Thursday 18 September 2014

The Four Kings by Scott Spotson

*I received a copy of this novel for free in exchange for an honest review*

I really enjoyed this novel. It was very interesting to read through!

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Politics, magic, and love don't mix. Or do they?

When the world is overcome with The Great Blight of poverty, corruption, and hopelessness, a group of young wizards seizes control and makes sweeping changes--which divides the human race into loyal supporters of the new regime, and bitter, angry revolutionaries.

In the midst of the turmoil is Amanda Fullerton, a grad student who is hired to act as liaison between the wizard council in North America and its citizens. While ruling like monarchs from their perch in the sky, the self-proclaimed "Liberators" create a widening gap among the Mortals, with Amanda caught in the middle.

As Amanda tries to serve both sides, she becomes embroiled in the twisted agendas of these puppet masters. With alluring, yet deadly wizard games that threaten her life and romantic entanglements, Amanda discovers her "dream job" is anything but! While the four wizards--Demus, Indie, Regi, and Justica initially unite under their libertarian ideals and their revered god Elsedor, their unique personalities eventually lead to infighting, with the fate of the continent up for grabs.
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To kick this off i'd like to say that the plot was fantastic. I positively loved all the politics and the whole image that this book created.

The author's imagination is amazing!

And even though I had no idea what they were talking about 35% of the book, i can tell he thought the plot through very well.


Also, the magic was displayed in a very nice manner. A wizard's power was basically unlimited... which brings me upon a thought that kept popping up into my mind while reading: "Why wasn't there ever an evil wizard?" Really? No evil wizard out for world domination hm? If I had that kind o power i would go around living the good life! I just can't imagine that there hasn't at least been one wizard that has gone astray and misused their powers.

Plus, the book said that when a wizard was to die; his magic would die with him. Only the mighty Elsedor (their god) had somehow managed to make his magic live on. So... did all the buildings and houses the four wizards made just disappear? :/ That wouldn't really be efficient.


And let me just point out that before we get to the actually action, we first have to read through 300 pages of debates and stuff like that. Now, I personally really enjoy reading about politics, but i can imagine a lot of people finding it very heavy to get through.

Around page 400 the plot really starts to develop and lots of action happens.

Those two combined make this novel really enjoyable.


Something that really bothered me was the amount of one-dimensional and self-contradictory characters.

Let's take Amanda, the main character, for example. She's displayed as caring, ambitious, smart and cunning. And yet.. she plays Demus like a rag doll.

Indie, what about her? We didn't really get to know a lot about her personality at all. She's bold,smart,demanding...and then she just goes back and forth between being harsh and nice. Same goes for Justica. I didn't really know what to expect from those two.

As for the two remaining wizards, Regi and Demus, they were developed a little more. But just a little. Demus was nice at times, but also really arrogant, bold, aggressive,cunning and kind of a control freak.

And Regi was described as "the perfect gentleman" Sweet, strong, caring, smart and all those things. Really? So you created the perfect man there. No flaws, eh?

As a reader you don't really... get to know the characters very well, and so you don't feel affected when something bad happens to them.


And there were tons of type-os during the first half of the novel. Random letters scattered around, missing words, words that were only halfway written and words that were misplaced or just didn't belong in the sentences at all.


Another thing that was questionable is the fact that no wizard bothered to do something about Amanda. She knew lots of their secrets and they just let her be? Shouldn't they lock her up or something? Or make her swear secrecy in some magic way that she can't break. Just saying, are they just trusting her with their precious secrets?


And then there was the baby thing. Any explanation on WHY that was possible, please? Nope? Still waiting... *turns last page* nope. Nothing.


Having read my review, you might have gotten the impression that i didn't enjoy it that much. Now that isn't true. Sure, this novel had its flaws and was far from perfect, but even though some things just didn't add up i still really enjoyed the plot lines that were going on. The action was addicting and i kept anticipating to read and find out what was going to happen next.

I recommend this book to any person that enjoys reading about politics, magic and dress ups.

Lots of Luck,
Bee

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