Hello everyone!
I am back with another book review, Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes.
This book follows four main perspectives, Jonas, the Paelisan son of a peasant winemaker whose brother is killed by a visiting Auranosian lord's son; Cleo, the Princess of Auranos who witnesses the murder; Lucia, the Princess of Limeros, the neighbouring kingdom and rumoured sorceress who will bring magic back to the world; and Magnus, the Prince of Limeros and son of the ruthless King Gaius who has yet to decide if he will follow in his father's footsteps. After the death of Jonas's brother, a war begins to brew between the Auranosians, who have controlled much of the land and lived in prosperity while the neighbouring lands have suffered.
Firstly, it took me a hot minute to figure out who was who in the book, not necessarily voice-wise (they were fairly distinct and in third person, so their names were always used) but in terms of who was a part of which part of the world. Luckily, there was a list at the beginning of the book with details on who came from where, which helped a bit.
Writing style-wise, I'm not generally the biggest fan of third-person perspective, especially when we're dealing with multiple perspectives. Yes, it keeps them separated, but I find it also distances the reader from the story and the characters. I'm not sure if it was a direct result of the perspective, but I did find that I wasn't as engaged in the story as I wanted to be and I could really feel that distance at times. A number of characters die throughout the book, some you got to know more intimately, others you barely knew, but regardless of how well you knew them, you became desensitized to their deaths - largely, I think, because of the distance I felt while reading.
Overall, while there were a few plot issues I had with the story, I did still enjoy the overall arc of the story and have confidence that Rhodes will find her stride with the next book in the series.