Customer Reviews

The Trouble with Kings

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The Trouble with Kings" takes place in four main countries, leading to delightful cultural comparison and quite some speculation on fashion, which Sherwood Smith is known to do well. So when you read the summaries, please remember that there is much more to this book than just a plotline and a jumble of characters.

Princess Flian, her memory gone, is told by her cousin, King Garian, that she is passionately in love with, and engaged to, King Jason Szinzar - a man who is "as expressive as a stone. A stone in the dead of winter, to give an idea of how much warmth there was in his countenance." When she is kidnapped on the eve of her wedding, the outlaws that capture her jog her memory, and all she wants to do is get back to her home in Carnison and be with her father in his old age. The powerful men all around her have other plans, however, and she's forced to face more of reality than she would like to deal with. Can you kill a man because he's an enemy? Can you really not trust anyone, when you've a fortune to your name that's easier to acquire through kidnapping and threats than by a wedding?

Flian is not a hothead, and she could be called passive. Her subtle charms may not appeal to everyone, especially not people looking for a kick-butt princess willing to take on anyone and everyone (for that, read "Once a Princess" - hilarious and exciting in all the right amounts). However, there is chemistry. Not in the Twilight-esque, ground-shaking, throat-tightening animal attraction, but in gestures and conversations and how the characters interact with one another. It struck me as very realistic - the kind of romance you can relate to. The magic is mostly present in the fact that "The Trouble with Kings" is set in a magical world with some handy magical objects and interesting magical history. Both are believable.

That said, I stayed up until 6 o'clock in the morning reading this, unable to put it down. It was great to see Flian grow and decide to take action - decide to find out who really is on her side, and help them if possible. If you're willing to read a book about a girl who is strong in a way that doesn't necessarily involve kicking butt, I recommend this book as highly as I can. It's fun, it's fast, and it's full of all the things we love: adventure, excitement, kings, queens, princesses, romance, magic - and beautiful dresses.

This book was a pleasent fantasy/romance along the same lines as Crown Duel. I liked the main character, a very normal girl which I think was the whole point. She is not supposed to be a superhero, or "Princess", she is a regular person with regular strengths and weaknesses. The missunderstandings and romance was very remmenisant of Pride and Predjudice. To give you an idea of my viewpoint, I am a fan of Ms Smith and I adore her Inda series, as well as Crown Duel. Senrid, on the other hand, I hated and couldn't get past the begenning. I enjoyed this book, and will no doubt reread it again in the future, which I suppose is the real test afterall.

This is a delightful book. There is fun, humor, adventure, saddness, romance, coming of age - all in sufficient quantity to complete the story. Nothing is overboard - as is not uncommon these days.

I bought the e-book version as soon as it was available, and have re-read several times so far.

The heroine, Flian, is a quiet princess who prefers to watch things from the sidelines. Unfortunately, circumstances compel her to participate. Eventually she realizes there is a balance to be had between action and inaction, and choses her path and future accordingly.

Three Cheers for another fine book from Sherwood Smith!

I liked _The Trouble with Kings_ exceedingly well. I started it on a Friday and it's a good thing I did because it was 3:00 in the morning before I could bear to put it down. There was so much I needed to do over the weekend, but all I could think about was getting back to this book!

Poor Princess Flian has been getting a great deal of male attention since turning sixteen. Since she is somewhat plain in appearance and has convinced herself (with the help of some court phonies) that she is boring, unaccomplished, and generally useless, she decides that it is actually her wealth that is getting courted. And she isn't wrong, for the most part. So when someone comes along who actually wants her for her, it doesn't even cross her mind that that may be the case. Plus, her thoughts are rather occupied with surviving being abducted and drugged and thrown into mortal peril all the time.

It was very refreshing to read about a heroine who is actually normal. Just your average untried, unsure young woman. She is a very loyal person with strong morals and good intentions but is hampered by her feelings of self doubt and her lack of experience and training. She has a great distrust of words which keeps her quietly in the background. In her own court, instead of leading, she is so quiet that it is hard for others to see her worth. (Abduct her and nearly get her killed however and the polite princess will tell you what she really thinks.) She doesn't seem to see her own worth either. She never recognizes her bravery, but instead insists instinct to be the cause of her actions. I thought her very likeable and, as I said, refreshingly real.

