Book Review
Title: Kingdom of the Wicked (Kingdom of the Wicked Book 1) by Kerri Maniscalco
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Historical, Fantasy
Rating: 3.25 Stars
This is a re-read for me and I remember not really enjoying Kingdom of the Wicked as it didn’t live up to the heights of Stalking Jack the Ripper for me (Even though I’ve only read two books in that series) but since I have heard some good things about Kingdom of the Cursed and it is the December Pick for the Double Booked Book Club I am trying it again. We are introduced to twin sisters, Emilia and Vittoria who come from the di Carlo family of streghe or witches. In the prologue we learn a little about the family history and why the girls are warned about the Wicked, the Princes of Hell. Vittoria and Emilia also seem to be special as they are given protective amulets and told never to let them touch or the seals binding the Princes of Hell would be broken. Being impulsive children the girls obviously do this, Vittoria in particular and it seems to have some meaning later on.
In the present the girls have now turned 18 and their grandmother is becoming worried about the amount of time Vittoria spends out of the house, Emilia puts this down to a boy when in reality it is because she is delving into dark magic but Emilia won’t find this out until a little later. When Emilia finds Vittoria brutally murdered and a man standing over her who flees into the night she vows to find the man and deal out revenge. She learns that her sister was dealing in dark magic and potentially summoning demons she decides to do the same and use the demon to find the man who murdered her sister. She uses the dagger the man left behind as part of the summoning spell and ends up summoning Wrath, one of the Princes of Hell she is surprised. She believes Wrath is the one who killed her sister and attacks him which doesn’t do much but he is angry that she has marked him and wants to undo it but Emilia refuses. Wrath agrees to help her track down her sister’s murderer in return from a favour from her through a blood vow and she has no choice but to agree. I will admit that a lot happens in the first 90 pages of the novel while this is good because it gets us sucked into the story it also means we don’t have a lot of time to get attached to Vittoria before she is killed, in fact we hardly see her at all.
Emilia wisely keeps Wrath contained within the summoning circle while they work out the terms of their bargain but during one evening she comes across another Prince of Hell, Envy who warns her that he and his brothers are already roaming her world seeking out witches. We know Pride and Wrath are looking for a witch bride to break the curse on Pride but we don’t know what the other brother’s want yet. Envy tells her that if she doesn’t ally herself with one of the Houses soon then the choice will be made for her but she doesn’t understand what any of this means but Vittoria seemed to. Emilia also believes that the spell book Vittoria hid belonged to the First Witch which explains the ancient magic binding it closed and that the three dead witches were all potential brides for Pride. Among Vittoria’s things she finds a gambling chip marked with the stamp of Greed and she knows she has to find this place in order to figure out the secrets Vittoria knew before her death. The Princes also seem to be looking for something called the Horns of Hades but we don’t know what these are yet but they seem very important and powerful. Right now we are around halfway through the novel and it seems like Maniscalco wants to introduce a lot of different elements like the murder mystery, the situation with Wrath and Pride and the Horns of Hades but we are focusing on any of them but drifting between them which makes it feel like nothing is happening. Emilia and Wrath are now working together and they have eliminated Greed and Envy as potential suspects in the murder of Vittoria and it doesn’t make sense for Pride or Wrath to kill her with leaves the remaining three brothers that need to be looked into but the story right now feel sluggish and I am honestly more than a little bored and I am hoping that the sequel blows me away otherwise I will be writing off this series entirely.
As Wrath and Emilia spend more time together trying to track down Vittoria’s killer they realise there is a spy in Hell as that is the only way information about the potential brides is getting out which means one of Wrath’s brothers is responsible. We are introduced to another one, Lust and he is the one that Emilia has the most trouble with but Wrath doesn’t let anything happen to her and when she is dealing with the depression left behind after being under Lust’s influence he takes care of her and ultimately brings her out of it which was very wholesome. Emilia also learns here that the bond she created with Wrath isn’t one of protection but one of marriage which terrifies her as she wants to marry for love but there is nothing that can be done about it now because despite how much she hates to admit it she needs Wrath in order to find her sister’s killer and bring them to justice. While I vaguely remember how the novel ends it doesn’t seem like we are working towards that goal which is why it might have seemed to come out of nowhere on my previous reading and I am not picking up many clues to it this time either but I hope that the sequel saves it for me otherwise this is going to be a let down and it will also make me hesitant to finish the Stalking Jack the Ripper series as well which I was really loved before I got distracted from reading it. Honestly at this point in the novel, I still didn’t really like Wrath or Emilia and I found the side characters like the other Princes of Hell to be more entertaining which doesn’t bode well for the ending of this book or the sequel.
The final section of the novel left much to be desired in my opinion because a lot happened and little was actually explained, however, in my experience Maniscalco’s first book tends to be the weakest in a series as Hunting Prince Dracula was miles better than Stalking Jack the Ripper even though I did enjoy both. I am hoping that Kingdom of the Cursed is better not only with it more adult content but with the story and characters too. Overall, I appreciate what Kerri Maniscalco was going for with Kingdom of the Wicked but I felt things were really rushed and not explained enough so a lot of things happened that we just didn’t really care about because we didn’t really understand them, similar to Vittoria’s death because we didn’t have enough time to actually get attached to her and see the depth of the bond between the twins so I honestly couldn’t have cared less about Emilia’s revenge mission. It would have been better if we could have seen more of Emilia and Vittoria together got to love them both and have Vittoria die towards the halfway mark when we would have cared about her more and then the revenge plot would have had a lot more impact on the reader. I will be reading Kingdom of the Cursed hopefully this month as well so I will be able to see if I am ever going to pick up the final book in the series.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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