King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Over the past week and a half, I read King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo. This high fantasy is the first novel of a duology and the sixth book taking place in the universe that Bardugo created in Shadow and Bone.  Although it’s been three years since the civil war in Ravka, Nikolai, the young king, is increasingly haunted by the small amount of the Darkling’s dark magic still inside inside his body and unpredictably transforms into a winged monster. One of the commanders of the Ravkan Second Army, Zoya, is focused on keeping Nikolai’s secret and making sure he doesn’t kill anyone with the help of Tolya and Tamar, members of Nikolai’s personal guard. Nikolai needs to make political alliances and find a queen to produce an heir to stabilize his reign, but after an incident with the Apparat and Yuri, a young monk who worships the Darkling, Nikolai goes on a journey to the Fold with Zoya, Yuri, Tamar, and Tolya to find a cure and destroy the monster inside him. On this quest, they confront hidden dangers and mysterious forces lurking in Ravka.

Undercover on a covert mission in Fjerda, the country to the north of Ravka, Nina is still devastated by the loss of her lover, Matthias, although she soon finds a place in the woods near a factory to lay his body to rest. Afterwards, she hears voices that take her to a grave site at the top of a mountain and decides to find out what is happing at the factory because it is poisoning the river according to a group of young women in disguise as soldiers. When she is lost in a snowstorm, she discovers that the girl from the convent who saves her is Grisha and befriends her to gather information, take down the factory, and bring justice to the women and girls who died there.

I thought King of Scars was absolutely amazing. I was enthralled from the beginning to the very end. The first chapter was creepy and suspenseful, almost like a horror novel, until it was revealed that Nikolai was the monster that the boy, Dima, found in his family's barn. After reading the first series within this universe, I thought that Nikolai was cured, so finding out that the Darkling, the villain of those three books, left a piece of his power in Nikolai was quite the reveal. I was terrified that the monster would take over Nikolai and the people of Ravka would find out their king is a monster before he could be cured. I was also excited that this book focused on Zoya and Nina, in addition to Nikolai, because Zoya was compelling in the Shadow and Bone trilogy and I loved Nina in the Six of Crows duology. I would definitely recommend reading both of those series before reading King of Scars because there are many interweaving plot lines. King of Scars is split into two parts and there are five point of view characters (Dima, Zoya, Nina, Nikolai, and Isaak, the young man who takes Nikolai's place as king when he is missing). Additionally, I enjoyed the sense of adventure and the new ways of using Grisha powers that Zoya and Nina learn. The plot twists at the end left me wanting more, so I'm very impatient to read the next book, Rule of Wolves, which will be released next week. If you love fantasy, you should definitely check this series out!