I liked the men too, though not as well. The reasoning they give for their actions sometimes seemed to me rather lacking. Nice girls with strong morals don't generally respond well to being abducted and drugged. Any of them thinking that she would be okay with such a thing is absurd. Maxl (her brother) I liked a good deal, though I wish he had been more protective.

Yep, I thought that the book was very good. One I'm sure to read many times. My "tip of the hat" to Sherwood Smith!

Like the other reviewers, I am a big fan of Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith. This was therefore an automatic buy. The book was good but not great.

The plus points-
1.Engaging but somewhat passive heroine. I like the fact that she is not a raving beauty but is described as quiet and plain.
2.Interesting cast of characters.
3.Gentle romance

The minus points-
1.Plot seemed to drag at the end.
2.Overall missing the spark that takes a book from good to great. I am not sure why- perhaps the meandering plot?

Still I liked it. Pleasant way to pass an afternoon. Also a clean read for your teenage daughter with romance but nothing graphic or inappropriate. I hate the cover!

Given my enjoyment of previous Sherwood Smith books, I was actually pretty disappointed in this new book, set in the same world as that of Crown Duel. Primarily, my problem is the lack of new and engaging characters -- the book smacks of the characters, personalities, mannerisms, settings of Crown Duel. Certainly, as this story takes place on the other side of the same world, I would have loved to either (1) seen some of the differences between the cultures or (2) get a sense for how it all ties together (a legible current map would help).

I found some of the references a little bit confusing. That said, it's been a while since I've read Crown Duel, and have not yet read the Inda series (also set in the same world). Perhaps if I had, some of the references to histories and locations would not have been as over my head.

Then comes the problem that I simply couldn't relate to the characters. Princess Flian is a plain, ordinary, and devastatingly rich princess who cries a lot, has low self-esteem, and hides behind her music. She becomes a heroine only because she (against her will) is dragged into these plots and her real "courageous" self shines through. My problem with her as the heroine is that she doesn't deserve it. She never wanted adventure, and yet she gets it. She never wanted love, and yet she gets it. Why? Because she's rich. Where's the justice here? I want a book that will not only engage me in the plot, but also inspire me towards my goals, not tell me that I should sit back and wait for it all to just happen.

The story itself is easy enough to follow. With regard to the plot, the blurb billed the story as a boring princess with 3 potential suitors, and she's not sure which is the good guy. The story actually turned out to be a boring princess with one boring suitor (you could totally see that coming from a mile away), who are thrown into a plot they really didn't want to be in in the first place. The plot seemed contrived (what's with all the abductions? I count... 4 throughout the whole book) and moreover, dragged in places. Some of the revelations and scenes were simply unnecessary. (FYI, this never happened in Crown Duel.)

Perhaps I've been overly critical of this book. To be honest, I expected another Crown Duel (in the figurative sense) to blow me away, and what I got was... another Crown Duel (in the literal sense), but only a shadow of it. It was all in all an enjoyable read and a great way to pass the time. But that's all I got, and not much more.

Princess Flian is one of those very rare heroines that catches your heart even more because she is so realistic. I readily admit that I am a Sherwood Smith fan and thing that I am a rabid fan of her writing style, but The Trouble with Kings holds a special place in my heart. In my opinion, Sherwood's heroes are some of the best in the genre: they are competent, honorable and caring, but have a tendency to be misunderstood (especially by the heroines).

The author herself once admitted on the blog that her fans might think that Flian is too passive a character when compared to Crown Duel's Meliara, but I simply do not believe that. Meliara in Crown Duel is always jumping into situations with the best of intentions with often disastrous results due to too little planning. Flian is a much more diligent planner. She thinks before she acts and often decides, quite correctly, that there is no point in exacerbating an already bad situation. It think that Flian's shy and diligent character only make her more endearing and her ability to readily admit her flaws in refreshing. Just because Flian thinks before she jumps, though, does not mean she has no backbone. Afterall, the opening scene of the story involves the results of her fleeing on horseback.

I love Flian's story and the imperfect nature of all of Sherwood's characters. I hope you will take a chance on this wonderful story.

