One day, you'll call me death. For now, Wrath will do."
My Rating: ★★★≛
Genre(s): Young Adult Fantasy, Mystery
Publication: September 24, 2020 (Little, Brown and Company)
After seeing multiple people rave about Kingdom of the Wicked, many of whom claimed to have already read it more than once since its publication this past fall, I decided to listen to the audiobook to see what the fuss was about. I had assumed I would love it -- a story about witches and demons and princes of Hell? What's not to love?
Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment. However, I am convinced it has more to do with the book's narrator than the book itself. I found the narration to be distracting much of the time. The narrator read breathily and with a strange undulation and oddly placed emphases. She also made many of the male characters sound ridiculous. It's hard enough to convincingly read a male character's dialogue as a female narrator, but when said narrator puts on bad Italian accents for many of the male characters (seemingly at random), they all end up sounding entirely too silly. This was a significant distraction for me, and I regret not listening to a sample of the audiobook before I committed to it.
The story itself was much better than the narration, but it was not excellent as I'd hoped. Emilia is a character who becomes more interesting over time. From shy and cautious to vicious and reckless, her transformation, though not exactly a positive one, is one of the more gratifying aspects of the story. Her ever-growing defiance and determination make her powerful enough to rival any creature of Hell.
However, Emilia felt a little bit too bland in the beginning, and despite the fact that I was intrigued by Nonna's tales of the Wicked, the first couple of chapters felt slow and uninteresting. Things picked up a bit when she found her sister Vittoria murdered -- and this was one of the more gripping parts of the story -- but the pacing thereafter felt off. Everything seemed to happen in rapid-fire fashion, but it still managed to feel like the story meandered at times. It created a lot of confusion, and I found that I was unable to keep track of all of the people Emilia met, places she'd been, and information she'd learned. Sprinkled throughout all of the freneticism were details of the witches' history with the devil. With all of the pacing issues, these murder mystery and backstory threads were hard to follow.
Wrath was a highlight of this book. As a prince of Hell, he was by far the most fascinating character as well as the most mysterious. Though he was present throughout most of the story, there is still so much we don't know about him. Somehow, though, I found myself trusting him despite the fact that his motives for helping Emilia find her sister's murderer were never clear. Wrath is secretive and calculating, and he is not particularly charming, but I still found myself charmed. Perhaps it was the chemistry -- albeit of the tense sort -- between him and Emilia
While I did not follow the murder mystery, and though I am a little confused about the nature of the relationship between the witches and Hell, I am interested in reading Kingdom of the Cursed, which will be out this October. I am fairly certain that several of my issues with Kingdom of the Wicked are rooted in my issues with the audiobook, and I think I may have to pick up a physical copy and give it a reread before moving on to the sequel. Emilia and Wrath were engaging characters with great chemistry, and for that alone I would love to give the first installment of their story another chance.
Content Warnings: death, gore, violence, self-harm, grief, loss of a loved one
Synopsis:
Two sisters.
One brutal murder.
A quest for vengeance that will unleash Hell itself . . .
And an intoxicating romance.
Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe—witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family’s renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin… desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister’s killer and to seek vengeance at any cost—even if it means using dark magic that’s been long forbidden.
Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked Princes of Hell that she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia’s side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women’s murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems . . .
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