Book Review: The King’s Weapon

In this week’s read I found myself, thanks to Tiktoker @crabandbell reading Neena Laskowski’s The King’s Weapon. The story follows Kallie who’s trained all her life to follow her father’s wishes, and unite the Kingdoms as they were in the past. With a latent gift for manipulation, when she touches someone she can tell them what to do and they will do it. She’s prepared to accept “her choice” of suitors, when it’s really the option that best suits her father’s political needs. But after the night of her choice, she’s kidnapped by a group who act as though they are saving her. A dangerous journey to another realm will uncover the secrets of Kallie’s past, who she really is, and whether she accepts their truth or not.

We are going to enter into spoiler territory, and the details of why in this section will be broken into two; my warring assessment of this book between a two and four-star review.

First the bad, and herein I warn you of serious spoilers and determents against reading this book.

Two Star Points:

This books’ opening chapter promised a lush and engaging world of court intrigue that wrapped me up hook line and sinker. But it became evident the further I read into the story that the writing deteriorated, as did the editing, to the point where I almost didn’t finish it.

I usually don’t criticize indie editing unless it’s prolific issues and they are ongoing. For example, a mistake with a word being wrong isn’t an issue unless its continuous, so “peak” should have been “peek” and “weary” should have been “wary”. These are the examples I remember, and there were others. There were numerous punctuation issues where sometimes I couldn’t tell if dialogue was meant to be dialogue or not. So extensive copy-editing issues.

The second point was the narration itself of the main character. Often times in an attempt to further blur some of the plot points that made this book so good, there was unnecessary or repetitive thoughts or internal exposition that became boring. A good dev editor or series of beta readers could have assisted in cutting back in this, but also further developing it for better underlying the wonderful plot twists to come.

Lastly was the scenes themselves, this story suffering from a soggy middle of drinking and card games, of backstory in dialogue, and repeated attempts at escape that were expected, but ultimately not in keeping with our unreliable narrator’s true goals. This led to a stopping and starting of scenes meant to invite excitement and encouraging the budding bond between Kallie and Graeson, but fell flat.

Why keep reading? What changed my mind?

Four Star Points:

The writer had a good story here that with an honest series of editing or beta reading could have better, and I enjoyed the story she told even as my reader sighed over mistakes, and the editor cringed.

The story still held great writing, with lines that had me turning the pages, and plot twists that honestly caught me off guard. I was intrigued by the constant state of secrecy by the kidnappers and what their goals really were. That this wasn’t an easy game of cat and mouse, but an intricate and difficult dance that went beyond desires.

By the time the ending arrived and all was revealed I alternatively wanted to get the next book in the series or throw it at the author. Hard. I will give them away below, but this is where to stop if you don’t want more spoilers on why I read to the end of this book, which upped my rating.

Full on Spoilers:

Kallie is an unreliable narrator and I felt knowing this enabled me to better see what it was that the writer was going for, even if it didn’t quite work. It’s revealed that she knew she was going to be kidnapped, and wanted to find out how to better use her gift of being able to manipulate people from the Pontians who are the only gifted people in this world. All this made sense, but what it’s revealed she didn’t know is that she’s related to her kidnappers, allowing for our warring sense of hiding the truth from the reader, and Kallie’s shock at the events. I feel like the way for Kallie to have betrayed her actual family could have been much smoother but the ultimate reveal and her decision to go against her actual family to the man who trained her left such untold story for book two I wanted to go and read more.

What bothered me the most was an almost “necessary” character death that felt like the wrong choice in Fynn’s death, and an unnecessary grieving of his passing which I skimmed over. The repetition in how the King stole Kallie from the Pontians, and that they used the same tactic of setting fire to the city to create their distraction, along with an unnecessary scene of Kallie falling down a hill, only to climb back up it, for no discernable reason.

Yet after this there are elements of the unreliable narrator start to become clear, and when Kallie decides to go with her father’s allies keeps you turning the pages until she reunites with her father, revealing her success in mastering her gift. The why of Kallie’s betrayal invites you to read book two to see where else the writer is going to take us, and how Graeson is going to get Kallie back for her deception.

Ultimately I gave this 3.5 stars rounded up to four because in lieu of the stories events I didn’t see the ending coming, the plot twists were executed immediately well, despite the elements of it that deterred me as a reader.