Breakaway Books

Authored by Kemi Ashing-Giwa; Published November 2025; Science Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️

The King Must Die has one of the most frustrating flaws a novel can have–it contains the kernels of far too many good ideas, and none of them is able to reach their full potential in such a short novel. As it is, I stumbled between fascination and confusion reading it.

In The King Must Die, Fen is on the run, searching for Newearth rebels who are her only hope of survival, hunted as she is by the Sovereign. Once she discovers their secret base, she quickly decides to join them and dedicate herself to their cause. However, as soon as she sets herself on this new path, she is diverted once more, swept up into an imperial prince’s crusade to bring down his brother and institute a government of true justice. Through it all, Fen seeks to uncover more about her past, her own self, and how she can possibly survive. 

The world that the author has constructed for this novel is incredibly rich, illuminating a dystopian future in which climate change has destroyed Earth and aliens so technologically advanced that they appear magical have transported the population to a new planet. From there, an insurgency of tribes against the alien-appointed sovereign ensues–and all of this is mere backstory before we get to Fen’s story and the principal narrative of the novel. The aliens who have effectively set all of these events into motion are fascinating but play a mostly peripheral role, and I wish there had been more of a focus on their activities, or perhaps just a more thorough explanation of their abilities. How can they grant a human the power to resurrect others? Where did they come from and how did they find earth? They set intricate behavioral rules for the human race to help them flourish on the new earth, but these rules are only vaguely mentioned when convenient to move the plot forward. I was fascinated by the idea of these rules, but every time one of these tantalizing regulations is brought up, it is snatched away before any real details are revealed.

I couldn’t help but wonder why all of this backstory is crammed into one book along with Fen’s journey when it seems that a trilogy, or even a longer series, would do the narrative justice. She goes from unwilling imperial servant to rebel fighter to helper of an imperial prince, and all of the life transitions she goes through carry an emotional weight that doesn’t seem to be fully expressed in this novel. I couldn’t figure out why I was trudging through this book until I realized that although I was intellectually fascinated by the ideas presented, I didn’t linger long enough in any one stage of Fen’s journey to form a strong emotional attachment to Fen or her friends. Their relationships confused me, with comments periodically thrown in about their deep romantic love for each other that didn’t quite come across in their actions. 

The King Must Die certainly got my imagination going, but it failed to fully form the wonderful ideas contained within its pages. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for new possibilities for dystopian futures, this one will fascinate you!