The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner

"All those years, I thought I was unhappy. I don't think anymore that I was," Leo reflects early in The Eyes of a King, looking back on his teenage self.

Now, after 250 pages of military dictatorship, abusive teachers, missing parents, Leo being sick, Leo’s little brother being sick, kids getting drafted into the army, and heavy-handed foreshadowing of a tragic event that happens around the 225-page mark, and Leo brooding about all of these things? If this is Leo North when he’s happy, I don’t want to read on to see just how unhappy he gets, so I stopped.

Don’t get me wrong. I read all kinds of literature in which terrible things happen. I’m a George R.R. Martin fan, for crying out loud, and we all know how wantonly he slaughters his characters. In Martin’s ... Read More