Wicked Prince of Blood

Overall Rating: 2/5

Wicked Prince of Blood is book 4 in the Wicked Princes series and is a standalone that can be read on its own.

Death is her duty; desire is her downfall.

The blurb of this novel is captivating... The first line is BEYOND captivating...It whispers promise and intrigue...it promises something along the lines of Assassin's Creed or something along the lines of the darker parts of Skyrim...and that's about the nicest thing that I can probably think of for this book.

We won't even start with the fact that about almost 30 pages of this is a random jumble of "lore" in the beginning... lore that seems more like hastily scribbled plot points or half-thought-out bits of information.... I understand this is mostly original lore, but also, as a mythology nerd myself and someone who's extensively studied things... I had to go back multiple times to just recheck things and try to make sense of what just happened....

Then again, that would not be something of a valid enough reason to argue, so I shall detest on that part... for now.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE lore, but sometimes it does not need a whole 30 pages of it to explain what exactly is going on in the book... or to capture a picture of the world that we are about to explore... worldbuilding is FANTASTIC, but there is such a thing as TOO MUCH... and this is definitely so much that it overwhelms absolutely everything.

This reads somewhat like a messy re-cap of a late-night Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) or similar sort of tabletop game.... hastily written down notes for the next session...an incomplete tale to be continued. There are several instances where the lore in front is contradicted... and there is a WEIRD use of "-" when words cut off and flow to the next line on many of the pages... the romance is uh.... something to say the least...it could at the very least use another glance through for editing or perhaps trying to smooth things over, because there are also phrases where I had to stop and go " what?" with how things are worded.

To be honest, I got bored very quickly after the first 30 or so pages (especially at the very random jumble that claims to be "lore"), and that boredom only worsened as I got past 200 pages...

Eventually I found myself staring off at the ceiling or the wall for long periods of time, and I had to give myself at least an hour break to be able to push through.

I rarely DNF, and this was seriously tempting me to on the DNF... I just could not wrap my mind around it to where I could bump the rating any higher.

If this didn't read off as a clumsy set of notes for D&D... and the plot actually somewhat made some sense.... This would be rated higher...

I am not one to give a book a low rating but...Unfortunately, as it stands right now... 2 stars is already way too nice in my eyes.