As is my style, let's get right to pointing out flaws and complaining about it.

This review contains mild spoilers that imo don't diminish the reading experience but if you want to go in completely blind, reading reviews is probably not the smartest move anyway.

Early on there is a scene where someone forces people to spew secrets with his powers as a demonstration of his powers. The kinds of secrets he lets people spill are completely inappropriate and his last attempt is totally unacceptable but apparently everyone is just fine with that for some reason. I think the author forgot that those characters didn't know each other well at that point yet which made their reactions feel out of whack.

There is a quad friendship that suffers from multiple very cringy and melodramatic confession of friendship scenes and the like.
So if you can't take things similar to "I really love you all, you are my best friends, *tears up*. Friend answers: I really love you all too." or "I would die for you all." and worse, you might want to skip this one. It's a bit much in places and its not just one scene either.

At one point important people think that two characters have a culturally scorned love affair even tho they are not shagging but apparently, they can not explain this for fear of the truth of why they were caught in these compromising positions being revealed. (That was a bad sentence, sorry.) That at least is what the Author tries to sell us but if you think about it for just a minute a perfectly reasonable explanation that is close enough to the truth to pass by any lie detection ability (which is a prominent thing) is obvious and relatable. In fact, the feared truth detection paradoxically makes this explanation perfectly workable. Luckily the misunderstanding™ didn't become relevant at least not in this book. I mention this flaw because this conflict receives a LOT of page-time while being easily solvable all that time which was frustrating.

Another problematic thing is that the supernatural community is assaulted by extremist non-magical humans repeatedly and is apparently completely unable to defend itself properly which I just find bonkers. They are so incredibly powerful and have virtually unlimited financial resources at their disposal and their apparent elite protection is a constant topic but despite all that they get ripped to shreds by frontal attacks etc. that never in a thousand years should've been possible.
I really hope it turns out the attackers had massive help from moles and traitors within to pull these attacks off (but there were no indications anywhere in this book afaict). Otherwise, this completely compromises the core of the plot.
/rant off

Final thoughts:
I really hope the next volumes don't confirm my fears of these flaws but I am a bit disillusioned at this point because I almost never have seen a redeeming second book in these kinds of situations. It's usually the opposite. You only realize how bad it really is in the second one.

Ignoring all the maybe-flaws I can recommend this to romance and friendship fans in a paranormal setting. Sadly the end is very much open and cliffhangery so I wouldn't recommend reading this as a standalone.
Before writing this review I was tempted to give this 4 stars. I enjoyed it very much but after writing all these problems down I can not in good conscience do so.

(Btw there only is an audiobook of the first book.) ( )

I didn't know what to think of a book that opened with a subject of jumbo dicks. Apparently, everybody in that school is hung like a horse, because they are *mystical beings*, and that's just one of the perks. I was left to conclude that wielding of such powers needed stern education. Fair enough.


That being said, it was one of the rare mature moments of the novel.

We follow Lilly, a tragically elected queen of the weres, after the death of her mate Dominic. She is learning how to govern- this is my simplest explanation- with three other Prodigies, each of witch will led their own people. Ezra for the Vampires, Pearl and Jack for the Elementals.

Now allow me to say that this book had so much potential to become something good, to become a series that would grip an audience for a long tine coming. But it wasn't. The reason???? Juvenile, high-school drama. By that i mean overreacting about insignificant matters, without a valid need for such.

Lilly's mate Dominic dies right? After only a brief mourning period, she concludes that the only way she will ever have any joy in her life now that her mate is dead, is to fill the void by having random, meaningless sex for the rest of her life. Now, if we take in mind the very first chapter of the novel, and apply what we learned from it, to give us a sense of proportion, we must agree that it is indeed, a very big void to fill.

The newly elected Prodigies, strike a kind of friendship in witch they support each other, stating that there is nobody out there that could understand the pressure of having to rule. The idea is solid, and the argument made sense....if they actually did anything of the sort.

They were basically a bunch of young adults, in a school teaming up because their popularity is so hard to bare, and apparently is, equally hard to explain to somebody else. Huh???



This here is a massive wall that Dawn presented to her readers. She had a good idea of how her novel should go, just, didn't back it up with the behavior of her characters. I couldn't emotionally connect to a bunch of characters just because she claimed there was a deep emotional connection. I couldn't relate to a girl that states how lucky she was to have found her one true love(Dominic), how unbreakable and unique mating is. That the loss of him, brought her so much pain, a loss that will never be forgotten.....no i couldn't relate, because in the same time she is flippant about casual sex, with random partners, that don't deserve an emotional response from her, because she's hurting.Like that gives her a green light to stomp on people around her. On top of it all, she has a full mental breakdown because she thinks she's ugly! Wait...WHAT??? Yeah, this is all grief about Dominic here...i can see it, plain as day. When she rubs her naked self all over Ezra, and thinks about his c*ck, yup, nothing but sheer pain there...

Look I don't mind sex in my books, and love my PNR's but this wasn't thought trough. It had the elements of being a quality NA story, but sadly it dealt with childish matters, in childish ways. The end result- BORING, CLICHE, AND UNIMPRESSIVE.
( )

Warning - Once You Start This Book You Won’t Want to Put It Down!

