King's Cage

My heart has stopped beating ever since I finished Glass Sword... I gotta stop reading these kind of books that mess with my emotions. And I will... After this book comes out

So, let me warn you right now: I am going to spoil. If you do not want any spoilers, please scroll down to the bottom.

Anyways, in the first book at the end-ish, we learned that Maven and Elara were the bad guys. It was more obvious for Elara, but not for Maven. That was hard to figure out and it was a GREAT plot twist. But… in the second book, Mare kills Elara but Maven is still bad. I’m not saying that this book is bad, I’m just saying that Maven is basically following his mother’s footsteps and it’s not him doing it, per say. But, in those two books I was not at all scared of the villains. Except for Elara, she’s pretty scary. But, at the very end, Mare basically makes a trade with Maven. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but Maven did take Mare as part of the trade. In the third book, it’s more about Mare and Maven. And… that’s about when I started getting cautious. Maven was basically an orphan who wanted to kill his brother, Cal. Mare was the prisoner and she was trying to undo what his mother did. It did not work. Not at all. She was close, but not really. So, Mare gets rescued by the Scarlet Guard and she and Cal are back together again. EXCEPT when Anabel comes and says “Cal needs to be the new king of Norta when Maven falls.” Mare is surprised, Cal is surprised, but he wants the crown. He asked Mare to be his queen but she didn’t want that. She asked him to refuse the offer, but he didn’t want that, he said he didn’t have a choice. So, they break up. In the fourth book, about halfway through, Maven starts getting scary. Like, nightmare scary. I’m not going to spoil the fourth book, but this is just a warning.

Anyways, if you were one who did NOT want spoilers, let me tell you, this book has twists and turns. It will keep you guessing and you’ll know that no matter what you guess, it will either be close, or completely wrong. But it’s never right. This is a great book, I recommend this for anyone who enjoys new and unexpected things.

This book is amazing! Some chapters get boring in the beginning and overall just feel tragic, but they set up the story for some interesting turn of events. This is the first book in the series with multiple perspectives. We mostly see Mare and her struggles, but it’s nice to see other characters and their developments as we get more understanding and even admiration for characters we originally hated.
SPOILERS AHEAD: In this book, we have so many deep questions begged.
Beginning with Maven, we have the question of how culpable is he when he had his mother twisting him inside out, and can he be redeemed? To what extent is he responsible for his actions when he was irrevocably set on this path? The answer is left open-ended, of course. In regards to Maven, I feel that while he cannot be trusted— and certainly not underestimated— he ought to be pitted, a fine line to walk.
Next, we have the question: Is love enough? When two people’s values ultimately go against each other, is love enough? And the answer here, unlike the previous question, is painfully given: no. While Mare and Cal love each other deeply, they both have parts of themselves that inherently won’t work with the other. They would need to compromise themselves to be with each other, which is something they won’t do. Not yet, at any rate. At this point, I feel that Cal has made his compromises: he’s killed Silvers. He has fought against his own to be with Mare, but while she’s made the ultimate sacrifice in giving herself up to Maven to keep Cal safe, she has not had to give up her morals. And when the time comes for her to choose Cal as she begs him to choose her, she does not. Instead, the two are left at an impasse and go separate ways.
Ultimately, while I love these two together, I think this was the right choice for Aveyard to make. If Cal had chosen Mare or Mare had chosen Cal here, neither would have been true to themselves, leading to resentment of each other in the future. Nevertheless, just as Cal’s love of Mare blinded him into making moral compromises in the past, I believe that Mare, while she will not be his Red Queen, will eventually compromise something in the future for him.