To Kill a Kingdom starts well but the pacing is awkward in the extreme. I wanted to love it. I tried to love it. It has tentacles on the cover and the heroine keeps the hearts of seventeen princes in jars in her room so loving it seemed inevitable. Alas, by the end of the book, I just did not care what happened.

To Kill a Kingdom is a romance (marketed as general YA) between two killers. Princess Lira is a siren. She kills a human prince and steals his heart every year on her birthday (hence the heart collection). Prince Elian is a human prince who sails the seas with his loyal crew, searching for and killing sirens (because of all the murders).

Princess Lira angers her mother, the Sea Queen, who punishes her by turning her human. She can speak, but she can’t use her siren song. Prince Elian rescues her (he thinks she’s human) and before you know it Lira is dressed like a pirate and learning how to swordfight and discovering the power of Found Family and Elian is making googly eyes at her. The two unite in a common quest – to find the Crystal of Keto and destroy the Sea Queen’s power.

The descriptions in the book are amazing and brutal. The world is divided into cities. There’s Midas, the city of gold, whose golden buildings cast reflections on the water so that even the sea looks golden. There’s Eidyllio, a land dedicated to romance and covered with flowers. There’s the terrifying land of Kleftes, where thank goodness we do not spend any time – it’s where thieves and slavers take refuge. Of course there’s also the undersea world, which is not described as much visually but which is described in terms of violence, politics, family, and class barriers (sirens can’t stand mermaids).

Here’s an excerpt about Midas:

The castle towers above the land, built into the largest pyramid. It’s crafted from pure gold, so that each stone and brick is a gleaming expanse of sunlight. The statues scatter on the horizon, and the houses in the lower towns are all painted the same. Streets and cobbles glow yellow, so that when the sun hits the ocean, it glitters in an unmistakable reflection. It’s only ever during the darkest parts of night that the true blue of the Midasan Sea can be seen.

And here’s the beginning of the book, in which we meet Lira:

I have a heart for every year I’ve been alive.

There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. Every so often, I claw through the shingle just to check they’re still there. Buried deep and bloody. I count each one of them, so I can make sure none were stolen in the night. It’s not such an odd fear to have. Hearts are power, and if there’s one thing my kind craves more than the ocean, it’s power.

Obviously this has high potential. It’s both gorgeous and brutal. However, the plot doesn’t match the world building. Elian and Lira search for The MacGuffin. Lira tries to keep her siren nature a secret. Elian and Lira bond, although the bond consists of mutually enigmatic comments and is never convincing. For long stretches of the book, nothing happens, and the bond between Elian and Lira never seems stronger than the bond between Elian and the rest of his crew. The use of language remains consistently excellent..

I mention violence in this review several times. I did not find any of it to be triggering, personally. I rather liked the idea of love between what amounts to two serial killers from fairytale land. However, there is a lot of violence towards Lira and some very grapic violence committed by Lira. The relationship between Lira and her mother, the Sea Queen, is extremely physically and emotionally abusive and could be triggering to abuse survivors.

It’s difficult to nail down a pacing problem or a lack of romantic development with concrete examples, but here is a quote about the relationship between Elias and Lira that should help you determine if you’ll love or hate the book. The quote comes from Elian, in a passage about teaching Lira how to swordfight. He mentions Lira smiling “impishly” which seems out of character for her – my impression of Lira is that she’s never been impish in her life. It’s a lovely passage, but one that seems based on an idea about romance rather than actual, intimate connection:

I step back and Lira pounces to her feet again. We eye each other like hunter and prey, and I cock an eyebrow, daring her to move toward me. Lira smiles impishly in return and picks up her fallen weapon.

We continue on that way, swords arcing through the air, our breath ragged. Soon there’s sun in the distance, or perhaps even moonlight. Everything is muted and as Lira swoops her blade down on mine once more, I let it all fall away. My mission, my kingdom. The world. They exist somewhere other than in this moment, and now there is only this. Me, my ship, and a girl with oceans in her eyes.

If this was a prelude to romance, or a moment in a more developed romance, I would eat it up with a spoon. The imagery is creative and beautiful. However, this is basically the whole romance. She has oceans in her eyes. He is, according to Lira, “elusive”:

His hat hangs low over the shadows of his eyes, stance loose and casual. His left foot is hooked behind his right and his arms crisscross over his chest, but even I can recognize the difference between appearing relaxed and actually being so. It’s the mark of a true killer, to never show the fire within.

These are descriptions of crushes, not romances. They are well done descriptions of crushes (the close observation, the hyperbole), but they don’t progress to actual emotional intimacy. Love is messy, even (especially) when it is between the leaders of two kingdoms. I wanted these observations to progress and mature but they never do, which was frustrating. I’ve read YA that demonstrated reasonably mature love and true emotional intimacy, but this is not it. On the other hand, if you like staying in that poetic place where people have oceans for eyes, you will adore this relationship and this book, since it maintains the same tone all the way through.

The concept of this book is great. The descriptions are great. However, I never felt invested in the characters and I never believed in their romance. Elian and Lira narrate the book in alternating chapters, and even though they are devoting their lives to heroic ends, they seem incredibly self-centered and melodramatic. Perhaps my own heart is siren-cold, but I thought that the end was naïve (among other things, Lira argues that humans just want to be left alone, which suggests to me that Lira hasn’t met enough humans). This kind of story is all about the journey, and the journey was, I hate to say it – boring. By the time the MacGuffin showed up and the climactic battle took place, I did not care. I was just in a hurry to move on to the next book in my pile.