KING OF SCARS brings us to a new Grisha story, centered on King of Ravka, Nikolai Lantsov.
It turns out that Leigh Bardugo is not done with the Grishaverse. But she never was really done with it. It was just a matter of when she was going to come back to it, and how.
It was just confirmed on EW that the spinoff book from the Shadow and Bone series is going to be titled King of Scars. But it won’t focus on Alina or Mal. This time the story will center on the swashbuckling Sturmhond, or better known as Nikolai Lantsov, the King of Ravka.
This is what Leigh had to say about the charming privateer, including the fact that Sturmhond wasn’t supposed to live past the second book:
“True confession: Nikolai Lantsov was supposed to die at the end of Siege and Storm,” the author tells EW. “I planned to pin his murder — at the hands of his brother — on the heroine, forcing her to flee the capital. Blood! Tears! Political intrigue! And we’re off to the end of the trilogy.”
Thank the literary gods that didn’t happen! Although Bardugo didn’t save all of our beloved heroes in the Shadow and Bone trilogy as you know, Lantsov would not die.
“But once I started writing my privateer prince who has a gift for invention and no talent at all for keeping his mouth shut, I didn’t want to stop,” Bardugo explains. “Maybe not surprisingly (certainly not to him), Nikolai is the character I get asked about most. Did he find happiness? Who will be his queen? How bad was the poetry he wrote in college? I always kept quiet, because I knew I wanted to continue his story when the time was right. In King of Scars, I’ll finally get to answer those questions and more — though you may not thank me for the poetry.”
So, there we have it, Ravkanatics, we will get to hear more from Nikolai in the near future. Watch below for the preview and then read the official summary of King of Scars.
Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war—and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.
Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha Squaller, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried—and some wounds aren’t meant to heal.
King of Scars is scheduled for a Winter 2019 release.
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