At this point, however, I was invested enough in the story that I was willing to make the extra effort.)įor the most part, Lyons does a fantastic job of leading the reader through a dense plot, making The Ruin of Kings a supremely-accessible epic fantasy experience that doesn’t sacrifice moral ambiguity, structural creativity, or textured worldbuilding in the process. (Near the end of the 560-page story, the twists and turns involving the many, often similarly-named characters can get a bit confusing and expository. The story is tightly-plotted with a rich setting that expands off of the pages and beyond the narrative, but this book is rarely intimidating. Paired with the frequent action of the tale, the structure propels the reader forward. The strucure creates a fascinating tension between the timelines, between what the reader knows and what the characters know. Concurrently, Kihrin ends with his jailing. Talon starts at what she considers “the beginning,” when Kihrin first robs the wrong house, and ends where Kihrin begins, with his sale in a slave market. In alternating chapters, Kihrin and Talon give us a greater understanding of the context that informs Kihrin’s, frankly, tragically unlucky life. Kihrin eventually escapes the royal household, only to be pulled into an even larger struggle for power-one in which he is part of a prophecy, sought after by gods, demons, dragons, and mages alike. If things weren’t already complicated enough, Kihrin is then claimed as the missing son of a treasonous prince, unwillingly pulled into the political machinations of a quite terrible royal family. Read more: Best New Young Adult Speculative Fiction Books

The ruin of kings series order