Confessions of a Bookaholic: To Kill A Kingdom

Princess Lira, siren daughter of the Sea Queen, has a heart for every year she's been alive. Like all sirens, Lira ventures forth from their hidden realm in the Diávolos Sea every year on her birthday to lure an unsuspecting human to the water, then rips out their heart to add to her collection. Unlike the other sirens, though, Lira's collection is comprised solely of royalty. Seventeen princes' hearts lay buried in the sand of her room, enough to earn the respect of her people as their future ruler and the fear of the humans. Known as the Princes' Bane, Lira relishes the reputation she's created for herself even though it makes her just tolerable in the eyes of her cruel and uncaring mother. All of that changes the day she breaks the sirens' most sacred tradition and takes a heart before her birthday. When Lira returns with the evidence of her wrongdoing, her livid mother declares that she will take an ordinary human's heart for her next birthday, ruining the last 17 years of careful collecting and humiliating her just years before she's to inherit her mother's crown. Unwilling to accept the shame, Lira hatches a scheme to claim the heart of Prince Elian, a notorious siren hunter, and present it to her mother as a gift to appease her anger. But when it comes time to carry out her mission, a lowly mermaid interferes and snatches victory right out from under her nose. The ensuing fight ends with the death of the mermaid and the Sea Witch, attuned to all the happenings in her ocean, appears. Furious at her daughter's insolence, her mother imposes the ultimate punishment and transforms Lira into a human, stranding her in the middle of the ocean with a command to not return until she's taken the prince's heart.

Prince Elian is heir to the Midasan throne, but the gilt city has never felt like home to him. In fact, he spends as little time there as he can get away with, choosing instead to sail the seas and hunt sirens with his loyal crew. Although he takes little pleasure in killing the disturbingly human-like creatures, Elian can see no other way to protect humanity from them. More than anything, he seeks the Princes' Bane, who's already claimed the lives of several of his own friends. As he searches for a weapon he can use to end their reign of terror once and for all, he uncovers rumors of an ancient crystal capable of overthrowing the Sea Queen herself. Further digging reveals that what was long regarded as a fairy tale really exists, but in an inhospitable corner of the world ruled by warriors that don't cater to outsiders, even royal ones. Elian's only chance to get at the crystal is to use his royal position to negotiate a deal with an insider at the court and negotiate he does. With a chance to lose the things he holds most dear, he secures an arrangement for a shot at obtaining the crystal. He and the crew set sail, but the plan quickly veers off course when they discover a girl floating in the middle of the ocean.

When Lira wakes up on the ship of the man she's been sent to destroy, it seems like fate is finally on her side. But despite her human form, the crew is suspicious of her from the beginning. How did she come to be in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight? Where did she come from? And how does she speak Psáriin, language of the sirens, when no one has been able to communicate with a siren long enough to learn it? They keep her at arms' length, but it doesn't stop her from piecing together their plan to find the crystal and defeat the Sea Witch. Suddenly, bringing back Elian's heart just to return to the status quo doesn't seem as tempting as claiming the crystal for herself, then taking her place as the rightful Sea Queen (albeit a less cruel one). With her new plan in mind, she decides to bide her time with Elian and his crew to get to the crystal's hiding place. As the journey goes on and Lira becomes more and more comfortable with the ship and its inhabitants, and they with her, she discovers that there's more to humans than she ever suspected as a siren. The crew's loyalty to their captain, the easy camaraderie they enjoy, and, eventually, their acceptance of her as one of their own make her feel more content than she's ever been before. Even Prince Elian, fearsome siren slayer, turns out to be more than meets the eye: witty, courageous, and, like Lira, tied to a legacy of which he has no desire to be a part. And yet she knows that the illusion would be shattered if they ever discovered the truth of her origin or her plan to betray them. The closer she gets to the destination and the more she becomes a part of the crew, the harder the decision becomes; steal the crystal and sacrifice the only time she's known peace in her life or surrender her kingdom to the reign of a tyrannical ruler?

Surprise, I'm back with yet another fairy tale retelling for you! Honestly at this point, you should just consider it a good day if I post any that *aren't* Beauty and the Beast, but this one is a Little Mermaid retelling... sort of. It's sirens instead of mermaids, but let's be real; you still get the sparkly fin and clam bra of Ye Olde Traditionale Mermaide, but now you're also crazy gorgeous and can sing to make men fall in love with you?? Count me in. I really liked this book for the most part. It's got a lot of the elements you would expect in a retelling, but with some twists. We've got sirens (that rip the still-beating hearts from their victims), pirates (that hunt said sirens), an evil Sea Witch with a trident (who is the main character's mother), the siren-human transformation... the only thing we're missing is a singing crab. There's a teensy bit of magic worked in that was pretty cool; Elian has a compass that can tell if someone is lying and a knife that feeds off blood. 99.8% of Elian and Lira's interactions are also extremely amusing. As with all retellings, I highly doubt you're going to be shocked by the ending, but it was different and fast-paced enough to easily keep my attention.

My biggest issue is that I'm having a really hard time identifying what my biggest issue with the book is. After the first couple of chapters, I had this feeling that something about it was off and it never went away, but I can't figure out for the life of me what it is. The author uses a lot of those flowery metaphors that some people love and some people hate, but I didn't hate most of them. There's plenty of descriptions so you can get a mental image as you read, maybe even too much description in some cases, but again, nothing I hated. The ending was a little abrupt, but it worked out well. Maybe it's that their journey took them from a golden paradise to an icy wasteland with not much in between and my brain is telling me it's not scientifically possible? Maybe because Elian managed to smell like black licorice the entire book, even when they'd been at sea for who knows how long? I don't know. I really can't figure out why I couldn't get obsessed with this book. It just lacks that je ne sais quoi that makes a good book great, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it.

Also can we talk about fan art for a second? I can't draw anything that doesn't involve a ruler, so it blows my mind that people can read something and just go off and draw it like it's the easiest thing in the world. This popped up when I was searching for an image of the cover and it's so perfect, I felt duty-bound to include it here. You're welcome. And artist, whoever you are? You rock.