Review--King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard

 

When the Lightning Girl’s spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?

Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.

As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare’s heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.

When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.

 

 

Another one bites the dust with my continuing a series and trying to get in completed! Lol. I am continuing my binge to finish Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen series and today I just finished King's Cage! This continues the exciting adventure of a world where fantasy and modernity are blended! I forgot that this series sort of borders a fantasy/dystopian kind of world what with flying planes and whatnot in a world that doesn't have modern medicine! Oh the things you learn when you return to a series five plus years after starting it! 

When we last left Mare, she made the ultimate sacrifice for her team, by giving herself over to Maven so that they may escape with their lives. For 200+ pages Mare is a prisoner of Maven, not allowed to do much of anything. Until Maven decides to use her as a speaker for his campaign in getting the Red bloods with magical powers to join his side in an upcoming war. He travels to the different kingdoms to rally support and gain soldiers with empty promises...or are they empty? I got to admit, Maven is a complicated character!

Again, I found myself a bit boggled with the slower pacing to the story. I guess I couldn't really recall what happened in the first book when it came to pacing and other such things. As I said, Mare is a prisoner for over 200 pages and while we watch her attempts at escape and defiance, there's really not much going on to help move the story forward. We do get to see more of Maven in his new kingly role and I can't believe there was a time I was actually rooting for this guy! At least I think I was, I might have been torn between him and Cal when it came to romantic picks. But man, Maven is pretty psychotic in some ways. Like in the twisted serial killer way where you can't tell what he will do next. 

In this book I was surprised to see we got a point of view outside of Mare's. Cameron has a few starring roles in her own chapters, I guess so we can see what's happening with Mare's group of friends as they strategically try to plan a rescue attempt on her behalf.

Now I'm just about to start the final book, so I don't know what kind of point of view situation I'll be walking into, but at this point I'm really wanting to see inside Maven's head, despite the craziness, and Cal's too for that matter as he kept making questionable choices that I desperately wanted to know what that boy was thinking when he made them!

I was a little happier to see more happening on the romance front. Yes, I know, who have I become?! But since Mare and Cal were dancing around each other all the last book, I was dying for something to happen! Naturally as soon as things start, you know they aren't going to last long when it comes to happy times, because there's still another book to read! I feel like that's a trend in most YA books where a couple continually fights to be together that once they finally get their chance, something tears them apart again!

The ending was a bit borderline anticlimactic. I feel like these battle scenes are sometimes taking just a tad too long. Or perhaps because it's just hard to read constant moments of action with nothing really happening other than people trying to kill one another. Once we get passed that battle was where the real drama started. I feel like I did right in waiting to binge the series, though I wish I hadn't waited quite so long, but that's the curse of the avid reader! 

While King's Cage was far better than the last book, I was still somewhat dismayed by the overall pacing. Even once we passed that 200+ mark things were still a little shaky with the slow pace moving forward. The book definitely had its spurts of action and excitement. Which I guess after a run of fast paced reads this kind of just throws me off. Normally, I don't mind so much but going from one extreme to another is never a good thing to do. I am still eager to see how things will end with this series as it's still been a whirlwind of a read!

Overall Rating 3.5/5 stars