Oh what an ending!!!
But let’s start at the beginning.
The Kingdom of Liars is told by a first person narrator, who is also the main character of the book: Michael Kingman. He is the middle child of the three children of the Kingman family: Lyon, Micheal and Gwen. Their father was executed for having killed the King’s oldest son and in that progress the children were branded as traitors.
As the name implies the Kingman were a family close to the Kings of Hollow, the town the book is set it. Due to the crime David Kingman committed the children are no longer part of the noble society and live a life in moderate poverty with their foster father Angelo Shade. Michael doesn’t really know what to do with his life and survives on conning lower nobles together with his friend. He is struggling to find his place in life and find out the truth about his father’s supposed murder.
The world the story is set in is a cruel one, which we already see as children get punished for the sins their fathers committed. Hollow is still a feudal system with the King and his high nobles having all the power. Those nobles are the ones that can use magic or have an army of magicians. The price to be able to do magic, or as it is called here, fabrications, is the loss of memories, especially if you’re not properly trained in those skills.
The book is fully packed with different characters of different types of people of different parts of society: High nobles, low nobles, fabricators, ravens, scales, skeletons and so on. It took me a while to figure out who is who and what. There is a huge cobweb of intrigues and plots that gets slowly unravelled and left me clueless till the very end. This ending really surprised me as I didn’t expect it at all.
It took me a while to get into the world the story is set in and I am still not sure I completely understood it all but that didn’t harm the story at all. It also took me a while to get used to the use of guns in a fantasy book as I am usually reading kind of medieval fantasy. So this world is on the brink of a new technological development stage. But of course the nobles who can use magic want to keep the common people from gaining power by using advanced weapon technology, so guns are banned in the city of Hollow.
There is also a revolution taking place and the rebells want to abolish royalty and the nobles.
I am very happy I won the book in a giveaway hosted by Nick Martell on Twitter. It moved the book up on my „To be read“ pile and I am really looking forward to continue with Michael’s story in the upcoming book The two-faced Queen.
I did not only read the book, I also listened to it on audible. I enjoyed the way Joe Jameson made the characters come to life and the way he used different voices for the different characters. I can recommend both versions for book as they’re both excellent entertainment.
