“I’m plotting to steal back my birthright, betray my mother and then rip out Elian’s heart so no human can be a worthy threat to us. And she creates a strange dynamic in his crew of found family. He doesn’t know anything about her, and she isn’t exactly forthcoming. My crew is my family and though I could never say it-perhaps, don’t need to say it-the Saad is my true home.”īut when he saves a transformed Lira, it throws a wrench into his plans. “They’re from everywhere and their homes are nowhere, but they call Midas so because I do. He’s built himself a crew that he views as family, who supports him in his quest to get rid of the killer sirens, but he has some complicated feelings about basically wanting to commit genocide. He’s a prince as well, but instead of staying on land and preparing to become a king, he took to the seas to hunt sirens. But then again, she *is* a siren.Įlian, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to classify. Her natural tendency towards human-seeming emotions has been viewed negatively, and she’s been actively encouraged to be brutal and ruthless, killing a human prince every year to collect his heart. Lira is a siren princess who has been brought up to succeed her mother, the Sea Queen. However, they are both morally gray characters.

It was easy to love both the MCs, especially since the story is told from alternating POVs. How have I managed to resist this book for so long? Because it’s been calling to me from the library shelf for so long, and now I’m kicking myself for not reading it sooner. One, what kind of people take stories like The Little Mermaid, and say “but what happened if I made this story more … stabby?” And the other thing was … am I the only person who didn’t know that this was a super-stabby version of The Little Mermaid? But honestly, the only thing that matters is that somehow, it works. But can he trust her? And just how many deals will Elian have to broker to eliminate humankind’s greatest enemy?Īs I read this, I wondered two things. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby-it’s his calling. The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Robbed of her son, Lira has until the winter solstice to deliver Prince Elian’s heart to the Sea Queen or remain a human forever. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one things sirens loathe most-a human. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all.

To kill a kingdom book 2