Francesca ❆'s Reviews > Kill the Queen

*Thanks to Edelweiss and Harper Voyager(Harper Collins) for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Sadly, this book didn’t work for me (despite the amazing premise) for multiple reasons.
I thought the world building was poorly flashed out (with bits of infos sprinkled in without a logic), the blurb describes it as “Game of Thrones meets Gladiator” but in reality the gladiators are used as plot device while the plot doesn’t have a smudge of the treachery and cruelty of GoT.
The divide between villains and heroes is showed like a neon sign, the usage of the first person narrative gave an alienating quality to the story (felt really lecture like) and also the language used felt very “modern” and created some discrepancies between the genre and writing.
The plot felt stifled and predictable, with lackluster plot twists and bland dialogues.
As for the characters....a big meh. I didn’t find them very fleshed out or captivating, the protagonist was both naive and annoying and although she matures a great deal she still comes across as a flat character; the male counterpart wasn’t any better: classic hunk with the personality of a coconut; the secondary characters were well integrated in the plot although I wished they were more “important” for the plot so they would’ve felt more real.
The romance could’ve been avoided: it goes from mild attraction to full “I’m gonna sleep with you tonight and I just decided it because we might die soon so YOLO” (I know, what a sound reasoning!), this rushing took away any investment I could’ve developed if the author stuck with the slow burn.