Book Review
Title: Kingdom of the Wicked (Kingdom of the Wicked #1)
Author: Kerri Maniscalco
Genre: YA/Dark Fantasy/Romance
Rating: ***
Review: I didn’t know much about Kingdom of the Wicked going into it, but Kerri Maniscalco is one of my favourite authors, so I had really high expectations for this book given how much I adore the Stalking Jack the Ripper series. We are introduced to Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria at eight years old and we soon learn the twin are streghe or witches and their grandmother, Nonna Maria is trying to protect them from the Princes of Hell (Malvagi or The Wicked) and the Devil but we don’t understand why other than a brief comment about power stolen from the Devil himself. The twins are eager and curious often wanting to learn more about the Wicked but one night they bring their amulets together which they aren’t supposed to do, and the result effect gives Vittoria the power to see people’s auras, but her twin says nothing. This prologue wasn’t as interesting as the opening chapter to Stalking Jack the Ripper, but we do jump forward 10 years when the twins are 18. As young women, Vittoria is the more outgoing of the twins often disappearing for most of the day, while Emilia is content to work in the restaurant and dream of running her own one day. I wasn’t overly impressed with the opening section of Kingdom of the Wicked but I am eager to see what comes next as Nonna Maria is once again spouting things about the Princes of Hell coming for their souls but the twins don’t really believe in them anymore or they don’t appear too but they need did tell anyone about what happened the night Emilia held Vittoria’s amulet.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, the twins are just enjoying their day to day lives, apart from the fact that two witches have been murdered in less than a week. That night Emilia is heading to the monastery to retrieve the items she left behind on her last visit when she comes across a man, hovering over the body of a young woman which isn’t uncommon but all of Emilia’s senses are telling her that there is something wrong with this situation. When the man attempts to consume the blood of the girl she stops him and he flees into the night leaving only his dagger behind but when Emilia draws back the sheet, it is Vittoria lying there her amulet and heart missing and she knows this isn’t anything to do with humans but at the same time she refuses to believe it was anything or anyone else. Emilia does swear to get revenge on whoever or whatever was responsible for the death of her sister, even though Nonna Maria begs her not to as she will be inviting the darkness into her heart, but Emilia can’t let it go. Things are starting to get interesting, but Emilia wasn’t my favourite of the twins, so I am not sure how I feel about following her. For the next three weeks, Emilia mourns her sister until she remembers the space under the floorboards where Vittoria hid things and there, she finds her sister’s diary and pages from a grimoire. As the diary is bound with magic, she takes it to a friend who uses the dark arts and Emilia is informed that the grimoire pages are to summon a demon and only demon can break the enchantment on Vittoria’s diary. While Emilia thinks it over there is no doubt that she is going to summon a demon to help her, she is planning to summon a lesser demon as the only way to summon a higher demon like the Princes of Hell is to have an object of theirs in your possession at the time of the summoning. The summoning works but Emilia ends up summoning Wrath, one of the Princes of Hell as the dagger belonged to him and he is now bound to her until she releases him. Emilia believes that Wrath killed Vittoria, but he tells her that he was planning to meet Vittoria that night but had only been killed by the time he arrived and while Emilia doesn’t trust Wrath, she is stuck with him now.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, not much has happened aside from Vittoria’s death and Wrath’s summoning so I am hoping things will start picking up soon. Upon summoning Wrath, it is clear that these two aren’t going to get along if the vicious barbs are anything to go by but Wrath also knows that Emilia knows little to nothing about what she is and her value to the demon Princes so he offers to make a blood trade with her. This means he will help her track down Vittoria’s killer and in return she will align herself with House Wrath, but she declines, more than once. Despite learning that Wrath and Pride, were working together with Vittoria for her to marry Pride and break the curse binding him although he doesn’t mention what Vittoria asked for in return or the exact details of the bargain. However, Emilia soon meets Envy, meaning there are at least 3 of the 7 demon Princes in her realm and Envy tells her that she is a shadow witch something she has never heard of before and offers her a position with House Envy which she also declines, but Envy warns her to pick a House soon or the decision will be made for her. Things become even more complicated when Emilia learns of the Devil’s curse which means he can’t leave Hell unless there is a witch on the throne beside his wearing the Horn of Hades in order to keep the peace between the two worlds and the girls including Vittoria are given the option to marry Pride in this case, and if they refuse they have 24 hours to reconsider before they apparently die but neither the Princes or witches know what is killing them. However, among Vittoria’s things Emilia finds a gambling coin marked with a frog and the word Greed so she uses her tracking gift to find the gambling house and she just hopes that she isn’t following too closely in her sister’s step but she has less than a day now until the containment spell of Wrath wears off.