Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman

Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman
Series: Blood of Gods and Royals #1
Genre: Historical
Release Date: August 18, 2015
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: Publisher
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Imagine a time when the gods turn a blind eye to the agony of men, when the last of the hellions roam the plains and evil stirs beyond the edges of the map. A time when cities burn, and in their ashes, empires rise.

Alexander, Macedonia’s sixteen-year-old heir, is on the brink of discovering his fated role in conquering the known world but finds himself drawn to a newcomer…

Katerina must navigate the dark secrets of court life while hiding her own mission: kill the Queen. But she doesn’t account for her first love…

Jacob will go to unthinkable lengths to win Katerina, even if it means having to compete for her heart with Hephaestion, a murderer sheltered by the prince.

And far across the sea, Zofia, a Persian princess and Alexander’s unmet betrothed, wants to alter her destiny by seeking the famed and deadly Spirit Eaters.

If you have known me for a while then you’ll have no trouble recalling that I am a total nerd when it comes to Ancient History. It started when I was five years old with Xena, which I used to watch with my grandparents at all hours of the night, and then the fascination progressed when we studied Egypt, Rome, and Greece in school. And then it became a full blown obsession when I watched Spartacus back in 2011, which then eventually led me to study Classical Civilisations as a hobby in my free time and gain a qualification in it. The point of this story? Well, Alexander the Great was one of my modules, and ever since I started reading more about him I decided that he’s one of the most interesting people of Ancient Greece and I needed to know everything. So when Legacy of Kings popped up on my radar, I had to get it.

I’m sure you can all see where this is going. I didn’t like the book. This is partly because I’m an Alexander stan (it’s a thing) and partly because I just didn’t like the book itself, historical inaccuracies and injustices aside. I’ll talk about the book stuff first without all of the other stuff because I feel like it’ll be best to get the bits that I’m least passionate about out of the way first.

My biggest two issues with this book were the multitude of points of view and the writing style. Firstly, there were… seven? I think? points of view in this book and it was too much for a 380 page book. If you’re going to have that many points of view, then your book needs to be longer. You need to do a George R. R. Martin. And your writing had better flow and it had better not be boring as hell. Herman really didn’t accomplish any of those things with Legacy of Kings. I was bored through most of it, and the constant changes of viewpoints were jarring at best. Not only that, but I signed up for a book about Alexander, not about a million other side characters who will probably be more relevant later on in the series but as of right now I don’t give a shit about any of them. At all.

And now I’ve got that off my chest, let me tell you about how Legacy of Kings completely ignores all historians and facts and proof that Alexander the Great was anything other than straight. And yes, this is a young adult book, and so perhaps Alexander just hasn’t realised how not-straight he is just yet, but there should have been at least some HINTS. That’s all I ask. You see, it’s pretty much universally accepted by everyone that Alexander was either bisexual/pansexual/gay. Unless you talk to people who are in complete and utter DENIAL, who try to say that Alexander’s kiss with a eunuch dancer was nothing and his relationship with Hephaestion was PLATONIC, even though Alexander compared them to friggin’ ACHILLES AND PATROCLUS, THE TWO GAYEST MEN IN CLASSIC FICTION. Ehem.

I could go into an essay about how, as the classical world started to crumble, our modern world started to veer towards homophobia and thus suppressed all mentions of homosexuality and tried to erase it from history, but I don’t think this is the time or the place for that right now.

Onwards.

So there was no Alexander/Hephaestion and I was distraught. There were also “games” (think a mild version of the Hunger Games) in an “arena”, which weren’t really a thing in Ancient Greece because those guys thought they were too good for bloody fights and such caveman ways (the Romans should probably have taken note…), and there was also a Macedonian character called Jacob. Yes, I get that it’s just a name and I suppose people were called all sorts of things, but that form of the name “Jacob” is Hebrew. Why not go with the Greek form? It was odd. Also, how were all of these female characters not married already? Herman makes it seem like women in Ancient Greece had a choice and were able to stay single until they were twenty. Ha.

I skimmed the ending because I really wasn’t enjoying this book in the slightest. As you can see, I had a lot of issues with it that I just couldn’t look past, and I didn’t even go into the romantic tropes and pairings that were so dull and lacking in chemistry that I was hoping someone would get stabbed with a sword to make those scenes more interesting.

The only way I would carry on with this series would be if Herman decided to do a 180 and actually do Alexander the Great and the LGBTQ+ community some justice and have the character come to realise that he’s not 1000000% straight. Because I would read a boring book for a better depiction of Alexander. But I don’t see that happening.