KING OF SCARS BOOKTALK

you hey everyone it's Jenna me and welcome back to my channel this story ate over so today I'm coming to you with a review slash book talk of a book that I've been waiting so so long for and I'm so glad I get to talk about it now and discuss all of my thoughts because this has been my most anticipated release of 2019 and just the idea of getting to talk about it now that this is actually a thing in my hands now that I've read now it's just super amazing to me so if you couldn't tell it by the title or the thumbnail of this video that is king of scars by Leigh bardugo this was as I said my most anticipated release of 2019 and I've been waiting for it since the first like prosna trilogy the shadow and bone trilogy since reading about Nikolaj in the second book and just knowing he was a character I wanted a specific series and like book on him for the longest time and I finally got it and I was just super super excited about that I will say because of all of like the waiting and expectation my standards were really high for this book I do feel like that might have harmed my opinion for this book and going into it and reading it but that doesn't mean I didn't absolutely love it as well but that's about all I can say without really spoiling this book for anyone so if you haven't read King of scars please leave now please do me and you a favor and not spoil yourself because I really don't want that on my conscience but for those of you who have read the book and finished it please stick around I'd love to discuss all of my thoughts on this book and the newest addition to the Grisha verse so if you're still here you have read King of scars and you know everything that happens and so I'm gonna get into all of my spoilery thoughts on it all right so I'm gonna start with a few of my general thoughts so I will say I absolutely loved this book but I didn't love it as much as I was expecting to I went to this with a lot of expectations a lot of like high hopes because this was the first book about Nikolaj himself from his perspective that we were getting in the Grisha purrs and he was just a character that I loved in the Christian trilogy and who had so much like it's only aspects to him that were so interesting and so I'm super excited to get this book about him but when I got it I felt like it fell short for me in some ways there's just a few things that kind of added together made this book fall short for me but I still gave it a four out of five stars and that's not about rating I really did like a lot of parts of it I really loved Zoya story in this book um I really enjoyed Nina's story although I felt like it fell short for me in some ways as well and I just loved seeing Nikolaj and all the struggles he goes through as a king in raava and just his undying love for Roth conscious so endearing but I think one of the things that fell short for me was the fact that this book relied a lot on you knowing a lot from the original Grishka trilogy and from the six of crows Zoology and that's not a bad thing with I reread the shadow and bone a trilogy before reading this but I think it was just that a lot of the book felt like it was recapping stuff from before or I was talking about how Nikolai had gone through all these things or why I have gone through all these things and you know they were so trying to heal but the thing was is that we never got any of those things from their perspectives in the beginning right so like in the Grisha trilogy we never got Nikolai's point of view we never get to see him kind of struggle like we do but not completely and so seeing him kind of building on those struggles it was kind of hard to connect the dots because we hadn't seen his perspective before but I still loved like reading this book if that's the thing like it's just so complicated my feelings about this book because I still really loved it it's just like I sometimes the pacing was a little bit slow I felt like I really loved seeing the characters again and like the nostalgia value was really great but then I was just waiting for more to happen and I also feel like the emotional gratification at the end just wasn't enough for me and that just kind of really let me down but let's get into the specifics so just - right into the book like the first scene the first chapter where we're getting at the side perspective who is seeing soya and that Nikolai as the monster and that soya picking him up and taking him away look that was just so interesting I love just seeing their banter seeing Nikolai and soya and their relationship and the way that they have these nightly and morning routines where she puts the chains on him and where she gives them the sleeping potion and all of that and just the way that the two of them look forward to those parts of their day was just so endearing so I'd be like in the first part I felt like their relationship was really strong I could see it going somewhere they're really good friends but they also worked well together and also just the idea that both of them are quite similar and that way they're both very confident and self-assured and kind of vain in a sense and like they always look perfect and it was just one of the interesting things about reading the shadow and bone trilogy was that soya jokes a lot that she would marry Nikolai in a heartbeat because he's a king and like well he's a prince and he has all these things going for him and she doesn't understand why alina would give up nikolai for mal and everything I just thought that was so funny and interesting and so seeing them kind of have feelings for each other in this book was really great but then I felt like in the second half when they were stranded in the fold I felt like their relationship started to fall short for me even though like he was transforming into the monster to protect her and all those things I just feel like their relationship just stayed in this stasis form of you know wanting a little bit more but not admitting it and then they neither them actually really admit it too much to themselves that they want to be with the other person because both of them value their country and their duty and everything that they're doing more and I just felt like in that sense the bromance fall short and somebody said like that Leigh bardugo didn't make their relationship like a focus of the book but in some ways I felt like it could have added to the story to the growth of each of them and I think that was one of the things that was lacking for me I felt like Nikolaj didn't grow enough in this book and I think that's what fell short for me because we have this whole journey we're taking to figure out what's wrong with the monster wise like haunting him and try to get rid of the monster and then when it comes