YA Weekend: Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Publisher: Razorbill (December 11, 2012)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ll admit, I had some serious doubts when I first heard about this young adult novel styled as an epic fantasy. I’m more of an adult fiction reader, so when I think about epic fantasy I can’t help but picture vast sweeping sagas in big fat tomes, and I have no doubt it was this bias making me skeptical as I eyed this relatively thin volume.

So you can imagine my surprise when it turned out I quite enjoyed this book. Still, I did don my YA hat as I was thinking about how to rate and review it. And furthermore, you should know that any time anyone anywhere compares anything to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, I take it with a grain of salt. On several levels, I suppose I can understand the reasons for some of the comparisons, or why a story like this would appeal to fans of Game of Thrones. And yet, to date I’ve never actually encountered anything else quite like Martin’s epic series and I didn’t anticipate it would happen now.

As such, you could say I went into Falling Kingdoms with a realistic outlook, along with an expectation for some of the usual YA trappings and perhaps a more delicate, dialed-down version of my beloved epic fantasy tropes. But putting it like that would also be doing this book a great injustice, because it also turned out to be a deeper and more intricate reading experience than thought. Despite having a central cast of mostly teenagers, some of the more mature and darker themes also took me by surprise.

The scope of the story was certainly extensive and far-reaching enough for my tastes; here we have a land where the rulers of three separate kingdoms are locked in a bitter struggle for power, thus creating a hotbed for intrigue, conspiracy, scandal and all that good stuff. I wasn’t expecting to see too much complexity, and indeed, the plot felt strained in certain places, I found myself questioning character motivations a lot, and some of the world building and story elements were lighter than what I’m accustomed to. And yet, when I look at the overall big picture, I was quite impressed with what I saw. It’s a lot more than I’d hoped to find in a YA novel, that’s for sure.

In a sense, this book reads exactly as it is described: an epic fantasy for teens. Since that was how I approached it, I thought it delivered everything that was promised and much more besides. If anything, the plot’s overall simplicity and straightforward nature of the narrative actually worked in the novel’s favor. It’s very accessible, easy to get into even if you aren’t an epic fantasy reader, and the story is just layered enough to be interesting but not confusing or overwhelming.

Falling Kingdoms proved to be a highly enjoyable read for me. Keeping in mind it is a YA novel, it’s probably not ideal if you’re looking for a more powerful, substantial epic fantasy, but I had a lot of fun nonetheless!