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I have to say that the murder mystery element and the spreading out of the clues was smoother in Stalking Jack the Ripper than it is here, but I do find the Princes of Hell intriguing and want to see more of them, also I want to know what a shadow witch is and why Vittoria and Emilia are so desired by the Princes of Hell. Emilia meets a 4th Prince of Hell in Greed and he explains to her that Vittoria willing gave him her amulet which was stolen by a creature that will guard it until it decides to leave its nest but while it is in the nest nothing from the underworld can enter there, meaning it is safe. Emilia immediately doubts that Vittoria gave him the amulet when she knew that their amulets were actually the Horn of Hades, the keys to the gates of Hell and needed for summoning the Devil himself and leaves refusing his offer to align with his House. That night an umbra demon steals her amulet and tries to slit her grandmother’s throat as she is explaining the truth to Emilia which prompts her to enter the creature’s lair in order to retrieve her sister’s amulet. She does this but gets bitten in the process and despite saying he would rescue her, Wrath does come to her aid and he is the only reason Emilia is still alive but he has had to bind them together, giving her some of his power to do it. In the aftermath, the pair come to a tentative alliance for the time being, but the pieces are starting to come together for Emilia, but she hasn’t worked out yet which of the Princes her sister was trying to summon. All the evidence points to Greed but there isn’t any evidence of him being in the room where Vittoria’s body was found and Wrath found no evidence in her blood that she had aligned herself with a House, so they have to start working a different angle if they are going to find out who killed Vittoria and why.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Emilia has also seemingly figured out a way to kill the Princes of Hell, but I don’t think it is as simple as she is making out. It turns out it isn’t that simple but not even Emilia is willing to find out what it would take to kill Wrath or one of the other Princes. We see the relationship between Wrath and Emilia build slowly into a friendship of sorts as they work together to try and find out who is killing the potential brides of Pride before the offers can even be made to them. They manage to track down one of the messengers that Wrath has been using who has been selling the information to an unknown third party and they don’t know if the person is human or not. Together Emilia and Wrath make a formidable pair when interrogating people and honestly, they even frightened me a little bit, but it was nice to see Wrath give Emilia some approval which is a massive deal coming from someone who feeds of power and the thrill of battle. However, when they meet Arin, another messenger, who lives in Hell but is still human, he lets slip that the next potential bride is also someone Emilia knows so they race to try and save her only to find it is too late. Arin also lets slip that the bond anchoring Emilia and Wrath to one another is a marriage bond and that Wrath needs to complete it before the war breaks out in earnest but Emilia feels betrayed and hurt that Wrath didn’t tell her these things and she leaves, releasing him from the bond they had and vowing that she will find her sister’s killer on her own. At this point in the book I was also expecting a little bit more from the relationship between Wrath and Emilia other than the childish bickering and the longing stares, but I am working with it.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, I was waiting for something big to happen which Kerri seems to be good at doing towards the end of her books. We are getting to the part in the book now, where the pace and tension should be picking up to head towards the climax of the novel and I am eager to see what Kerri has in store for me (please say it’s a love confession – I’m a sucker for them especially in enemies to lovers). We do see some development in the relationship between Emilia and Wrath but not in the way I wanted, and Emilia seems to be constantly changing her mind on how she feels about Wrath which at times felt like it was giving me whiplash. However, she meets brother number 5 in Lust and has to deal with the aftermath of his influence and she loses two whole weeks to despair while other girls are dying. It turns out that Envy was the one working against Pride and Wrath and he wants the Horn on Hades for himself, so he takes Emilia’s family and friends hostage and gives her 24 hours to find the other amulet and turn them over to him or he will kill them all. During this conversation he also lets slip that Wrath has been lying to her and he only needs one more soul to break free from the confines of Hell without breaking the curse and while Emilia doesn’t want to believe this and wants to give in to her growing feelings for the demon she can’t bring herself to do it but she knows she is going to give Envy exactly what he wants because she can’t bear to lose anyone else who is dear to her.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we finally see all the pieces of the puzzle come together as Emilia unravels not only her family history, but the history of her line of witches and does what needs to be done. While Kingdom of the Wicked as a good entry to a new series, it didn’t grip me as much as stalker Jack the Ripper did and I didn’t quite connect with the characters until the end of the novel. The romance that was also teased throughout this novel didn’t really come to anything but that does have the potential to change in future entries in this series. Overall, I felt Kingdom of the Wicked was good, not amazing, but good and I will be reading the next instalment just with see where things go from here but right now I am on the fence about whether I genuinely liked this book or whether it was just a little meh compared to the other books Kerri has written.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this copy for review consideration from Terminal Tours.
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