Let them believe they are better than you, even that you are willing to do anything to serve your king. They won’t expect intelligence and strategy from someone they deem a whore. This is good. Let go of your pride.
The Rook picks up the baton right where it was left after the events of the first in the Twisted Kingdoms series, The Hunt. Tempest has agreed to work with the rebel forces and expose the murderous king and bring his crimes out into the light of day. Now, having earned her place on the King Destin’s War Council, she walks a perilous tightrope between the king she’s betrayed and the Rebel she can’t trust.
This sequel did not disappoint, nor did I find any elements lacking. Tempest stays true to herself and her beliefs and highlights some many unsavoury factors of rebellions. Such as the fact that there will never be one side solely righteous and the other utterly evil. There will always be innocents trapped on either side of war and lines that should not be crossed, will be, which encourages Tempest to follow her own rules and work with the rebellion and not for it as long as their goals are one and the same. It’s this refreshing, self-thinking, intelligent character writing that we see frequently with Frost Kay’s protagonists that deserve to be praised.
The veil that keeps the enigmatic Pyre shrouded in mystery slips a little bit more, answering a few questions about this perplexing character yet raising even more as readers are left with one hell of a cliff-hanger that certainly felt like it came out of nowhere. It honestly took a second reading to spot the cleverly hidden clues and I applaud Pyre’s iceberg nature of a character and wonder how deep under the water does he extend.
Being the second book in the series, I expected most of the world building to be mostly completed in the first. Seeing that only a fraction of the world had been explored in The Hunt was a pleasurable surprise as The Rook delved far deeper into the kingdom, it’s surrounding lands, and the different, fantastical races of beings that inhabit the continent.
All in all, The Rook is one hell of a ride and has been a personal favourite this year. I absolutely cannot wait for the next instalment of the Twisted Kingdoms.