Review: Crush the King

Crush the King by Jennifer Estep
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Crush the King, the third installment in the Queen of Shards series sees Queen Everleigh in her continued effort to kill the king of Morta, Maximus. Evie almost gets kidnapped by geldjagers under the pretense of a surviving member of the Blair family. Everleigh becomes hurt and enraged by this and gets the idea that she will get her revenge at the Regalia Games on Fortuna Island.

Evie and company arrive at the island and meet the DiLucris, Driscol and Seraphine, the wealthy family who Evie suspects sent the geldjagers to kidnap her. From the moment that she arrives, Evie decides that the best way to stop Maximus is by killing the king at the Regalia, before he has the chance to take over other lands.

Serilda attempts to kill him but the king's power is too great and renders the arrow into pieces. Realizing that Evie was the one behind the attempt, the king sends assassins to take out Serilda.

Question is does Serilda survive?

I don't want to give too many spoilers here because I want the audience to read the book.

What I liked about this book was the evolution of Evie's power. There was a scene when she uses and invisible shield to protect her and friends from a huge tidal wave. Evie uses all her power to push the water back to towards a group of weather magiers.

Evie's character development continues to grow because she is more confident in herself in the effort to defend her people.

I enjoyed the imagery as always. The detail of the strixes and caladriuses are beautiful. I also liked how certain colors that characters are wearing match the color of their powers or a physical attribute such as eye or hair color.

I liked the use of names like Leonidas and Maximus. It made me recall two of my favorite characters from 300 and Gladiator.

I was disappointed at first at the result of the fight between Maximus and Evie, but I understood how Evie explained why she allowed the events to happen the way it did.

She wanted Maeven to experience what she had gone through. I think there is going a fourth book because of the way Crush the King ended.



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