down to it there's like nothing really happens with that like he still keeps the monster sort of but gets rid of it sort of and then there's a whole ending which I will get to in a second so I felt like the whole book which is kind of going in circles most of the time but in opposite that I feel like soya had a much better kind of character arc in this book she's kind of starting out really icy and cold and being kind of mean and that by the end of it she's trying to come to terms with all of the horrors of her patch take it all in and show more feeling I left her training with URIs Juris and when she becomes a dragon and like takes him in like I absolutely loved all that that kind of Arc for her I also loved Nina's story in some ways I loved the idea of her kind of still morning mattias and trying to work through her grief like I didn't love that she was Mourning but I just loved that we were getting to see her working through her grief and we weren't just like you know being okay she's over a kind of thing and I loved that we got to see her bringing Mattias his body around and trying to find a place to put him to rest and I think that does fall in with the midpoint of the book like her putting Mattias is body trust and then meeting honey I thought that was like a really good kind of shift I also loved honey as a character I thought she was really cool I loved that she was this character who grew up and like this very bigoted and like prejudiced society and she's trying to find her way through it and but she's also still rebellious despite it all and Nina's trying to help her through that as she did with Mattias and I just love that we got to see more of the Virgin Society and the way that it works I also love the dynamic between honey and Nina one of the things that I did not like about it was the way that Nina is manipulating honey a lot in this book and although she's doing it for her good and like trying to help her and all these things I do feel like when at the end like honey I just forget her at the end I felt like it was just a little too easy I feel like you know after all the lies that Nina told like she should have been like a little bit more angry but I don't know I think that was my opinion of it I just wanted to see a bit more of a struggle there but I also just really wanted to see more kind of emotional things with those two when honey shows up you can definitely see that this is a pairing that might happen and obviously these things might happen in the second book but I also wanted to see more bread comes of their relationship blossoming and like starting out and so I felt like we didn't get enough like emotional gratification at the end of the book but on the other hand I really did love seeing the way that Nina was trying to save these women I felt like there was a bit of a drag at the beginning when we were trying to find out what was happening at the factory and know why they were there and although they were trying to help like other Greece I just want to know what was in the damn Factory and then when we finally got to it we're like okay and then they make a plan to get them out but I felt like all of that could have been condensed to a shorter frame of time I feel like in every chapter there was a bit of a lag like we were always speculating and thinking and talking but we weren't nothing was actually happening you know what I mean and I feel like that's been a general consensus with people I've talked to who have read the book the pacing was just kind of slow although it was still really a good book like there was just so many things that each of the character there's some really great themes throughout the book I loved that Nina was helping these women who were being trafficked who were being raped who were being forced to become addicts I loved that she was helping these helpless women and trying to give them a second chance because it is one point where Adric aside well we can't help them like you know they've already been addicted to jeredy parem and like there's nothing we can do for them and she's like no like I was there and I came back like no one's a lost cause kind of thing and so I just thought that that was really important and I just love seeing that like there's just a lot of like important themes in this book that I absolutely loved but I loved that at the end Nina gets Adric and Leone to do the miracle and she puts up the bone tree and everything and in a way she's using it to break the prejudices around Grisha in virgia and trying to get them to see them if not as regular people then at least his Saints as something to be revered rather than feared or hated right and I think that that's one element of trying to break prejudices you need to put them in a positive light even if you can't you know humanize them another thing I really loved was just seeing all of the characters from the Grisha verse just like returning I absolutely loved that Nina like often mentions the six of crows gang and like how she wishes she could be ruthless like cats or she could be like quiet and like nimble as an edge but and then there's like this line where she says like but all she inherited was like Jespers a tendency for bad decisions so that was hilarious I loved seeing Tamar and tolya and Kenya and David together again and I loved seeing Adric again I like the addition of Leone and that there was a little thing going on between Adric and Leone and then in the second half I also really enjoyed the chapters with that character who takes the place of Nikolai for his name now but he was really interesting I just loved how we got to see his like journey from like a kid being a soldier and trying to provide for his family and then Nikolay kind of seeing him and wanting to help him and he felt so grateful for that that he didn't even like blink when they asked him to take Nikolai's place and pretend to be him I thought those are so interesting I was thought it was just really tragic and sad the way that he fell for that princess who turns out not to be princess and was trying to assassinate Nicola I thought that that whole twist was really interesting I just felt like in general like the plot was good it's just it took too long to get started or like it took so long to actually like happen and it is a long book it's like 500 over 500 pages so I felt like there was like a lot of great things that happened towards the end and like really great twists and everything but then nothing happened until the end and then of course we come to like the twists at the end with Yuri and then with the darkling oh my gosh okay so when he's betrayal he came up I was just so blown because I was like actually warming up to his character and I like Sam and I was like oh maybe he'll become part of the