King of Battle and Blood

After a long string of particularly dry reads in late 2022, I found myself craving a lush, opulent adventure and some good old fantasy. Scarlett St. Clair is an author whose work I've had on my TBR for a while. Although her Hades x Persephone saga looked tempting, it was far too long a read for me at the moment. After the recent announcement of her upcoming work, Mountains Made of Glass, I decided it was time to pick up one of her books and give it a go.

Touting an enemies-to-lovers relationship and vampires with politics, King of Battle and Blood seemed like the perfect thing to sink my teeth into for a short, entertaining read. While cliche, I'm a sucker for tropes like these, especially when they are executed masterfully. Cliches are cliches for a reason, and when well done, make for a compelling read.

Plot

Henri, the king of Lara, chooses to surrender to a vampire king who has been ravaging the rest of the kingdoms on the continent. While Adrian (the vampire king in question) accepts his surrender, he also makes a particular demand in return. He asks Henri for the hand of his feisty daughter, Isolde, in marriage… so that she can be the queen of his kingdom Revekka, and rule with him. The reason? That is for Isolde to muse over and for readers to find out.

"You assume I want a wife," he said. "But I came for a queen."

The first time Isolde meets Adrian, you can pretty much tell what is about to happen. Although their relationship follows a predictable path, It is quite delicious to watch them navigate the waters of their testy marriage, especially as they soon make it to Revekka, where Adrian rules. Isolde learns more about vampire politics and culture while trying to reconcile her feelings for this man who is supposed to be her king and enemy - but is soon turning into a lover.

When vengeful witches and cruel deities got added to the mix, I was quite excited to see where it would go. Seeing things in the mirrors in the hallways and in her dark dreams unhinges Isolde, who soon starts to get tangled up in Adrian's murky past.

While I initially breezed through the first half, the second half was harder for me to get through. While there were parts where my curiosity was piqued, the second half focuses lesser and lesser on the actual plot while devoting too much time to Isolde and Adrian's sex life. Although fun at first, too many erotic scenes peppered throughout the entire book ruined my reading experience. While I'm all for the spice, too much of the plot gets skipped over in the interest of petty jealousy and romantic scenes - even towards the end, which should really have focused on bringing the plot home. Unfortunately, the last few chapters did nothing for me except for loosely tying up a few plot threads in the hopes that the reader just followed them through the hazy outlines of the plot.

Characters

Isolde

Isolde is pretty much your average fantasy heroine. She has been trained for birth to take over the throne one day, is a fighter and has the ability to inexplicably fall in love with your typical fantasy villain. Even though she keeps insisting again and again that Adrian is the enemy - I didn't really sense a lot of hostility from her. It was almost like she was just... ready for him to marry her? Where is the enemies-to-lovers romance I was promised, guys? I really wanted some more scenes of platonic love to solidify their relationship, which barely existed outside of their sexual encounters.

Although she keeps claiming she is a warrior, she barely does any of the fighting! Isolde picks up a weapon, starts to fight, and then someone takes over the fighting midway while she cries because she is so tired. She wants to be a good queen, and she might have found the time to actually do it if she could get her head out of petty things like jealousy. There are too many instances of her claiming to be different... but at the end of the day, she's just like those other girls, and nothing she did made me really respect her.

Adrian

Adrian is the tall, brooding man of Isolde's dreams who dresses only in black, barely talks, and has a tragic backstory. He is the calmer side to the wild and passionate Isolde, and there were parts when I even liked him. However, he did come off as a bit bland in the sense that I barely knew anything about him at the end of the book - apart from his romantic trysts and the fact that he was the king of Revekka.

"I am many things," he said. "Man, monster, lover."

The problem with the vampires in this book is that the author tries too hard to them all likable. While Isolde tries to figure out if they really are as bad as people make them out to be, at the end of the day, they have murdered people. They have wrecked kingdoms. They're not all sunshine and flowers. I was really looking for characters who were more than one-dimensional with some questionable morals. Isolde never seems in any real danger around them, and while it's not a big thing - it is something that bothered me quite a bit.

The Witches

Easily the most intriguing characters in the book, I really wish they had been introduced sooner and had more time to develop. By the point the coven of witches appears in the story, they feel more like an afterthought than actual, important characters. I'm really hoping that Clair expands on them and their stories in the next book.

Worldbuilding

The worldbuilding of this book is an aspect of it that shines - I really wish the author had taken more time with it. There were so many parts about vampire cultures or vampire history that I wanted to know about, where we were cut off abruptly with yet another sex scene.

Writing Style

King of Battle and Blood is peppered with odd word choices and some slight grammatical errors. There were parts where I doubled back because the words just didn't seem to fit right. While it makes for an easy read, I wish the descriptions had been richer to embellish the opulent vampire court of Revekka.

There's a good amount of time spent examining the difference between something that is a monster and something that is monstrous - and those parts were the best.

"Are you not their king?" I retorted, frustrated by his sarcasm.

"I am the king of vampires," he said. "I am not the king of monsters."

"There is no difference," I said.

I was really hoping that the book would focus more on this grey area of morality by devoting more chapters to Adrian, instead of Isolde and her endless monologues.

In Conclusion

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, King of Battle and Blood still very much feels like a first draft. For a fantasy book with such a heavy background story, it felt like a pretty short read that could have definitely benefited from having more pages.

Having a cast of vampires, witches, and humans in one place was an interesting concept and a fresh take on just plain old medieval stories. However, I still think it needed more space to flesh out the plot threads and make the characters and their relationships more well-rounded. I think it really had the potential to be an amazing book with rich lore, morally grey characters, and monstrous villains that didn't fall so flat.

Despite its shortcomings, King of Battle and Blood still makes for a decent read with its interesting mix of characters and deeply flawed protagonists. If you're looking for a short, entertaining read, it's not so bad. At times, it's even... addictive - if you don't mind the other glaringly obvious flaws. Here's to hoping that it gets better next book.