Kingdom of Souls Book Review

From Goodreads: A girl with no gifts must bargain for the power to fight her own mother’s dark schemes—even if the price is her life.

Heir to two lines of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. Yet she fails at bone magic, fails to call upon her ancestors, and fails to live up to her family’s legacy. Under the disapproving eye of her mother, the Kingdom’s most powerful priestess and seer, she fears she may never be good enough.

But when the Kingdom’s children begin to disappear, Arrah is desperate enough to turn to a forbidden, dangerous ritual. If she has no magic of her own, she’ll have to buy it—by trading away years of her own life.

Arrah’s borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal, and on its heels, a rising tide of darkness that threatens to consume her and all those she loves. She must race to unravel a twisted and deadly scheme… before the fight costs more than she can afford.

Hi everyone,

Kingdom of Souls has been on my shelf for a while, courtesy of the amazing Nikki from Booksandlemonsquash, who sent me the gorgeous Illumicrate edition which has a snake design sprayed onto the page edges. But this month, I finally got around to picking it up, and it was a really fun read.

I loved that the novel honed-in on Arrah’s fears over not having magic. I think the magic system tied really well to the culture and the religion, and so all of her self-doubt was really exacerbated because there was so much pressure on her, especially with her family being so powerful. I think Arrah is a great protagonist. She’s so compassionate and kind, and I think she has this bravery that really shines when she is making decisions to help other people. It was nice to see a protagonist whose bravery doesn’t necessarily show itself through fighting, although she does participate in that, but more through her decision-making and her choice to sacrifice some pretty important parts of herself to try and rescue others. It’s something that made a lot of sense with her personality traits, and I never felt as though Arrah made decisions that felt OOC. I also liked the complex relationships she has with her family and how they play out over the course of the novel. I think there were some really interesting dynamics there and I liked that her disapproving mother wasn’t one dimensional, but it seemed as though there were a lot of layers to their relationship and explanations for why she behaves the way she does, and I think this added a lot to the overall story.

The side characters were also pretty awesome. I kinda thought at the start that Rudjek would be one of those characters that gets mentioned a bit but never puts in much of an appearance, so it was nice to see him playing a pretty significant role. I also loved all those cute moments with Arrah and her father, and her grandmother. Again, I think the relationships are explored in a lot of detail and this massively enhances the novel for me. Kofi is also a highlight for me, he’s so cute and sweet and is one of those adorable little brother types that I love to see in fiction.

It did sometimes feel like there might be a few too many characters in there, especially towards the end of the book where new people were introduced. I think part of it is that I struggle with names and so sometimes when there’s a lot of them on the page, I sort of zone out a bit, especially when the characters are not major ones (and that’s why I had such an issue with Kingdom of Ash). The magic system was also a little a little confusing at times, because it felt as though the opening chapters of the book explained a bit about what people could do with their magic, and then later on things were happening that seemed, to me at least, to break these rules.

In terms of the plot, there were quite a few moments when I predicted what was going to happen. At this point, I can’t really tell if this is a valid complaint or not, as I’m spending so much of my free time and work time reading YA at the moment (and we’ll be discussing that in a whole other post at some point) and so I’ve gotten to the stage where I can predict plot twists about 90% of the time. So I’m not sure if it’s fair of me to say that I predicted the first major twist, but I feel like it is fairly predictable and I’m sure other people guessed that one too. It didn’t mean that the consequences of that plot twist were any less enjoyable though, I actually thought the stuff that came after that first major twist added a lot to the story. There were some smaller twists that I didn’t see coming, so I think that’s worth mentioning too.

I think I’d be interested in reading the next book and seeing what happens. Kingdom of Souls feels like it finished the narrative arc that it promises in the synopsis, but then there’s that interesting scene right at the end that throws a good curveball in there and sets up a cliffhanger for the next book.

Overall, I’m giving Kingdom of Souls:

I thought the plot was compelling, if a little bit predictable, and while I liked the characters, there were a lot of side characters, especially towards the end, and this sometimes made the book a little hard to follow.

Has anyone read this book yet, or plans to? What did you think of it? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a message in the comment section below <3