Although set in a fantasy world, the driving force behind the plot is the characters and their actions, with very little allusion to magic. And although I adore magical castles and fire breathing dragons, I didn't miss them because the characters were wonderful enough to hold my attention all on their own.
This was a wonderful book with a great blend of adventure and character development, with a charming romance woven throughout. It is the story of Flian, a quiet, introspective harp-strumming princess dragged into political intrigue, and how she grew into... well, since that's a rather large part of the plot, I'll just say she grew into better, more confident, yet still harpstrumming version of herself, and that I truly enjoyed reading about the transformation.
The characters were easy to identify with, and the villain was an intriguing person with enough depth that you couldn't quite whole-heartedly hate him, as much as you might like to.

Overall, I'd probably rate this book 3.5, but since that's not an option, I rated the book 4 because while the book had flaws, it also had a lot of positives and I really enjoyed it.

The heroine, Flian, was passive, especially in the first part of the book, but given the surroundings, that made sense. She was raised to be relatively ornamental. It didn't seem like she had been trained to deal with difficult situations. She grew throughout the book and that for me was one of the positive factors. Likewise, none of the characters were one-sided. All the heroes had flaws. As a light adventure, I thought the book did very well. The story wasn't predictable and it was a lot of fun. This was the first book I read by Sherwood Smith, but it will not be the last.

The only real problem was that I didn't feel the book really worked as a fantasy. There was magic but most of it really wasn't explained and didn't add to the story. For instance in the first chapter, Flian whispered a spell to take care of a personal need and it seemed like a casual use. However, she didn't seem to use magic for anything else and it was never explained. Likewise, I thought the world-building was very weak. I couldn't get a feel for the different countries and little of society's rules. I felt as if the fantasy was a cover thrown over the story rather than a significant part of the book.

First published in ebook format by Samhain Publishing, THE TROUBLE WITH KINGS was just recently released in print format. I read and loved Crown Duel (Crown Duel / Court Duel) several years ago and this one caught my eye because it sounded similar in a delightfully swashbuckling sort of way. This book is also being billed as a fantasy romance--a genre I'm beginning to feel is a bit finicky (for me at least). It seems very difficult to strike just the right chord.

Flian is a princess. Though when we first meet her she does not recall that rather important fact about herself. She does not, in fact, recall anything about herself as she apparently took a fall off a horse, a bump on the head, and lost her memory. She awakes in an old woman's cabin and is soon whisked off to a castle by her "cousin" Garian. Garian seems very keen to let Flian know she was on her way to see him when she took the fall. Oh, and she was also on her way to her marriage to a dour king named Jason who is also in residence at the castle. Despite the fact that she feels nothing for Jason (and is pretty sure Garian is drugging her drinks) Flian goes along with the plan. That is until another overbearing prince crashes through the window on horseback and whisks her off to a cave in the back of beyond. This prince turns out to be Dour King Jason's brother who is very intent on selling his version of events. Naturally. Eventually Flian manages to remember herself and get home. She even has a loving father and pretty awesome brother waiting for her there. Not that she gets to enjoy them long. Dour King Jason swoops in in the middle of a poetry reading and carries her off once more.

Okay. Enough with the plotliness. I had a problem with this book. For one thing, it was very light on the fantasy and even lighter on the romance. I kept waiting for something magical to happen or for there to be some semblance of chemistry between characters (in any sense), but it never came. I really wanted to like it. And parts of it I liked very much. It has a great premise: the amnesiac princess who gets carried off not once but thrice (it's actually even more than that) and has to determine which prince/dour king is lying to her and who to trust, etc. The thing is the abductions got to be too much. And Flian wasn't compelling enough to carry the whole thing off. If she was just so freaking awesome that it was clear why these nutjobs wanted her and you wanted to stick with her and watch her be awesome and figure out which nutjob was actually a cool cat, then that would be one thing. But Flian is just. so. boring. And the princes three? Turns out they're just nutjobs. Pretty creepy ones, in fact. Nothing more. None of the characters get any decent development and when you do find out which one has been telling the truth the whole time (even though he SO has not) he doesn't get any cooler. He's just no longer the one who wants to marry her for her money then kill her. Hardly my idea of The One. Now it did keep me reading all the way through because I kept hoping at some point the story would delve beneath the surface and I'd get to know these perplexing characters in some more profound way. But satisfacton was not in the cards this time.