Book Review: King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

King of Scars is the sixth book by Leigh Bardugo, set in the brilliantly crafted Grishaverse, and is the first book in the King of Scars Duology.

I continue to be impressed with how Bardugo’s writing improves with each new book and it is a wonderful experience for me as an aspiring author. I love this world, and the characters continue to surprise and delight me. They have depth and are extremely relatable even though many of them are Grisha (capable of a type of elemental magic). The interpersonal relationships in this story and the dialogue are what I enjoy most.
The reason why I give this book only 4 stars is that I found Bardugo’s method of writing each chapter from a different character perspective, like the previous books, interrupted the flow for me. Particularly, the chapters involving Issak. They threw off the rhythm of the story and detracted from the big picture for me. Also, the book jumped around more than usual which I typically don’t mind, but I didn’t enjoy it this time.

As always, the overall story and the characters were wonderful and my love of the world and those characters, as well as the lore, kept the pages turning for me. If you have read the other books before this one, you will understand what I mean.
I do hope going forward that we get to reacquaint ourselves with Kaz Brekker and Inej and the rest of that crew again. I am excited to read the next book, Rule of Wolves.