Quick Thoughts: King of Scars (King of Scars #1) by Leigh Bardugo

King of Scars

(King of Scars #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

January 29, 2019

514 pages

Goodreads Summary:

Face your demons... or feed them.

The boy king. The war hero. The prince with a demon curled inside his heart. Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. The people of Ravka don't know what he endured in their bloody civil war and he intends to keep it that way. Yet with each day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built.

Zoya Nazyalensky has devoted her life to honing her deadly talents and rebuilding the Grisha army. Despite their magical gifts, Zoya knows the Grisha cannot survive without Ravka as a place of sanctuary—and Ravka cannot survive a weakened king. Zoya will stop at nothing to help Nikolai secure the throne, but she also has new enemies to conquer in the battle to come.

Far north, Nina Zenik wages her own kind of war against the people who would see the Grisha wiped from the earth forever. Burdened by grief and a terrifying power, Nina must face the pain of her past if she has any hope of defeating the dangers that await her on the ice.

Ravka's king. Ravka's general. Ravka's spy. They will journey past the boundaries of science and superstition, of magic and faith, and risk everything to save a broken nation. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried, and some wounds aren't meant to heal.

Review

I fell head over heels for Nikolai the moment he appeared in Siege and Storm so I was over the moon excited to learn he gets his own story in King of Scars! I ran to the bookstore to grab a copy, no joke. The constant plotting and careful execution of plans in this book made my heart leap and sing.

What I Liked:

- seeing most of the Shadow and Bone characters again!

- the Grisha Triumvirate, fancy title but so deserved

- Ravka's struggles made for an extremely compelling storyline

- the search for Nikolai's Queen plotline (I guessed the twist but it was fun to watch events unfold)

- NIKOLAI LANTSOV, that is all

- badass Zoya- despite her inner turmoil she was always ready

- the multiple POVs really bared the characters (and their hopes and fears) to us

- Nikolai and Zoya's every interaction

- Nina coping with what she lost in Crooked Kingdom

- watching Nina scheme and act was most entertaining

- Zoyalai is my new OTP

- that one hell of a cliffhanger ending, bravo

The Not So Much:

- the cruelest cliffhanger ending lol

- the changing POVs- I was a lot more invested in Zoyalai's chapters than with Nina's, oops

"If you listened to a man's words, you might learn his wants. The trick was to look into his heart and discover his needs." (p. 204)

"To live is to grieve." (p. 464)

"Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea." (p. 465)