To Kill a Kingdom (Hundred Kingdoms)

Read by Ann: Ann found the use of the present tense uncomfortable but enjoyed the story of two people with similar situations both break out of their situations and learn humanity along the way.

Easy to read and quick - darker version of little mermaid

I couldn’t put it down!!

The book was entertaining, but when I took a step back and thought about any part of it, it completely fell apart. Definitely not a 1, but also not truly a 2. More of a 1.5 Spoilers (+ mentions of incest, self-harm, and racism): (view spoiler) One of the significant parts of the book is that every Siren is legally mandated to steal a human heart every year in the month of their birth to honor their goddess who was killed. If they are between 1 and 11, their mom will do it for them. This is fine and makes sense. Because there are so many sirens, people would just constantly be getting killed by them, so it doesn't seem like there is any pattern to it for most people. The problem comes in when Lira only kills princes. Every year during her birth month (We are not told exactly when that is), a prince is killed. It’s a pattern that humans recognize. For the first six years of her life, Lira's mom exclusively killed princes from the kingdom of Armonía. Did no one think “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be sending our princes near the water during this month.” You could argue that maybe they had obligations that they absolutely had to attend in kingdoms that could only be accessed by boat, but there are canonical airships in this world. If you know for a fact that the boys in your family are being slaughtered one at a time during a predictable time frame in a predictable and preventable setting, why on earth would you not do everything in your power to avoid it? Why would any prince go anywhere near the water during Lira’s birth month? It’s because the author wanted her to have a badass backstory and didn’t think of anything beyond that. Or maybe the royals in this book are just exceedingly stupid. There are plenty of other examples of that, too. When Elian is trying to figure out how he’s going to retrieve the crystal/the second eye of keto from the cloud mountain of Págos, he thinks there's no way the myth about only the royal family of Págos being able to survive the climb because the myths about his royal family are false. This would make sense if none of the royal family had magical powers, but some of them do! Women in the royal family of Eidýllio make any man they touch go insane with love for them. This isn’t the myth that the general population believes, but if the royal families can have magical powers, why is Elian so confident the Págos’s don’t? Because the author wanted the characters to go on an epic, dangerous quest that few have survived, but then she completely brushed over it. Despite the hike up the mountain taking weeks, it lasts for one chapter (11 pages). Not only do the ‘abilities’ of the Eidýllio’s royals make Elian’s assumptions about the Págos’s illogical, but it also opens its own can of worms. The only reason it’s in the story is to get Elian out of a bind he got himself into and some “Gay Rep” that can’t even count because it’s a marriage of political convenience where they haven’t even met before they agree to it. The ability passes down through the women of the family; it’s not clear if men can pass it on to their daughters. Either way, this seems to be one of the few cases where only men should be allowed to ascend to the throne. It makes no sense why they would want a ruler with that ‘ability.’ The spouse of the monarch is clearly supposed to take on political responsibilities, so why on earth would you want them to be slowly growing crazy? How on earth has the general populace not realized that something fishy is going on when every single man who marries into the family goes insane? Furthermore, what is the extent of this power? The book says it affects every man a woman in the family touches. Does this extend to their male relatives? Would a mother giving her son a hug cause him to fall madly in love with her? The book says men fall into endless devotion and lust for them. I need to know if that happens to their relatives. What about children? The book says it affects men, but is that just referring to the sex/gender of the person, or is that also referring to the age of the person? If not, what’s the cutoff? The Págos royals take their great climb up the mountain and into adulthood at sixteen, so can a woman descended from the royal family of Eidýllio never touch their male children after they turn sixteen? I need answers. This could be an interesting concept to explore in its own book, but just throwing it in as a tinny detail to another one is weird. When I picked up a YA little mermaid retelling, I wasn’t expecting to be confronted with questioning whether there was implied-non-consensual-incest in the text and whether or not it extended to children. If one instance wasn’t enough for you, don’t worry. There's more implied-non-consensual-incest! Yay! [image] Now you might be wondering, two, what do you mean by two? You just explained one. Don’t worry. I’ll explain the second. Lira has been assigned a Merman to mate with named Flesh Eater. She makes it clear she doesn't want to have sex with him. Later in the book, Lira remarks that if she dies, her mother will just create another heir with Flesh Eater. We never find out who her father is, so is it Flesh Eater? Either way, it’s messed up. This one was slightly more obvious in the text, but it’s still insane how brushed over it is. Lira’s mom being so willing to kill her is another problem. Lira’s mom makes her disdain for her daughter very evident. She makes it clear that she doesn't think Lira is fit to rule the kingdom and puts her in very deadly situations. Lira says her mother could very easily come up with an excuse for why she died, so why doesn't her mother just kill her and cover it up? There's no reason. In the text, her mother could very easily create another heir and clearly has no qualms about Lira dying. The way succession works is also very stupid. The queen gives up the throne once they turn sixty, but there is no mention of what happens if their heir is very young at that time. Do they wait until the heir turns a certain age? Plus, if they pass the throne on at the age of sixty, and Lira is supposed to inherit the throne in three years, that would mean that her mom had her when she was around 40, and they die when they are 100. If Lira’s Grandma followed the same timeline, she should still be alive or just recently have died, yet we hear no mention of her in the entire book. She would definitely still be alive when Lira was forced to kill her aunt. Did Lira’s grandma have nothing to say about that? Did she die an early death? Why is there no mention of her? As a final note, there is also a scene where Lyra uses a jellyfish to inflict pain on herself. It’s very obviously meant to be self-harm, but it’s never brought up again. The only reason this scene would have been included was to show how messed up Lira is, but it’s never really resolved. There's no warning about it anywhere. If that was something that was triggering to you, there is no way for you to find out and avoid it.

Good story, bad execution.

(Further review later)