Saturday, April 22, 2017

King's Cage

King's Cage 
By: Victoria Aveyard 
4/5 LOVED IT 


I loved this third installment in the Red Queen series the most so far! King's Cage is such an exciting fast paced book, with deep meaningful undertones, and some superb character development.
We are left off at the end of book 2 with a full blown Red rebellion underway, a heartbreaking loss, and the capture of Mare Barrow landing her in the clutches of the obsessive boy King Maven. 
Finally, all the secrets of The Scalet Guard are revealed and some serious new players in the revolution  are discovered. Piedmont a southern country much like Norta, Montfort -a "free republic" where Reds and Silvers live alongside each other as equals not enemies or slaves. (We shall see about that) - which is a new far off country  that many Nortans did not known existed has Allied with the Guard as well as some unexpected Noble Silver houses of Norta who also align themselves to the cause. CRAZY.
 First, we see a few new traits in Mare Barrow our leading lady, she is less of a martyr and more of a solider in this book and she also has to make some crazy hard choices, like wanting to get revenge for someone she lost but not taking the opportunity for the greater good, that my friends would be incredibly hard to do and props to Mare.
Also , we meet a lot of awesome Newbloods with incredible abilities and overwhelming loyalties to Mare and the Guard. There are a lot of politics in this book , but never boring and very applicable to our world today. If you are rich and born to the right family you will worry for nothing, but be just a lowly poor red blooded schmuck and your odds at success and fair treatment are signifantly less. 
All that matters to the nobles and royals of Norta is strength and power, they marry to conceive the strongest most optimal children, never for love, that's what reds do in their meaningless, trivial, and depressing lives. People are sent to war and used as pawns in a never ending struggle for power and those who profit from all the destruction are never the  people who suffer. This whole series has had the same rhetoric of inequality and how little people's lives mean to the rich and powerful, why should they care who starves or who's kids are sent to work or war when they are still children if its not their own or if it's for their own gain?
Another narrative I noticed a lot of was how people can use their own children in the coldest ways for power and selfishness, the manipulations of a child's parents can be most damaging. Maven is the screwed up boy he is because his mother quite literally twisted his brain (she is a whisper after all) and took pieces of him and added what she wanted and ultimately created a hollow monster who has only ghosts of true feelings, which is very sad and not his fault at all and in this book he is finally  showing signs of his true self trying to break free, but that being said he as a ruler is unyeilding and malevolent, I can't wait to see what Aveyard does with this character.
The other Calore brother Cal, the once heir to the thrown was also manipulated grown to know only battle and that his Kingdom's way of life - Reds are lesser beings meant to serve, and reds like it that way and Silvers are gods- is the only way and it takes a lot for him to step up and choose to sacrifice his way of life, even though at his core he is a genuinely good, and kind man. Cal has never had to make a hard choice in is life and is taught to do what the royals do and move on, no need to change a broken system if those on top stay there; it is very hard for Cal to accept that the old ways can no longer be tolerated and that change is a long fraught battle, and is always more difficult but in the end necessary. I ended up crying a little at the cliff hanger at the end of this book when Cal finally makes a damn choice and it was definitely not what I wanted but hopefully in Book 4 it will be for the best, as of right now my heart hurts a bit. Overall this is such a great series and cannot wait to read on! Aveyard sure has a lot to say about humanity and I'm hooked.  

No comments:

Post a Comment