crew and like you know we'll learn more about him and like the darkling in who actually eventually joined the side but no boy was too faithful to the darkling and the starless ain't like oh my god that whole like element of like the starless st. was so interesting like I like that we got to see like the continuation of what the remnants of the darklings power I was just apprehensive about the idea of bringing back that Dark Link because feel like a lot of popular series do this thing where they bring back the old villains or something and then and then like the epicness of that ending with that villain gets like undermined by bringing the back you know what I mean but this is really great ending where like Elina takes down the Dark Link and then you get all of this closure and epic feeling at the end and then by bringing them back I feel like that kind to minish is that feeling if you know what I mean I feel like I'm not making sense so that's one of the things I'm kind of scared about going into the second book because the darkling you know comes back at the end of this book and I thought that was super like interesting and cool and also just the way that he's like nice to see you all or something like he says some really classic you know really good line and like you know gives you chills and everything like oh my God he's back but I'm also just kind of scared that all of his greatness and his creepiness and just the grandness of him as a villain is gonna get diminish by having him come back and like do a rerun you know what I mean that's what it kind of feels like to me but I don't know maybe the second book will be better but I did like the idea of Nicola I kind of hang on to the monster and not completely like getting rid of it one thing I will say is that I totally saw the whole twist with Elizabeth like turning on them like coming like I saw that coming she was being kind of creepy and weird and I was like why are we in this like weird dimension and you know why are why are these three Saints here and like there's got to be something wrong here and so I totally called her turning on them and I think that just kind of annoyed me I was just expecting a bit more from all the plot points of the book and I also just didn't think she was compelling as a villain like we don't really know who she is when she comes in and then when she comes in like you know she's kind of creepy but otherwise like I didn't really feel anything about her so that also annoyed me but I definitely did love seeing how Nikolaj was grappling with this monster within him one thing I wish we had more of was I wish she was conscious during like these when he becomes the monster let's just parts where he is when he's trying to like save soya and everything but in the regular episodes that was she knew what was happening and really kind of fighting the demon not like every moment like I feel like that would have been a more interesting thing but it's just kind of this thing that seems external that comes out of him at night and then goes back and he's just kind of scared where he's gonna come but other than that there's no real grappling with him being monstrous there is a point at the end where he starts to see the monster as embodying all the things that he hates about himself about him being too self-serving and like that's something that Alena kind of pointed that in the Grisha trilogy and something that she couldn't come forward with and one of the reasons why she couldn't be with her I also thought it was really interesting to see how Nick who I really was hurt by Elena's rejection the fact that he had everything going for him and she still said no and I just thought that was interesting and I thought it gave a little bit of insight into Nicolas character as a little bit more self-centered and he go to school then like I originally thought he was but yes overall I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book I really wanted to like love love love it and I give it five stars and say it was like the best book I've read and like forever but like it wasn't and that really disappointed me but I still really enjoyed it I really loved getting back into this world and to see these characters I'm definitely going to be the next book and Ike I want to know what happens and I definitely want to know what happens with the darkling and like all of that I just hope that we get a little bit more Nikolay in the next book because I think that's another thing that fell short for me it's the fact that this book was called king of scars and that it was supposed to be about Nikolai Nikolai was finally getting his own book but a lot of the book was also from Zoe's perspective or from like the guy who impersonates Nikolai it like his perspective or it was from Nina's perspective there was like four different perspectives but like Nikolai was only a part of that and I feel like his whole journey and his emotional arc didn't really take up that much space in the book even though the book was very long but those are basically my thoughts I just hope that we get more Nikolay in the next book and that more of the emotional beats kind of pay off but yes that is about all I have to say I unfortunately could not like do a scene-by-scene breakdown of this book you should I can only do that for books that I super super loved but I still like enjoy talking about this and I want to know everyone's thoughts on this so if you've read King of scars please let me know what you thought of it and like if you agree with some of the things I said and if you disagree please let me know I'd love to hear what like other people like people who really loved it and like thought it was like a five star trade look let me know what you thought and why you thought that and everything and if you didn't like it as much as I did like let me know why I'd love to discuss I just want someone to talk to you about this book because like no one has finished it yet so please let me know your thoughts down below that is about all I have to say about King of scars by Leigh bardugo I still think Liberty goes Queen I still loved this universe and I'm still gonna be reading all the rest of the books I just felt like this one fell short for me that's about it but thank you so so much for watching and please remember that this story ain't over bye [Music]

Channel: thisstoryaintover

Views: 3,003

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: books, book, booktube, booktuber, read, reading, king of scars, booktalk, king of scars booktalk, king of scars review, book review, king of scars book review, leigh bardugo, six of crows, shadow and bone, grishaverse, grisha trilogy, shadow and bone trilogy

Id: tZQkY8Cq3Bw

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 16 2019