The Kingdom of Little Wounds Hardcover – October 8, 2013

The author has a great command of language and a large vocabulary used to create vivid scenes for the imagination to take hold. Excellent story telling!

Oh my goodness, you guys, this book. This book! I originally checked out The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal from the library because it has a gorgeous color and the pages of this book are beautiful. They’re dyed red and so pretty. Then in my brilliance of “ebook only” phase purchased it for $10 or so. Then it sat around for a few weeks while review opportunities took precedence. One day Ruby asked if it was gothic so I went to GoodReads to see if it was or not and I was unfortunate enough to see in a review that Cokal self-proclaims her book to be “a fairy tale about syphilis”. I can’t even tell you how my stomach plummeted. Because really is syphilis something deserving of a fairy tale?And then I started reading The Kingdom of Little Wounds and I was so pissed that I had wasted $10 on this book. The first 25% of the book is horrific. I wouldn’t be comfortable handing this book off to a friend’s daughter who is a senior in high school. There is sex, rape, slavery, jeweled penises, strong subject matter and language. As a 29 year old woman it was still hard to read but damn it! I spent $10 and I was sort of disgustingly interested in where the story would go.I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I stuck with this book! If I had to classify this book I’d call it adult historical fiction. My biggest issue with The Kingdom of Little Wounds was going into it expecting young adult and getting a whole bunch of adult thrown in my face. Once I reconciled that fact I was able to really enjoy the story. There is palace intrigue, servant rivalry, insanity, court politics, life and death, and almost anything you can imagine in between.I would recommend this book for adult readers who enjoy historical fiction but can stomach the atrocities that occurred in history.First reviewed at Once Upon a Chapter

Susann Cokal's books are all edgy in a fascinating way. They are meticulously researched and she is incredibly talented at 'world building'. The Kingdom of Little Wounds is most definitely an homage to the old-style fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers. The characters took a while to get to know but they were vividly developed as the story went on. I definitely think that a high school age young adult could read this book. Yes, it is disturbing, but if parents are really seeing what their kids are watching on television, or the lyrics of the songs they are listening to, or the video games they are playing, they will see that this book is much less disturbing than much of that content. The book is true to of what life was like back then, and it was grim. The ending was perfect - not too bleak, but also not too "Disney". Bravo for another fabulous piece of literature. I hope there will be many more books by this author.

This is the perfect combination of dark and fairy tale. Not in the way of the redundant efforts of others to rewrite classic stories, but a perfect melding of beautiful written fairy tales as a plot device to further the story; to unwind the mystery of the characters and their deep, dark motivations. The small tales add to the story, which is wonderful itself. Frankly, I am jealous the author has managed to not only master the art of the story, but also the art of crafting a fairy tale. I didn't want this book to end. I know I will be reading it again. Is it sometimes unhappy, cruel, and disgusting? Absolutely, but so is life. The story was so creative I couldn't put it down. Plus, interspersed randomly in the tale are poetic, truthful lines of writing that are so insightful I found myself underlining. My only complaint would be that the end felt a little rushed, and I would have liked to stay observing The Kingdom even longer.

I was a little uncertain when I started reading this book because other reviews had mentioned the graphic content and violence. Overall, if you've read anything by George R. R. Martin or Gillian Flynn, I doubt this book will phase you (though there is an awful lot of discussion about menstrual blood which was just strange and irrelevant). The story is told in short chapters that rotate focus among the main characters. Using this technique, the author develops some interesting, though at times cliché, characters but she does so at the expense of the plot. As a result, the plot is often slow or disjointed and, by the end story, it doesn't really amount to much.

Guys seriously. Young adults? I'm 32 and I don't have kids, but if I did I wouldn't let them read this - so much that I wish I didn't read this myself. So many things about this book. I bought it based on a review someone gave of it on youtube and it was exactly the opposite of what I expected it to be. Graphic, depressing... I hate to give a review that's negative if there are some people who would like it - but I definitely regret buying it. The writing was great, obviously a talented author but the storyline... errr... If you're looking for something for your kid, or you're used to reading things like Divergent, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings - this isn't for you.

I don't consider this a book for young adults. Even though the main protagonists are seventeen or so years old they are spinsters in their world where marriages take place very early because life could be unpredictably short. As the author says, it is a fairy tale about syphilis, not exactly choice YA reading material but as a fairy tale it is very good and I will think about it for a long time.

Sometimes I got lost, not going to lie - the book shifts between storyline and perspectives and sometimes I forgot whose story I was in.But the writing is gorgeous, lush and dark and building slowly and you can just FEEL disaster creeping closer. And then you get to where everyone converges and it's not slow, it's a fast slide down into.....well, into something even more so.

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE WOUNDS by Susann Cokal is an exciting novel about the Lunedie family, a fictional Scandinavian royal family.⁣The two main characters are smart and strong women: Ava Bingen, a former seamstress who was demoted after pricking the queen with one of her needles and Midi Sorte, the black governess who was rendered mute after having her tongue cut in half. ⁣Conspiracies against the crown, illness, sex, violence, the author's pen spares no character and it is all the more enjoyable.⁣The characters of Ava and Midi are developed to perfection, and Nicolas is the very embodiment of opportunism.⁣I had a bit of a hard time getting into this world because it's not the kind of novel I like the most, but the more I got into the story the more I wanted to know how it was going to end for Ava and Midi.⁣The author took seven years to write this novel which required a lot of research: the descriptions of places and events are all the more realistic.⁣I really liked the fact that she incorporated more or less known historical elements into her fictional world and what I can say is that this book is really unique in its genre.⁣