Title: Kingdom of Exiles
Author: Maxym M. Martineau
Series: The Beast Charmer #1
Not the best beginning but still a great book
I would like to thank Maxym M. Martineau, Sourcebooks, Inc., and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book was a fun adventure with high stakes, an intriguing premise, and a fascinating use of magic. It was generally well-written, with multifaceted characters and creativity that knew no bounds.
I can definitely see why they used Fantastic Beasts to pitch it; I was fascinated by the beasts and their unique characteristics and abilities. Some of them were difficult to imagine, but creatures I know from other IPs helped me to picture them. For instance, I imagined the Graveltots were small Graveler Pokemon, and the Myad was an ornamented Bagheera from Disney’s live-action Jungle Book. In my mind, the Gyss were Tinkerbell fairies crossed with Genies from the Spyro 2 Playstation game.
I found other shades of Harry Potter here, but it had nothing to do with the beasts, lore, or society; rather, I saw the Marauders, aka Harry Potter’s father and his friends, in the five prominent characters. Noc was James, Ozias was Remus, Calem was Sirius, and Kost was Peter. Leena, then, was Lily. They weren’t by any means exact matches, I just saw similar elements in their personalities and group dynamic. It helped endear me to them, because Lily and the Marauders are my favorite part of Harry Potter lore.
But unfortunately, the story and characters weren’t set up well.
I had such a hard time getting into the story. Not because it was poorly written prose-wise or uninteresting, but because, I think, it was a bit overwhelming. After getting further into the book, you can make sense of those first few chapters, but when you’re first reading them, you might find it difficult to grasp what’s going on. The first chapter was pretty much all action; all show and no tell. There was very little inner monologue and even less exposition, meaning we’re introduced to the world, the scene, as if we should already have some background knowledge of it, and because I didn’t, most of it just went right over my head.
I understand why Martineau (henceforth dubbed 3M) started out with the matter of the Gyss, foreshadowing and demonstrating what Leena’d been reduced to, but it wasn’t a great way to introduce us to Leena. Later, after we understood her situation, we were able to sympathize with her and the choices she had to make to survive. But as we didn’t know anything about her yet, she merely came off as a cold, callous, and selfish criminal who regularly dealt in the black market, selling off living creatures who loved her and trusted her to take care of them. She also declared she didn’t “do” love to a guy who clearly cared about her and wanted a relationship with her. She kind of lived with him and would use him to get off, never mind that by doing so she was stringing him along and encouraging hopes she didn’t want him to have. We learned she was on the outs with her people, then we watched her ruthlessly use Iky as a weapon, as a means of torture, which did nothing to contradict the impression we’d gotten already. I honestly didn’t like her much through the first several chapters, and that initial dislike cast a shadow over her character for the remainder of the novel, though I did come to appreciate her in some ways.
Noc, Cruor, and the assassins were introduced in a similarly abrupt manner, also as if we should have already known them, particularly with Noc. Watching him inwardly fret over a bloody Kost helped to endear him to us, but not overmuch because at that point all we knew about the assassins was that they made a living by killing without compunction or discrimination. It goes against the grain to sympathize with a character who, in most other stories, would be the villain. (This book is rather subversive in that way.) We watched Noc hurt Leena, toy with her to demonstrate his power and authority, then smoothly lie through his teeth to make a false deal with her, fully intending to betray her and kill her after he’d gotten what he wanted. And we were supposed to consider him a swoon-worthy hero? As with Leena, he gave a bad impression and it cast a shadow over his character even after I decided he was an okay guy.
So because I wasn’t overly fond of either of them, their romance fell flat for me. I didn’t feel the chemistry between them despite solid efforts and skillful writing on 3M’s part.
Side note: She needs to dial back on the hero staring intensely at the heroine for an extended amount of time. It got kinda creepy.
Overall, the poor beginning made connecting to the narrative difficult, but it eventually got better as the characters and beasts grew on me. Once I was able to grasp what was going on and saw that the characters had good in them, I quite enjoyed the story.
This is supposed to be a trilogy, so I would assume we’ll be seeing books 2 and 3 within the next couple of years. 3M doesn’t have any information on her website about the rest of the series (as of writing this review), but since they presumably refer to Leena in the name of the series, I expect we’ll continue in her POV and pick up the threads left dangling at the end of this book: Leena and Noc working out the kinks in their relationship; Leena potentially joining the Council; finding whoever ordered the hit on her and killing them so neither Leena nor Noc has to die; discovering more of Noc’s past life and what that has to do with everything; adjusting Cruor to Noc’s new ways; preventing or fighting the coming war; dealing with the consequences of Calem’s revival; getting both Kost and Oz laid. (Yeah, there was a lot going on, but 3M juggled it all pretty darn well, I think.)
