Eleanor Herman’s Reign of Serpents is the third book in the Blood of Gods and Royals series. The events of Empire of Dust scattered the protagonists across the Mediterranean. Alexander was ruling in Pella, until he found himself imprisoned inside his own body. Olympias marries Cynane to the king of Dardania. Katerina and Hephaestion wait for Ada on the small island of Meninx. Jacob hides his Earth Blood magic from his fellow Aesarian Lords and Zofia continues her quest to fight fate. As fate, once again, draws the protagonists together, everyone can sense a growing evil approaching on the horizon and the dying of the era of Gods.
As expected, this book is full of POVs. No less than 10 people have their voices heard in this fantastical historical retelling, but, keeping with consistency, only the main six will be mentioned here.
King Phillip of Macedon left Alexander in charge of Pella. While it got off to a rocky start, his decisions began to establish the amazing leader he would become. Unfortunately, his leadership was cut short when a dying god decides to possess his body, leaving him trapped in inescapable darkness. With control of his body belonging to someone else, all his hard work begins to come undone.
In attempt to regain Alexander’s loyalty, Heph embarked on a journey with Katerina. During the journey he fell in love with Alexander’s long lost twin, but carries the burden of a powerful prophecy: Kat will be the death of Alexander.
While on her journey, Kat learned a lot about her powers as a Snake Blood, but as she spends weeks and months on the island of the Lotus Eaters, she soon learns the burden and curse of her magic. In her weeks on the lonely island, Kat must decide to accept her growing abilities or deny them in order to reject the evil and loss associated with them.
Jacob is in trouble. The Aesarians are known for their hatred towards magic users, but in reality, they collect magic users and sacrifice them to the Spirit Eaters, evil monsters that bring destruction and despair. With the discovery of his powerful Earth Blood magic, Jacob must find a way to destroy his magic or offer up a powerful sacrifice in his place.
Despite being married off to a faraway country, Cynane refuses to give up on her dream to become a queen and obtain Smoke Blood magic. Unfortunately, Dardania is ruled by King Amyntas, a psychotic sadist. While surviving the King’s bloodthirsty insanity, Cynane develops a strategy to steal the kingdom and obtain her coveted Smoke Blood.
Zofia has had a pretty rough time. In her attempt to escape fate, the Persian Princess was kidnapped, enslaved, and left to die. Her sister was also murdered which doesn’t make her life any better, and now she’s pregnant and showing. While Zofia does get to ride a Pegasus, she soon falls off and wakes up bruised and with little memory of her experiences. But her journey is far from over, as fate brings her ever closer to the Prince of Macedon. Reign of Serpents is another great book by Eleanor Herman. The book maintains a constant sense of intensity and urgency, but has an awkward pacing. The pacing problems are due to two reasons.
The first is inherent in the time period. Things in ancient times took a while, but in order to maintain urgency, Eleanor has to make the events feel like they are happening quickly. She succeeds at this until she casually mentions that there is a several week time skip between the POVs of particular characters. For people who don’t notice it, the pacing carries on as normal, but for those who do, the timing of events can be enough to jerk them out of the book and make the fast pacing feel unnatural for a book that should have a slow and steady progression.
The second problem with the pacing is the sheer amount of events Eleanor Herman tries to cram into this short book that barely breaks 300 pages. So much happens in the book that many events lose their vibrancy and are turned into short and dry retellings. This is one of the few books that could have benefitted from 100 extra pages to enhance the emotional trials each character faces. While all the characters had individual arcs, all of them suffered from dry abbreviated writing that sucked the life out of them. This is a real shame as each character faced a deep emotional challenge that was undercut by dry writing.
Despite my disappointments with this book, it was an exciting story full of unpredictable twists and turns and ends the promise of much more in future installments.
I give this book 321 page book 4 stars.
Blood of Gods and Royals
The Blood of Gods and Royals series takes place in 340 BC. While the Greek gods influence the story, the plot takes place during the end of the Age of Gods. Most believe that magic disappeared with the gods, yet their are few who posses magic.