Kingdom of Blood and Salt

De: Alexis Calder

Narrado por: Amy Kennedy

An epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout, Raven Kennedy, and Sarah J Maas.

After spending years training to defend my people from our enemies, I never expected that my enemy would be the one keeping me alive.

Athos is the last human city. A treaty with the Fae keeps the fae, the vampires, and the wolf shifters at bay, while we fight against the dragons at our border. Being a human in this world is dangerous, and we all make sacrifices to survive.

When the delegation sent by the Fae King arrives to claim the human tributes required by our treaty, I never expected to forge a connection with their leader.

Ryvin is as dangerous as he is handsome. I know he’s my enemy, and I know I’m supposed to hate him, but with each passing day, he’s more difficult to resist.

But things are changing in Athos. Humans no longer want to bend to the Fae King.

Alliances blur, and centuries of lies begin to unravel.

And I’m faced with a choice.

No matter how much I hate him, Ryvin might be the key to preventing war.

But it may mean sacrificing everything....

Kingdom of Blood and Salt is the first book in a fantasy romance trilogy with fae, vampires, and shifters. This enemies to lovers series contains violence, mature language, and spice. This is a NA/adult fantasy romance, and steam level will increase as the series progresses. Mind the cliff.

©2023 Alexis Calder (P)2023 Alexis Calder

The story line was good

Was this my favorite? No. Was the story enjoyable yes absolutely. But as others mentioned the narrator’s performance didn’t do the story justice. She didn’t do such a horrible job that it caused me to not want to continue. The biggest issues for me were the accent of Lagina and making Laera’s voice SUPER whiny. One other issue was the flow. There was often a pause after a quote that seemed to last a tad bit too long before stating he/she said.

Narration is sub par

The narration is the story was brutal at times and made it extremely hard to continue in audio format. No pause during chapters and the way it jumped in see unorganized.

Needlessly drawn out

If you like books where the characters supposedly hate each other but continue to bang, then this book is for you. I won’t be continuing on with book 2 but I feel like this should not have been split into multiple books since so little actually happened in this book.

Intense story

This was such an incredibly intense story. The world building was simple and easy to follow, the characters were great, the magic system was interesting.
Ara was such a great female lead. She had a strong sense of duty and loved her sisters fiercely, and wanted to serve her people.
This whole book really dealt with her struggles to understand why things couldn’t change for the better of her people.
Ryvin was a great male lead, he was morally grey, but also protective.
The snarky banter and chemistry between them was great! There was so much happening, there was so much betrayal and heartache, and wrestling with your own desires and demons.
I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Unfortunately the biggest challenge was the narrator, she was all over the place, and really detracted from an epic story.

Princess never developed

The princess never moved forward. It was the same thing throughout the story. She was stuck on the same mindset the entire time. I kept waiting for her to move forward but it never happened. All the other people developed/progressed as the story moved along. The princess made the story move in a circle. I am hoping the 2nd book is better. I am interested to find out what lies ahead in Koronos. With any luck the 2nd book will allow all the characters to progress.

Great story and narration!

I enjoyed the strong male lead. It would have been better with dual narration though

good book

I really enjoyed all of this book but I think it should have duel voices too

Performance

I should have taken to heart the other bad reviews, performance is horrible. The book is amazing but it goes to show how voice acting can ruin an audible book. Kingdom of Blood and Salt deserves a re-recording with a different voice actress and director. Some of the narration of the male characters was cringy. At times she made the main female character seem vapid. Which is not how the character was written by the author. Just read the physical book or on kindle unlimited. On the plus side, evidently anyone can record for audible.

oof

So the narrator was definitely the wrong choice for this story. She gave the FMC a pretentious voice that didn't seem to fit how the story was written. It ended up being very annoying and ruining a lot of the character dialogue for me. She would also do some random accents for parts of characters speaking, but not the whole sentence? and not everytime that character would speak? It was odd and threw me off.

Spoiler free review: So the premise of the story isn't bad and the mystery of a few things is what kept me going to the end. I'm an avid "romantacy" reader so I do give props for keeping me guessing on a few things. Beyond that, I found the book very difficult to get through. The pacing is very odd, sometimes we're skipping through things very quickly and then the next, we're stuck in a scene for entirely too long. The character development was basically non existent. The world building was sub-par. The prose is SO cringey, things like "I've *seen* your darkness", "Naughty girl", and other cheap lines with no other context that feel detached and not very believable. Overall, just not great writing. Pair that with the weird narration and it was a mess.

Spoiler review: Girl meets supposed enemy. Girl feels "weird and inevitable" connection to him. Supposed enemy continuously saves FMC "for no reason". FMC flip flops like an idiot and never seems to learn from an enormous amount of clear signs that supposed enemy is actually the good guy. FMC gets betrayed by allies and STILL won't come to terms with MMC actually being the good guy. Everything falls apart and even after having her whole fake life fall apart around her, she STILL won't come to terms with the reality of her situation. Mix in some poorly written s*x scenes and a single well written banter line. This story had a lot of potential and could have gone in so many cool or interesting directions, but it all stayed exactly how you would think it would play out. By the end, I was completely fed up with the FMC and there wasn't enough character building for me to believe or understand why she would want to continue to "sacrifice" for her sisters. Overall, the MMC, FMC, and plot had a lot of potential that went nowhere.

Surprise!

There were some surprises throughout the story. I am excited to read the next book! The narrator was totally fine.