To Kill a Kingdom

This book reminded me of a darker Little Mermaid! I was so hooked that I got through this one in an afternoon. Good if you like fairy tales with a twist and protagonists that aren’t as black-and-white!

Lira is a siren princess with an evil mother, who has shaped Lira into a cold killer. Lira is the Prince’s Bane, because every year on her birthday, she kills a prince and takes his heart. Lira’s mother, the Sea Queen, is power hungry and rules by suppressing her subjects through fear, and maintains the rule that a siren must take the heart of a sailor every year. While the Sea Queen is supposed to retire soon and pass down the mantle, she doesn’t want to give up the throne and tries to prevent Lira from being seen as a legitimate successor. To punish Lira, she turns her to a human and orders her to take the heart of the prince Elian as a human.

Elian is a pirate prince. Prince by birth, pirate by choice. He resents the crown he’s supposed to inherit, and would rather spend his time with his crew on the ocean. His chosen calling is finding and killing sirens, and he especially wants to find the Prince’s Bane. He doesn’t trust anyone outside of his crew, including the wet, naked female he finds drowning in the middle of the ocean — Lira. Ultimately, he wants to destroy the Sea Queen, as well as the Prince’s Bane, and then kill all the sirens so they no longer pose a threat. He’s willing to die for his goals, and has a plan to find the tool he needs to kill them all — a stone that will give him the power to kill all sirens. When Lira claims to know about the ritual he needs to unlock what he seeks, he’s forced to bring her along on his journey. She wants to use the stone for her own purposes, and sees Elian as a means to an end that will restore her place as the future queen of the sirens. And she’ll take his heart anyway afterwards, to make her mother proud.

Lira’s transformation throughout the book is perfect. She strives to make her mother proud, which is an impossible goal. The ruthlessness in Lira is a product of her mother’s messed-up parenting, and while Lira continually looks for ways to kill the prince, she ends up getting the space she needs from her mother to figure out what kind of leader she wants to be. She sees the example Elian sets, and how his people love him. Granted, this is after A LOT of defiance and the brainwashing takes time to drain out of her system, but it also feels more natural that way. Elian and Lira antagonize each other for most of the book. But they have common ground, and really are almost identical in their personalities and values.

While they joke throughout the book that Elian isn’t your typical chivalrous prince, he still has many prince-like qualities. No, he’s not a docile lamb. He’s much more entertaining. He’s cocky, witty, and not interested in saving damsels. But he’s also willing to die for his cause, and has earned the loyalty of his crew, who follows him with even more devotion than his citizens have for the king because their devotion isn’t blind and required. Lira and Elian’s relationship builds slowly and realistically, and they’ve got great banter. There’s no insta-love, which I’m grateful for. And the ending is a happy one for both characters!