Hi, hello, happy Wednesday! Drinking my Favorite Cherry Blossom white tea from David’s tea today as I talk to you about Kingdom of the Cursed by Kerri Maniscalco, let’s go!
So I picked up Kingdom of the Cursed, this past Halloween Weekend, 1 because it fit the vibes of Halloween. You know Hell, demons, witches, and the hot princes of hell. But I also picked it up for Battle Surtur in the Avengers Reading Initiative Readathon. The challenges was to post a picture of your Halloween costume, which I didn’t do because I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since college, and/or buddy read a book. So I buddy read this book with my new friend Shannon from the discord and let me tell you it was a great book to have someone to message about. They finished it Saturday, while I had just started it, so they knew that there was going to be some shocked messages!
On to the review, so I originally thought that this was just a Duology and that Kingdom of the Cursed was going to be the end, I am so glad I checked before reading it. It is actually going to be a Triology at this point, and book 3’s release date and title haven’t been published yet. My guess is September/October of 2022 though. I enjoyed this book. I loved Emilia and Wrath in the first book (Kingdom of the Wicked) and I found that while my enjoyment of Emilia stayed about the same Wrath definitely stepped up. There is just something about Dark, broody, ultra possessive book men that I enjoy. While I wouldn’t put up with it in real life, that’s what is so great about books and fictional worlds is you can enjoy something without any real life repercussions.
I enjoy Kerri Maniscalco’s writing, it just flows smoothly to me and is easy to get sucked into. I will say that this book probably trends more towards New Adult than YA (Kerri did say on Goodreads that she was writing this as New Adult, it just is typically shelved in YA sections of bookstores). There were points in the book when I thought I had jumped into one of Katee Robert’s erotica novels, which are great when you are expecting that. I will put some content warns below so that if you want to pick up this book you know what to expect.
Wrath and Emilia pick up right where book 1 ended and are at the entrance to hell. Emilia has to pass through the Sin Corridor where she is tested by each of the Seven Princes’ of hells signature sin. What was new (to me at least) about Maniscalco’s hell is it was not the typical human/mortal idea of hell. It was a frozen waste land. But as Emilia makes it through the Sin Corridor, she then has to come into her new role of as the Queen of Hell. There are lots of twists and turns that I didn’t expect! I only guessed the one that was revealed at the very end of the book. But if you are a reader that enjoys Fantasy Romance and are looking for something slightly less on the steamy side (it has its moments though!) I would definitely recommend picking this one up. After you read Kingdom of the Wicked of course.
Content Warnings: Murder, mutilation, mind control that leads to – forced sexual desire, bdsm play, and forced servitude (all of these are very brief and only happen for about the space of two pages. You can skip this scene if it bothers you, just wait for Wrath to appear during Anir’s training scene and then skip about a page and a half). The mind control is Wrath playing up emotions that Emilia is already feeling, and he does it to show her what his brothers have the power to do so that he can train her. However, it was done without her permission or knowledge, Maniscalco has the characters address this and it is not done without Emilia’s permission after the first time.
What’s a book that you’ve recently picked up that you’d thought was going to be one thing (genre, age range, etc.) but ended up being something completely different?
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