Sins of a King by Emma SlateMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Uncomfortable Reading For A Brit
I’d probably give this book 3.5 ⭐️ if I could.
It’s well written but I have reasons for my lower score and the reasons are given below as.........
*********SPOILERS*********
Be warned that this about a woman who falls in love with a man who runs a criminal organisation in the US in order to funnel guns to the Scottish equivalent of the IRA. Now someone doesn’t have a problem with really dark romance will probably laugh at my discomfort around this subject matter but I don’t like my MMC to be really really awful. I like them to have some redeeming qualities before the MFC falls for them. I thought this was the case with this character because he seems kind for a ‘bad boy’. He runs a brothel and casino but his brothel workers are dubbed courtesans and have a choice about their clients who are very carefully vetted and monitored. Both these things are illegal but it isn’t like he’s selling drugs to kids or taking part in human trafficking.
However, as you get pulled into the story you become aware that essentially the MMC is a terrorist. In the US the IRA might be considered a group of freedom fighters, who have fought for peace. However in the UK if you are over a certain age the initials IRA conjures up a chill. The IRA were at war with the rest of the UK and they had no qualms about killing men, woman and children indiscriminately. Anyone who travelled through London in the 1980s and early 1990s (as I did as a teenager) will remember the low-level fear of not making it to your destination. No bins in train stations, signs about unidentified packages, does this sound familiar? It’s because in the UK we dealt with terror threats before the USA even knew what one was and it came from the IRA.
To have an author choose to make their MMC the member of an organisation like that for a country that has been part of the UK since 1707, nearly 70 years before the Declaration of Independence was written may seem like a good idea because of course, Scotland would never try to seek independence from Great Britain using violent means, but for a Brit who lived under the threat of the IRA, this does not make for a comfortable read. I don’t find terrorists heroic, no matter how much of a freedom fighter they are meant to be.
However, if you can distance yourself from that it’s a pretty well-written book. The characters are engaging, provided you ignore the fact they are terrorists. The characters are interesting and you can enjoy watching the way a fairly normal woman becomes the head of a crime syndicate as she tries to reconcile the actions she must take in order to stay alive and free.
It’s not incredibly violent, or it doesn’t dwell with glee on the violent incidents that occur. It’s still pretty dark in places though, even if it doesn’t start off that way. It’s a cleverly constructed descent into a murky world.
You may have guessed though that I won’t be reading the rest of this series.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, made after using the above links.
No comments:
Post a Comment