To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

You know, I've heard this book called 'a retelling of The Little Mermaid' by many, many Booktubers and honestly I think this is really unfair. For starters, it isn't even about a mermaid. Apart from sharing the plot elements of a prince and the ocean, there really isn't anything in common between them.

To Kill a Kingdom is the story of Lira, a siren princess who is allowed to steal the heart of a human prince every day on her birthday (a siren tradition). When she breaks this rule and steals a heart early, she gets punished and (after another transgression) transformed into a human. Now she must steal the heart of the richest prince in the land without the use of her siren voice (originally I am pretty sure she is given until her birthday to do so but then this deadline is never mentioned again so...oops?).

The story is told in dual narrative, with chapters alternating between Lira and the prince Elian. This style bothered me at first mainly because, until Lira became human, I didn't have much interest in Elian's story. Don't get me wrong, he is a great character and I liked his crew a lot, I'm just not particularly into adventure stories. I thought this book would be a bit of a drag but it picks up as soon as Lira is human, and ultimately it has a wonderfully solid plot. It is definitely more heavy on the fantasy elements than the books I usually read but this was by no means a bad thing. I loved the world the author created and there was a lot of inventiveness in the detail of the creatures and such.

There was only really one problem for me with this book and while it wasn't handled appallingly, it was quite a large part of it. Once human, Lira arbitrarily avoids murdering Elian for chapters and chapters, purely so they can keep the plot going and eventually fall in love. Everything about the love felt sudden to me, though this is more from Lira's feelings being badly described than not having enough time dedicated to it in the story. I liked their interactions and felt they had an interesting vibe going on, but love? I didn't buy Lira's change in feelings with the amount of description dedicated to her trying to work them out, even with the excuse of newfound humanity.

Having said that, I still really love this book. I found all of the characters compelling, and Lira in particular was very well fleshed-out. The world-building elements of the underwater kingdom were so cool, and the same goes for the actual kingdom as well. As is typical with these books, the ending felt a little rushed and not entirely clear but it wasn't unsatisfying. I would definitely recommend giving this book a try if you enjoy fantasy, and this author deserves more credit than 'a retelling of the Little Mermaid'.

Overall Rating:

.5