I was highly anticipating reading Kingdom of the Wicked ever since I found out the plot, I love a good mystery and this one also involved fantasy, so win-win! I can say now, I was not disappointed by this book, Maniscalco weaves an excellent story!
Kingdom of the Wicked, Kerri Maniscalco
Themes: Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Witches
Reading Format: Paperback
4 STARS // 8.4 CAWPILE
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I was sent this book in exchange for a fair review from Hodderscape.
Kingdom of the Wicked is set in a time of witches, vampires, princes of hell, the whole supernatural shebang. I’m not clear entirely on the time period, but it’s dubbed historical fiction so we will just assume it’s a good few years ago. The magic we’re dealing with in this book is very much spells, herbs and incantations, which I love. It felt more like a traditional magic system, which I don’t think I’ve read about for a while, so this was very welcome.
We start with twins, Emilia and Victoria, both young witches who live with their parents and grandma and help to run the family restaurant. I should add, this book is set in Italy and my GOD THE FOOD! This will have you desperate for pasta, pining for pizza and hypnotised by the array of flavours mentioned within these pages. I’m very thankful my copy came with pasta included from Pasta Evangelists because it was needed! But back to the story, not the food… These two twins are close and immediately we can see the differences that define them, Emilia being quieter and reserved and Victoria being much more extroverted. But the plot is taken in a new direction when at the start of the book (and this isn’t a spoiler, it’s no more info than is on the blurb), Emilia finds her twin brutally murdered. So we have a fantasy-paranormal-murder mystery on our hands!
Emilia’s motivation is the driving force throughout this book, her need to find out what happened to her sister and avenge her death overpowers any other emotion. Where she should be scared of her journey, she is bold and brave and becomes a very likeable character. We also meet Wrath pretty quickly who is one of the seven Princes of Hell, one for each of the seven deadly sins. He is also as buff as a Micheal Angelo sculpture, shock horror! I want me some normal bodied nerdy guys to take up the role of potential love interest, but alas, YA demands toned, muscular men and the authors provide. I jest though, I really liked Wrath’s character, he felt fun and cheeky and had a way of Hunt to him from Sarah J Maas’ House of Earth and Blood. In fact, I could pull a lot of comparisons between Kingdom of the Wicked and a Maas book, substituting Fae for evil demon dudes… but I think this is why I enjoyed this book so much. It played on some of the stereotypes we love so much about this kind of young adult fantasy and it made them fun and different from what we usually read about.
I want to know more about these seven brothers… are we seeing reflections from Dante’s writing here in the seven layers of hell in some sort of visibly human form? It seems there’s a lot to unpick with each sin. The very element of these sins is a religious one and these connotations are not lost with constant references to a local church, but perhaps a sin depends on who it is being seen by? We don’t all perceive sins as the same thing… I’m getting too far into digging this apart now, which probably isn’t what you want from this review. So onto setting?
I loved the Italian setting, it made this young adult novel feel a bit different from the typical American or British atmosphere. This world felt dark, it felt magical, it felt passionate, from the characters to the food… yes I’m on about the food again! The way these streets twisted and wound around each other felt like a maze Emilia was trapped in and yet I never felt she was without the control. I’ve visited Italy and the vivid imagery of the architecture of the streets stuck with me as I read more and more of this book. It feels beautiful with every page and I feel felt like I was there with Emilia trying to solve this mystery with her.
As far as a mystery goes I definitely enjoyed this one. It kept me guessing and whilst my first guess was correct, I was always seeing more potential suspects in the murder of Victoria. I enjoyed that I was kept constantly guessing and I felt satisfied by the ending, but also intrigued to see where more books in this series would go. Overall, this was a really enjoyable read filled with action, magic, intrigue and surprise… and just a bit of lust too!
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As soon as you mentioned that this is set in Italy my mouth started to water! Italian food is incredible and this could probably be the number reason why I now want to read this. Still, it’s great to hear that this was a good mystery. Thank you for the review!