Marcus B. South River High School.
The King of a ruined nation tries to hold together a country surrounded by warring nations while dealing with a demon controlling him and a cult loyal to a tyrant. To do this he is forced to work with the cult and enter a wasteland created by the tyrant that the cult worships. In this wasteland he finds out the truth behind ancient history and works to purify himself of the demon. The story also follows the adventures of a spy loyal to the king in an enemy nation trying to survive and bring it down.
I liked how it didn’t try to go back on the ending to the previous book or to try to follow the same formula as it and instead tried to make its own path in a new direction. I also liked how things later on completely recontextualized previous scenes and so if you attempt to reread the story, things would seem to play out very differently from how it did the first time. I disliked how this book would not be capable of standing alone as a novel and how despite being the first in a duology, you had to have read the previous series to even understand it. I think that fans of high fantasy who don’t mind a somewhat long series would highly enjoy King of Scars and the rest of the Grishaverse series.