Court of Vice and Death

Blood and Salt, Book 2

By: Alexis Calder

Narrated by: Amy Kennedy

The stories about the fae court were true and I’m not sure if any of us will survive.

Everything in the fae court wants me dead. The monsters who live here, the royal family, even the other tributes. I’m surrounded by enemies but I won’t forget the cause of all this suffering: The Fae King. If I’m going down, I’m going to take him with me.

But nothing is easy in Konos.

And the only way through is to face the most dangerous monster who ever lived.

With surprising allies and newfound skills, I might have a chance. But you can’t trust anything in Konos.

Not even your own heart.

This is book two in the Blood and Salt series and is not a standalone. It’s dark, violent, and spicy. Mind the cliff.

©2023 Alexis Calder (P)2023 Alexis Calder

Storyline 👌🏼

Much improved writing, from book one. And the overall development of the story is amazing! The narrator is decent. Her voice for each of the primary, secondary, even tertiary, characters is great! But, her voice for the MC can be, somewhat, grating on the nerves, at times. All in all, worth following.

Story interesting

Narrator pronunciation is horrible! Many times sounding like’s a valley girl. Monster pronounced Munster. Really?

Awful Narration

The narrator was incredibly hard to get over. The sisters who grew up in the same home under the same parents somehow have different accents. It seems like she started to attempt a British accent for one, realized she couldn’t do it, and switched it up to something totally unrecognizable. Other than that the story is fine. There are quite a few inconsistencies, and convenient plot points. SPOILER AHEAD she finds out all the selected tributes are fated to die, she never even makes mention of her sister even though she knows Sophia was selected, then the tributes die but she never once thinks about what that means for the fate of her sister? The sister she traded her life for? Dumb. He fights her repeatedly about switching places with Sophia because “he doesn’t make that decision” just to be like nah it’s cool. Why even bother with the back and forth. It didn’t create any extra tension in my opinion. It’s just fine.

I don’t know why I hate myself

I don’t know what I was thinking after the first one. This one is just as bad. I am baffled by the good reviews for both books - are we all reading the same books??

First: the plot. Transparent and predictable. SPOILER ALERT: of course he’s the prince. Duh. Are we shocked? Yawn.
The main female character (I honestly keep forgetting most of the characters’ names, they aren’t memorable) makes the stupidest decisions. You’re going to have a full on conversation with your enemy and just give them everything you know? Good lord. Like the conversation she has with the prince’s sister? What was that? For a princess who grew up with court politics, this girl is just stupid.

This is also the slowest damn book ever. The first and second books could have one with all the extra crap cut out.
Also, please say “monster” one more time. 8,678,452 times is not enough.

Now for the narrator:
You know those stories about people who pretend to be ASL interpreters and then it comes out that they were signing gibberish? That’s this narrator. I highly doubt she’s ever narrated ANYTHING, and I would be shocked to find out she’s ever read a book out loud at all.
She sounds like a mix of AI and Moira Rose from Schitts Creek. Every character, especially those from the same family, has a different, baffling accent and the ACCENTS CHANGE HALF WAY THROUGH A SENTENCE. WHAT?! I want to email her personally and tell her to knock it off, it makes me so mad. I cannot express how much I hate this narrator and I have no idea how she got hired for this. She’s trying to do this sultry, whiney, whispery voice for every single character and it’s just so bad. Reading this book on kindle makes it a little more tolerable because you don’t have to hear Moira Rose say “mhunster” every other word.