The Kingdom of Liars / Nick Martell

Title / The Kingdom of Liars

Author / Nick Martell

Series / The Legacy of the Mercenary Kings

Publication Date / May 2020

Page no. / 608

Overall Rating / ★★★

*I received a digital copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

The Kingdom of Liars is a debut fantasy book and the first book in the Legacy of the Mercenary Kings series. The story starts with the protagonist, Michael Kingman, being held on trial for the death of the king. The book focuses on Michael’s narration of the events leading up to this event. As of writing this, I do not know how long the series is planned to be or when the next book will be released.

While this is a good, solid debut fantasy book, I didn’t love it as much as I wanted. It starts quite slow and doesn’t really pick up until the second half, which meant that by the time the plot got engaging I just wasn’t invested enough in the characters or story. It does have a slow start but Martell does a good job of blending politics and mysteries into the plot. The world building is quite well done, however I think areas could have been improved upon. For example the story takes place mostly in one city but I didn’t really understand the geography of it. The writing is also good, although there were a few times it felt a little clunky.

During the first half or so of the book, I found Michael to be quite an infuriating character. He was selfish, naive and makes stupid decisions on numerous occasions. Since he is the sole character perspective we see, you can’t get away from his frustrating behaviour, until the second half when things start to improve. Michael’s character definitely improves in the second half but by that time I just wasn’t invested enough in him to really care about what was happening to him. For me, this had a lot of potential, but it unfortunately fell a little flat.

Overall this was a good fantasy debut, but unfortunately it didn’t fully work for me. If you are a big fantasy reader, I think this will still be worth checking out. I probably won’t be checking out the next book. Have you guys read this book? I’d love to know what you thought. I hope you are all having a wonderful day and I will see you next time.

Pippa