I really was about hoping Lyra would just take his heart, honestly. He whines about everything- unless he's talking about how GREAT he is and how SKILLED and LUCKY he is. I'm not sure if it was the narrator or also just the character himself, but Elian was so freaking annoying. idea.' I know it's hard to read for the opposite sex, but this was awful! It wasn't even just a poor accent, it was terribly done and I was rolling my eyes through every chapter he read. He read the male voices fine enough, but whenever he read a woman's part he spoke in the most halting manner, like he was learning to read each word as he read it. the female did her parts really well but the male- I was cringing through his reading. The biggest kicker for me was the male narrator. A bit like a dark retelling of the Little Mermaid, if Ariel was a siren and had killed over a dozen men and taken their still-beating hearts. Bottom line: It wasn't what I was hoping it would be, but I still enjoyed the story, even with all its disappointments. Let's just say it was an undeserving finale and wrap up for this book's potential.

My rapt interest briefly returned toward the end of the story, when Elian finds out who Lira really is, but those scenes were followed by the final battle and ending which can be best described as lackluster. And, you guessed it, no swashbuckling shenanigans. But both Lira's transition to humanity and her slow budding romance with Elian were underwhelming. I was expecting a lot more from Lira's complex darkness, a nail-biting romance, and some fun pirate swashbuckling to top it all off.

I was riveted through the first quarter of the book, but my enthrallment slowly faded away as the story sailed on (pun intended). It's dark and different, and it paves the way for what I thought would be a fantastic story. Thoughts: This book starts off with a bang. Lira now has to bring back Elian's heart to win her mother's favor and become a siren again. How awesome is that? The story takes off when Lira makes a mistake that pisses off her one-dimensional, evil queen mother, who turns her into a human as punishment. The skinny: You have Lira, a beautiful siren princess who rips royal hearts from their chests with her bare hands, and Elian, a witty pirate prince who makes a successful career out of hunting Lira's kind.

To kill a kingdom by alexandra christo