King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde Book 1)

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Outside of rereading my favorites (all of Sarah J Maas’ works) I haven’t picked up a new fantasy in…maybe two years? To end a years-long war, Princess Isolde of Lara is willing to do whatever it takes, even if that means marrying her enemy, the ruthless vampire king, Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, and kill him. It’s easy to judge her for not being game with everything that she learns and sees faster, but when you take a beat to consider all of her context and the constant sense of being a traitor to those she is actually sacrificing her values for, you can truly appreciate the author’s character work.

If you fail to comply with this obligation, we may have a right of action against you for compensation.The stakes are higher than ever as they confront mythical beasts, malevolent gods, and personal sacrifices.

In other words, the premise was extremely interesting but the execution was lacking and left much to be desired.

The first time she confronted Safira was okay, but still the things she thought and said just made me hate her more. Adrian’s whole personality trait in here is that he’s supposedly violent and that he loves his wife.

Considering that I'm not a big fan of the author's previous works, I really delve into this with zero expectation. I understand that this book is now well beloved by many but you guys cannot tell me that this had a decent plot. Ancient prophecies and vengeful deities threaten to tear them apart and bring chaos to their kingdom. This is one of the most frustrating “tropes” (and I say trope because that’s literally what it is at this point) to read about. This romance is a hate-to-love on Isolde’s part, but I feel that the “love” part did not develop entirely because of Adrian’s actions or words, or because Isolde realized that he wasn’t so bad.I am one of the few individuals that actually really loves traveling plots, but it just didn’t feel realistic or necessary in this book. Let me describe this book poorly: woman gets new boyfriend, old boyfriend is jealous, woman is jealous of new boyfriend’s female acquaintance because he goes to her for his fix, but woman doesn’t want to help him, she just gets mad at the other woman.

Always makes sure he’s got consent for anything and doesn’t even bat an eye when she tries to kill him. Hoping to end the war and bloodshed that ravages Revekka, princess Isolde accepts to marry the Blood King Adrian Alexander Vasilia, even though he is a vampire and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. This is not intended to be a full statement of all your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations. So I started reading under the impression I’d be going through something YA to NA levels of smut and explicitness. Because the whole thing made it sound like he was getting revenge against her people or something, but god this disappointed me so bad, it hurt.It only added to the immaturity I felt from Isolde, but from Adrian, it was a little harder to explain considering how old he is. I was just expecting quite a bit more, and would have recommended cutting a lot of the traveling back, or simply writing more after their arrival, to balance with the traveling, so the pacing doesn’t feel so disjointed.