What a find! Scarlett Dawn has created a new urban paranormal world of Coms (humans) and Mys (mysticals - shapeshifters, vampires, mages and elementals) who are just trying to get along - well, most of them that is. The story
follows the new generation of the four predestined rulers of the Mys, Lily, Ezra, Pearl and Jack as they undergo training to take over the leadership of their faction in the Mys world. The four characters are entertaining individually and together as they bond over their future responsibility. Their story is about friendship, love, loss and secrets as the Fab Four start crossing the strict boundaries between each of the Mys factions as they begin to prepare to rule. The four also are trying to navigate the tenuous politics of working with the Com world which seems to have developed a terrorist group actively acting against the Mys world and trying to kill off the four. We follow all this through the perspective of Lily, the future Shifter Queen, who is hiding the fact that she is a hybrid of two of the four factions which is considered an abomination within the Mys. BUT don’t confuse ‘King Hall’ as a coming of age story for the Young Adult audience. The characters and story are complex and filled with emotion and action with a splash of fun and romance that keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. The book is the first in a series and ends on a cliffhanger. However, the book does not leave you unsatisfied as Scarlett Dawn wraps up much of the initial storyline and starts the next phase for the Fab Four as they are thrown into the responsibility of their positions. Don’t miss this exciting and creative new book based in the world of urban paranormal which will grab your attention and leave you craving for more.

I received this ebook for free in exchange for an honest review. ( )

I strongly believe the first scene of a novel, the first paragraph, hey, even the first words, absolutely set the tone for the rest of the book. So you can imagine what I was thinking when the first words of King Hall were "Sex Education" and the first scene was an awkward, terribly clichéd sex ed class where the teacher proudly proclaimed that Mystics (who are supernaturally gifted) are better endowed than their human (Common, or Com) counterparts, and brandished two differently sized bananas around to make her point.

Yup, I basically thought this book was going to be about the main character doing the dirty with everyone in sight. Especially since in the first chapter, she couldn't go two minutes without reminding us how awesome that aspect of her private life was. Imagine my surprise, then, to not find a single explicit sexual encounter, and further-more, no make-out scenes between the 4 protagonists.

The book is set in a world like ours, but where supernaturals are out in the open. There four different types of Mystic: Vampire, Shifter, Elemental and Mage, and each has a King (or Queen) who rules them for 20 years before choosing a successor. King Hall follows the four newest Prodigies as undergo leadership training. It's like college - there's drinking and dancing and sex - but everything is more complicated where magic is involved. Lily, our main protagonist and the future Shifter ruler, doesn't want to be the future Queen, not only because she's a hybrid and will be condemned to death if anyone finds out.

King Hall suffers mostly from being too vague: I don't understand why the Mystics all school together but romantic entanglement isn't allowed, and thus don't really quite get what the big deal is with Lily's secret, especially since everyone who finds out doesn't care. I don't understand the King system and what, exactly, is expected of a ruler of a class of Mystic. I don't understand the mating magic, and like Lily, struggled with how little choice there seemed to be in the matter. There are a lot of world building elements that the author sneaks past readers by being hand-wavy, or by making it so complex you begin to think that it must make sense, and you're missing something.

I feel the novel is let down because it doesn't feel plausible: why would the announcement of the successors of the current Kings occur in a school gymnasium? Why do the four of them still have to pretend to attend school (they all graduate with college diplomas, but after they were announced as successors, I don't remember them attending class, except when they learnt self-defence). I'd have also thought, that as heir apparents, they would have had a lot more security than they seemed to have around them, and that, in Lily's case especially, there would be rules in place to prevent intimate relationships between the guard and the person they're meant to protect.

But the book perked up when the four future leaders of the Mystics, two women and two men, are forced to train together. Their friendship is amazing, and I think it's one of the strongest messages in the novel: the importance of friendship and loyalty in the face of everything else. But because Mystics traditionally don't get along, their bonds are treated with mistrust by their future subjects, and things get a little awkward. I thought, with the four of them spending so much time together, that there would be awkward romantic tension and what-not, but the author handles it well with the mysterious mating magic rendering cheating impossible, and the only two unattached members of the group hiding too many secrets to be romantic.

That's not to say there isn't romance in the novel, because there is! But it takes a back seat to the friendships between our characters, and their journey to learn how to govern their peoples well, combine their magics to achieve goals, and generally learn the ways of the world they are going to eventually watch over. There are bawdy jokes aplenty though, and although some made me laugh, many were cringe-worthy. I also think that the author tried to make the blood exchanges between the characters sexy, but I mostly found them awkward. For example, Lily's unusually small stature amongst the Mystics was an interesting quirk, until it led to her having to assume increasingly intimate positions with her partners to exchange blood - then it felt a bit contrived. And there's an exchange scene right at the end that honestly confused me more than anything else, because ... well you'll have to read it to see what I mean.

I also liked the introduction to the politics of the world the author has created. The tensions between the Coms and the Mystics. It feels a bit archaic (especially when a political marriage was briefly on the cards) and I'd really like to find out more. I would have also liked a bit more insight into the Com state of mind. I don't understand why the races don't get along, although the Coms being threatened by the Mystics and their powers is certainly plausible.

Overall, I found King Hall to be enjoyable. It could have been better, but there is a lot to like about Dawn's début, and I will keep an eye out for future books in the series. King Hall leaves the story open to a sequel, and I'd love one so I could learn more about the world, but mostly it's been exciting to read an NA novel that's not centred on sex.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.
You can read more of my reviews at Speculating on SpecFic. ( )