“The truth of what I am has become a nightmare.”
Oh my gosh I am about to start gushing because this book SLAYED me. If you are even a little into retellings you have got to pick up To Kill a Kingdom immediately. Do not delay. Do not pause. Go to Amazon and pre-order this gem NOW. This is The Little Mermaid like you’ve never heard it before. It is absolutely terrifying and fierce and did I already mention terrifying?
Our “little mermaid,” if you will, isn’t a Mermaid at all but a freaking Siren, created solely to steal the heart of princes. As in, the literal heart. Yes, she pulls their hearts right out of their chests and it is just as gruesome as it sounds.
Our prince is more of a pirate, bent on eradicating sirens from the face of the earth by whatever means necessary.
Our sea witch is actually Lira’s (the siren princess) psychotic mother, who banishes her daughter to land after she shows weakness (aka human emotion). Lira has to kill Prince Elian and deliver his heart to her mother if she ever wants to rejoin the other sirens.
Not exactly your classic Disney story, that’s for sure.
Lira is a fantastic anti-heroine. She’s brutal and willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and in that way her and Elian are the same. Elian may be a prince but he is also ruthless when he needs to be and utterly single-minded in his determination to end the war with sirens once and for all. They’re about as star-crossed as two people can be, and when they begin to get all tangled up in each other it gets messy real fast.
I liked the quest aspect of this book a lot, but I would have liked just a smidgeon more of the questing – it was a little too easy for them to get all the pieces together. Honestly, I thought this would have made a great duology, but as it stands now it’s still a fabulous standalone.
If you like stabby pirate love stories this is definitely the book for you!
Rating: 5/5 stars