potential to save him. Or not.

We enter the story with Kihrin languishing in a cell guarded by Talon, a gorgeous looking girl who is in fact a monster keener on devouring him as her next meal than being forced to guard him. This literary ploy really establishes the relentless tension of the narrative and subverting the usual “will they won’t they” into “will Talon devour Kihrin or not”. It also means we get to hear the tale from two different timelines narrated in turn by Kihrin and his unwilling jailor. This makes for an interesting way of storytelling which puts you inside Kihrin’s head, but also provides an outsider’s viewpoint of Kihrin’s life. Yet at the same time that someone has been intimately involved with it.

There are many such clever twists in the plot as the story goes on. Just as you settle in to what might be an expected outcome of a particular scene, there is a twist, usually not in Kihrin’s favour. All of these serve as excellent cliff-hangers with which to keep the reader engrossed in what turned out to be a tortuous plot which kept on surprising.

The blurb mentions Game of Thrones, but the narrative is something far subtler and laced with a great many humorous observations by Kihrin, often when he is in deep trouble or grappling with the kind of situation there seems no good way out of.

Most of the villains are purveyors of world-class unpleasantness with no redeeming features, which makes for a refreshing change from a trend of justifiable bad person because an unfortunate series of events has made them that way.

The story is so densely layered with backstory and different plot strands that I did occasionally have to take a break for fear of overload, but in all The Ruin of Kings is an enjoyable read and a tale to keep a reader enthralled throughout.

Fantasy was my bread and butter for much of my childhood. Nothing was quite as exciting as discovering new worlds and joining exciting heroes on their adventures. Although I did broaden my reading out a bit since then, Fantasy has always remained a staple and I keep returning to it time and time again, looking for authors that craft something new within the genre's conventions. My latest Fantasy read was The Ruin of Kings and I think I'm still making up my mind about it. Thanks to Pan Macmillan, Tor and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Like most other genres, Fantasy has a lot of conventions that kind of need to be followed to let it qualify. A big part of that is the Hero's Journey, a concept coined by Joseph Campbell but existent for thousands of years. A young hero sets off on an adventure and encounters a magical guide. They face trials and challenges and undergo some kind of death and rebirth, whether that is physical or mental. In the end they return wiser, having learnt from their travels and having conquered their enemies. This pattern is immediately recognizable and brings to mind countless of stories and characters and is also the reason why Fantasy and YA fit together so well as genres. The best Fantasy novels take this journey and transplant it somewhere completely new. I have loved some of the recent Fantasy novels that moved away from the stereotypical Tolkien-esque setting and rather reinvigorated the genre by bringing in their own cultural backgrounds. I'm thinking specifically of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and The Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean. The world created in The Ruin of Kings isn't quite as refreshing or new as those, but Lyons does create something very interesting with her world building. And I do mean interesting in both its positive and negative connotations, because although The Ruin of Kings gripped me, it did so in part because it felt slightly messy.

For parts of this book I was utterly confused. Part of that, if not most of it, is down to the book's narrative structure. We start in the present, where Kihrin is telling his story in first person, but he is not telling us his story from the very beginning. He is telling Talon, a demon, who then tells the initial part of Kihrin's story, leading up to where he began, in the third person. The novel flicks back and forth between these two narrators chapter by chapter. And finally, all of this is has been transcribed by a third character, who adds footnotes whenever they think anything needs clarifying or a sassy comment is required. I am confusion! Now, I adore complex structures. I wrote whole essays just on structure while I was at university. A complex structure, however, has to have a purpose aside from just being different or unusual. In the case of The Ruin of Kings it often leads to a lack of clarity rather than adding to the meaning or message of the novel. Throughout the novel, and especially in the blurb, Lyons hints at wanting to tell a story of someone who is neither hero or villain or perhaps both. I assume this is what the split narration is meant to work towards as well. This gets almost completely lost though since the structure means you get attached to Kihrin in a kind of distanced way while the moral gets lost.

We follow Kihrin's story from two different points of view, technically, but Talon is a shape shifter who has taken other people's memories, so her narrative is really the point of view of countless of characters. Together they tell the reader what has happened to Kihrin so far, how he has come to be where he is now. This journey of his spans years, as far as I could gather. How many I don't know. Some years apparently pass within a single sentence while some days are stretched out across chapters. Similarly there are a lot of supporting characters, many of whom were once someone else or at the very least aren't what they appear to be. What this means is that The Ruin of Kings is a fascinating read with some amazing world building, stunning imagery and interesting character building, while simultaneously being confusing for its readers. At almost 600 pages, I think that The Ruin of Kings could have done with some more thorough editing to prevent overloading the reader with too much information they can't place yet. There is so much going on in this novel that now, as I'm writing this review, I keep remembering things that happened, plot lines that were fun but seem irrelevant to the main story. While Lyons tries to address topics such as free will and slavery, the few instances where these are highlighted are washed away by a kind of sensationalist violence akin to Game of Thrones. There is a lot of murder, love, slavery, backstabbing, politicking, incest, etc. and it's all very exciting. Where the heart of The Ruin of Kings lies, however, what it is that the novel is supposed to really care about, is unclear.

In the paragraph above I have tried to give as clear an overview of why The Ruin of Kings was a confusing read for me. I absolutely loved a lot of what Jenn Lyons did in this novel. There is a clear historicity to the text, it is steeped in references to emperors and kings, to deities and battles, intrigue and lawmaking. It reminded me of the Nevernight books, in that it felt like there was much more, that we were only scratching the surfaces of this world. Unfortunately Lyons does overwhelm her readers with much of the world building. Not a single page is read without a reference being made to something the reader will only understand fifty pages later. As the first book in a series, you'd think that Lyons would leave some of the world building to future books and focus on strongly establishing her main characters in this first book. Instead now I have a lot of information about Kihrin and his companions, not all of which I can place. The Ruin of Kings is like an incomplete puzzle. Pieces fit together here or there, but I feel like the overall picture is crooked. I'm not a big fan of books, or films for that matter, that serve only as a set-up for future books, and it does feel as if The Ruin of Kings is mainly there to make sure everything is set up and kind explained for the next book in the A Chorus of Dragons series called The Name of All Things, expected later this year. Don't get me wrong, I will most definitely want to read The Name of All Things because I'm fascinated by this world Lyons has created, but I have high hopes she will restrain herself a little bit with the flourishes and focus on telling a clearer story.

I loved reading The Ruin of Kings but it was a bit of a problematic love. There is an overabundance of style and showiness to this novel that will make it a confusing and potentially frustrating read for many. There is also a lot of promise and excitement in Lyons' novel that mostly makes up for it. I'd recommend this to readers looking for a fast-paced and expansive new fantasy series to get stuck into.