King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard

Summary:
When the lightning girl’s spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?
Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country-and his prisoner.
As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continues organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare’s heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.
In this breathless third installment in Victoria Aveyard’s bestselling series, allegiances are tested on every side. And when blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire-leaving Norta as Mare knows to burn all the way down.
Review:
King’s Cage is book three in this series. See my review for book two here. I put off rereading this series for way too long. I have read this book before, but I remembered literally nothing about the story. The first half of this tome was a bit boring. I’ve been noticing that this is a trend with fantasy. The first half of the book is build up and suspenseful and dramatic. The book was told in (mostly) two different points of view with a third thrown in here and there. I really liked this because we see what Mare is going through, but we still get to see what’s going on in the rest of the world. I like getting more than one perspective when it comes to fantasy. I always prefer knowing more of the world. This is especially relevant in King’s Cage because for much of the book we’re following Mare who is in captivity and not seeing or learning a whole lot about what’s going on in the world.

“I am the lightning girl. I am a storm. It feels like a lie. The lightning girl is dead.”

Mare wasn’t my favorite character in this book. But she wasn’t the worst either. I think she handled the situation she was in pretty well. Essentially tortured in a handful of different ways for six months, she still did her best to learn as much as she could and remember everything to use after she escaped. She, for the most part, never lost hope. She told herself she was going to survive and escape Maven even though she was convinced that the Scarlet Guard was not going to be coming to her rescue. I appreciated Mare in captivity because she was realistic. She lashed out and screamed and yelled and smashed things, but she was also frequently afraid and didn’t hide that. She knew when to push and when to shut her mouth and I appreciated this.

“Maven Calore is not his own self. He told me as much. He is a construct, a creation of his mother’s additions and subtractions, A mechanical, a machine, soulless and lost. What a horror, to kow that someone like this holds our fates in the palm of his quivering hand.”

Our sweet villainous Maven, this book really gave me a new appreciation of him. I love a villain I can care about. Give me a villain that was made evil instead of always being evil any day of the week and I’ll love them forever. We learned SO much about Maven in the time that he held Mare prisoner. I think he’s a really complex character and we got to see further into why he is the way he is. I love him, in the way that he’s an interesting and complicated character. He’s also very smart and I’m interested to see how the story ends in the final book.

“To stand in front of a person who is your whole world and be told you are not enough. You are not the choice. You are a shadow to the person who is your sun.”

Cal really disappointed me at the end of King’s Cage.He did do much and helped Mare and we all were lulled into them finally being in a good place. And then he threw it all away because he is actually garbage. I loved him so so much until the last chapter. I really don’t even want to talk about him because I’m really salty about it.

“Those who know what it’s like in the dark will do anything to stay in the light.”

Cameron is the other main point of view that we get. I liked seeing things from her perspective because she’s so different from most of the other players involved in the events occurring. She wasn’t really brought into any of this by choice and her attitude just that much more to the story. Her POV gave us eyes into what was going on within the Scarlet Guard and I think it was the perfect perspective because she’s not a super important member of the team. She wants to mostly stay out of everything. She wants to save her brother and stay out of it. So she’s sort of an objective viewpoint because she world love to just watch the world burn if that meant she could save her brother and get away from it all. She’s fierce and stubborn and I loved her chapters.

“We will not break, and we will no longer bend.”

The final character I want to mention is only relevant because somehow Victoria Aveyard has me feeling all the feels for the villains in this story. Yes, I’m talking about Evangeline. I hated her in the first two books. But somehow Aveyard has me feeling bad for her and even liking her for certain things. I think it really speaks to the authors abilities when you can make me change how I feel about characters like I did in this book.

“As you enter, you pray to leave. As you leave, you pray never to return.”

Overall, I enjoyed the third book in the Red Queen series. I think there were good parts and bad as there is with most things. I was excited to get to see more of the fantasy world this takes place in. We travel with several of the characters and it was great to get to see more of the world. I’m very antsy to get to the final book, so I’m going to stop here.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

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