Book Review: And Break the Pretty Kings by Lena Jeong

And Break the Pretty Kings by Lena Jeong

 Book title: And Break the Pretty Kings
Author: Lena Jeong
Genre: YA fantasy
Published: June 20, 2023
448 pages
My rating: 3/5

Summoning fire was easy. Mirae had been studying the manipulation of the four elements her whole life. Scorching the woman in front of her, however, was something she hadn’t managed even once in the past three months.

After a generational madness incapacitates her mother, sixteen-year-old crown princess Mirae needs to take the crown. Before she can do that, she needs to show herself capable of wielding the three magic powers of her bloodline, including her rare ability to switch with herself in time. But when a monster is unleashed and her brother is kidnapped, she must embark on a mission to save her brother and to stop a war that has been brewing for thousands of years.

And Break the Pretty Kings is the first book in Lena Jeong’s young adult fantasy series Sacred Bone. It is also Jeong’s debut novel. I liked the Korean-inspired fantasy world and found the magic system interesting enough. However, despite the worldbuilding being solid, it wasn’t super exciting.

I liked that the book focused less on romance and more on family and Mirae’s relationship with her brothers. There is little to no romance in this book, although there are hints that the later books in the series will have more romance.

Other than that, I’m not really sure how I feel about this book. Based on the blurb and the first chapters, I formed an expectation of what would happen in the story, but after the first chapters, the plot took a direction I wasn’t expecting – before veering back to the direction I had thought it would take in the first place. For the majority of the story, I didn’t know what this book was trying to accomplish. It seemed to mostly work as a set-up for the later books in the series, but since the book was mostly set-up, it didn’t work as an independent story that would make me eager to continue with the series.

The time travel aspect was interesting and one of the reasons why I picked this book up, but ultimately I found the time switches rather confusing, especially since Mirae often jumps so far ahead in time that we never get to see those parts of her life in this book. Again, they seemed like a set-up for the later books. The switches with her future self were also used as a convenient way of her getting out of whatever scrape she was in, which means that we never actually see her getting out of dangerous situations. Instead, she returns to the present world after the situation is over, armed with some new and confusing information about the future.

Mirae’s characterization was rather frustrating. She is reckless and makes rash decisions, and although she in the end realizes she needs to learn to be more patient, I’m not sure she quite succeeds in that. She is also a little too trusting. She’s told that she will hear both lies and truths and that she needs to figure out which is which, but she never stops to do that. She simply presumes everything she learns must be true.

There are several deus ex machinas where side characters appear to save the day and little plot holes where I didn’t understand how Mirae knew or guessed or realized certain things. As a reader, I would have preferred more breadcrumbing along the way so I could have figured things out myself, instead of being spoon-fed the realizations Mirae had.

I hope that most of the issues I mentioned are simply debut novel kinks that will get ironed out in the later books in the series. Although I don’t think I will continue with the series, I can recommend it to younger teen readers who want a Korean-inspired fantasy with elemental magic, a dash of time travel, and a focus on familial love. I gave the book three stars.