We’ve been reviewing a lot of stuff about dinosaurs lately on the blog, so it’s nice to mix things up a bit and get back to reviewing Fantasy Books.

From the start, it feels significant to admit that this is a book I purchased because of Tik Tok. This is probably nothing special for most people. ‘Book Tok’ is an absolute force to be reckoned with and has been for quite a while now. Even in the archives of this blog, books like Fourth Wing and Verity stand out as prime examples of the app’s ability to generate hype around a book, which eventually ended up in the purchase of said book.

However Anji Kills a King feels somewhat unique compared to these other books in that I had already been following Evan Leikam’s account long before I ever knew he’d written a book. Looking at the book’s Author Bio and the Acknowledgments, I now know that Leikam has toured Europe with a band, has a book review podcast (Book Reviews Kill), and has acquaintances (or maybe even friends, who knows?) like Daniel Greene, Jason Pargin, Travis Baldree and Will Wight.

But to me, Leikam was just some dude who had some interesting things to say about a couple books I’d liked (I don’t even remember which ones), and so when I saw he had been picked up by Tor Books, I was excited for him, and curious how it would read. I figured I would enjoy the book considering we had similar tastes in books.

And Anji Kills a King DOES have pieces which I can see are reminiscent of books I enjoy, however, I found myself really struggling to work my way through this book, despite those elements which I typically enjoy. One such element involved “tenets” which a famous mercenary group within the book uses as a kind of code of conduct, ostensibly to provide some kind of moral north star for the group so that their behavior might have some hope of being distinguished from the misdeeds of the bounties they hunt.

Excellent. We now have a hard metric by which to judge the characters of this story. An easy marker by which to judge their change-arc. Do they move closer to these ideals? Or stray further from them as the story progresses? This trope (called The Commandments by Tv Tropes) is a cornerstone for many books — Dinotopia, and The Island of Dr. Moreau come to mind — with Fantasy authors appearing to take a particular liking to the technique. Perhaps the most modern, and well known (other than the ten commandments in The Bible) is Brandon Sanderson’s use of “Ideals” in The Stormlight Archive.

I feel one the major reasons the “ideals” are such a success in Sanderson’s work is a mechanic in which the characters we judge against them actually have to “say the words” in the moment they apply to the character’s arc, and before this have often spent time ruminating on them, and considering alternate modes of behavior. There is a frequency with which the ideals appear, and so when a thematic moment involving their core argument arises, the ideals are fresh in the reader’s mind.

By comparison, The Menagerie’s tenets are listed on the first page, and then almost never listed again, only occasionally referenced in dialogue such as ‘remember the tenets’, but hardly accessible unless we flip back to the first page of the book (which I almost never do) to reacquaint ourselves with them. If I consider each of the tenets now, after finishing the book, I can probably think of a corresponding scene in which they are broken (lot of falling arcs in this book which has the potential to be so cool), but I’m still left relatively unaffected as these character moments are all taking place for members of the Menagerie, and not the main character.

There is this frustrating dynamic in Anji Kills a King in which the book feels like it isn’t really about Anji at all. Typically I’m a big fan of the whole story-after-the-typical-story thing. Take Seanan McGuire’s The Wayward Children series, which are mostly about what happens AFTER a typical portal fantasy is over. McGuire has found extremely fertile ground in exploring the nuances of children’s experience after the primary adventure is over.

By comparison Anji Kills a King takes place AFTER what might be considered the primary goal of a more typical fantasy story: assassinating a corrupt and evil king. Again, HUGE potential here, and considering I can’t really think of many other stories in this vein, certainly a unique premise for a story. But Anji is almost immediately recaptured (perhaps somewhat more realistic than a normal fantasy) and stays bound for just about half of the book. In this way, all the events of the first half of the book happen to Anji, and she’s really just along for the ride. But then in the second half, events feel the same despite the small bit of agency she’s gained by that point. For instance, on two separate occasions later on in the story, she manages to commit two more murders, and yet the reader still leaves those scenes feeling like the other characters did all the heavy lifting.

And the ‘tenets’ I mentioned earlier? They govern the members of the Menagerie, not Anji, so she more or less never comes into conflict with them.

I’ve tried considering Anji’s character through a lens more akin to something like Watson in Sherlock Holmes, where Anji is the Watson character, simply telling the events of what happens to Holmes, and I just can’t seem to make it fit. I haven’t studied those stories well enough to know why the dynamic works there, and not here, but throughout this work, the readers feels as if the story should be about Anji, but she never really gets put into the game.

I would be remiss not to mention the parts of this book that do succeed. I really liked that The Hawk, and the other Menagerie characters were aging, or older. I personally haven’t read a lot of fantasy about old characters. And this dynamic is only all the more interesting because Anji is so young. You get an almost enemies-to-(platonic) lovers style dynamic in which we have a younger character becoming (again platonically) closer to an older character. This was kinda fascinating.

And then there’s the end, which I won’t spoil, but I do love it when a plot seems to have gone into complete and utter shit — ahem — chaos, and then one thing falls into place and everything else just gets back into line like some weird reverse dominos. I won’t spoil what the ending was, but I’ll only say that it’s the most hopeful of (possible) endings in a book that is pretty bleak throughout.

So Give ‘Anji Kills A King’ a Read?

It depends on what you like. This book has a lot of action, and has a few clever twists on some common fantasy tropes; however, I think that some of the main tropes it tries to hang its hat on — Ten Commandments style morality metrics, and story-after-the-story setting — ultimately let the hat fall.

I’ll still be following Leikam on Tik Tok, and would probably try another series if he does one. But I’m not super anxious for a sequel to Anji Kills a King

That’s all I have for this time. Has anyone already read this one? Am I completely out of my gourd? What are your favorite examples of the ‘Ten Commandments’ trope?

Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’m looking forward to talking about this one!