33 Thoughts I Had While Reading King of Scars // Review

Hello world! It’s me, April.

It’s been a hot second since I’ve posted, or interacted with the blogosphere for that matter. The end of the school year is coming to a close (one. more. week) and you know, life stuff happened. Tests, projects, nationals for speech, the musical, the whole shebang. I’ve been reading up a storm (read: stress reading rom-coms) and haven’t really had the energy to do the little finger-tap-dance required to sit down and type out a post.

But I finished King of Scars the other day, and let me tell you, I have thoughts. So I decided to do another Thoughts I Had While Reading post. Yay team!

Please note, there are potential spoilers for Crooked Kingdom, but nothing overtly spoil-y about King of Scars. Everything is out of context and I chopped out parts that spoiled major plot points, so you should be in the clear.

Book: King of Scars

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Format: ebook

Published January 29th 2019 by Imprint

Trigger Warnings

Sexual assault (implied), Death of a loved one, Torture, Captivity, War themes, Bullying, Violence

1. the banter! it’s literally chapter two and I’m already loving the snark
2. the way i thought nina was decapitating a body and not a fish…
3. omg waffle scrubs! i want that
4. i thought i was emotionally ok after CK, but KoS is driving that poisoned knife further into my heart ow
5. hold the phone— kirigan???
6. ok so nina is just casually chit chatting with the dead?? cool cool
7. respected?? pfft, sure buddy, you keep telling yourself that
8. good god
9. 9?!?!
10. y’all. was the cult really necessary??
11. that’s not good
12. The fact that I’m not even halfway through this book and I would straight up kill for any of these characters… I think this is a sign that I am far too emotionally invested
13. Ok but why is the Darkling lowkey smart in the scariest way possible. I mean, if you ignore the sheer idiocy that is his name (seriously, could be be any less subtle??) and think about the motivation behind a lot of his actions. Like he knew that Genya valued her beauty, so he targeted it. Similar to how he knew that Nikolai valued his mind so he targeted that as well.
14. the dialogue in this book is pure gold
15. ok but what is the point of breaking into the ice court if you can’t brag about it??
16. I love how the Darkling stans in the book also manage to completely misinterpret his character even within the fictional universe
17. “Great men are often the victims of lies told by their enemies.” I— I don’t even know where to start, but I do know that I want to punch this kid
18. Please Zoya, verablly shred this man
    • or physcially shred him. i’d be ok with that too
19. that is very much not good
20. yea that is very very not good
21. who is isaak?????? *confusion*
    • oh wait… i figured it out
22. NO HE DIDN’t
23. Nikolai is giving Kaz a run for his money with their utterly ridicious plans that always, miraculously, work out
24. now there is a talking dragon???
25. WAIT A DAMN SECOND
26. noooo, not this man again
27. I’m calling trickery right now. There is no way that this dragon-dreamscape-disaster will end nicely
28. they are so not giving up their power
29. I have a bad feeling about this
30. Welp it is offical, Kaz’s greed quote applies to everyone
31. I have the re-alived trope with a burning passion ugh
32. y’all are going down so fast
33. that is very much not good

Hands down my favorite book of the Grishaverse. The characters, the storytelling, the sheer choas of the terrible plans actually working. I’m here for all of it. I thought Six of Crows was amazing (which it is) but somehow Miss Bardugo kept going with these 10/10 books. Wow wow wow

Have you read King of Scars?? What did you think? Who was your favorite character??