Book Review - King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard

King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard | Blushing Geek

King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard
Series: Red Queen, #3
Published on February 7th 2017 by HarperTeen
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult
528 pages
Format: Kindle
Source: Purchased
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Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In this breathless third installment to Victoria Aveyard’s bestselling Red Queen series, allegiances are tested on every side. And when the Lightning Girl’s spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?
Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.
As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare’s heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.
When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.

Review

Unfortunately, I didn’t like it as much as I hoped to 🙁

King’s Cage started right after what ended in the previous book, in which Mare chose to be captured in order to save her friends. She was kept as a prisoner for 6 months in which she experienced a lot of awful things.

I feel for her really, especially on the part where Samson invaded her mind and tortured her. But it was also during her capture that I learned to see some annoying qualities in Mare that I failed to notice in the first two books in this series. I liked how strong willed she was, I think that was also the reason why I liked her in the previous books. But now I just realized how selfish she was most especially in book 2 when she kind of forced the newbloods to also fight with her. But in all fairness, she tried to change eventually and learned to be open with others.

As for her captor, I actually liked Maven before and I remember how confused I am whether I’m team MareCal or MareMaven, hahaha. But seeing this cruel side of him, I can’t help but get disappointed. He was basically created by his own mother, and any love he felt for his brother and father was taken from him, except his love for Mare. It was actually hard to describe his love for her, but reading about those things he discloses to Mare, I can’t help but feel sorry for this boy. That said, I guess right now the character that I am most interested in seeing in the next book would be him. He may be the bad guy, but his character is pretty interesting and I can’t wait to see what he will do now and hopefully we’ve got to see him in full action this time.

Since I am already talking about the characters, hahaha, I suppose I have to talk about the other characters eh? Lol.

I really liked Cal in the previous books, but heck, I wasn’t amused by him anymore in this book. He was born Silver so I know it was hard for him to choose a side, but after what he has seen and experienced, he should have known by now what to choose. He’s always been a good person, but he’s unwilling to make a choice. Well, technically he did, and that’s why Mare was heartbroken. I have to agree with Mare though, Cal just always follows orders and is unwilling to act, unwilling to truly change himself.

Aside from those three and the other characters from the first 2 books, we also got to meet some new sets of characters here, and most of them have some pretty interesting abilities.

Unlike the previous book, this one has lesser fighting/action scenes, which is mainly the reason why it lost my attention while reading it, which in return made me finish it for few more days instead of just a day or two 😅

I personally prefer a single or dual pov and that’s what I have been reading a lot for the past few years since my hiatus in blogging so I was kind of at a loss at first. But as I read further, I’ve got to finally adjust and learn to appreciate it since we’ve got to see multiple points of views on some specific topics or areas in this story.

It may not have been great like what I hoped it would be, but overall it was still a decent read. There was only less action, but after that ending, I am definitely sensing a more action-pack story in the next book.

Other books in this series:

I also have my favorites lines from this book posted here.