Review: Gary the Once and Former King by Isabel Murray

Title: Gary the Once and Former King

Series: The Unwanted King: Book Two

Author: Isabel Murray

Length: 242 Pages

Category: Fantasy

Rating: 3 Stars

At a Glance: Gary the Once and Former King comes down to this: it wasn’t necessary to read this book. It doesn’t add anything of depth or value to what I already knew about Gary and Magnus. It’s light on plot and heavy on the erotic, so if that’s your cuppa, you won’t be disappointed in the least.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: The Kingdom of Estla is in turmoil. Power plays, intrigue, and plots seethe in the corridors of power. And Gary of a Hundred Days, Last of the Tyrant Kings is …well.

He’s dead.

That’s what (almost) everyone thinks, anyway.

As far as Gary’s concerned, they can go ahead and keep thinking it. He’s busy living a whole new life with his beloved Magnus on a homestead in the heartland of Caithen—a kingdom where they don’t want to kill him—and he’s learning all sorts of interesting things about exactly what it means to be a husband and a bondmate.

Okay, he’s trying to learn. It’s turning out to be a lot harder than he thought.

Callin, the ex-stable lad and Gary’s new (first!) best friend, has been less than helpful when it comes to giving Gary the correct advice on how to proceed in intimate matters. The books Gary ordered for instructional purposes are taking forever to arrive. And just as he’s starting to make progress in the bedchamber, Gary’s past as the rightful King of Estla rises up once more…

Review: Gary the Once and Former King does not fulfill the promise of the first line of its blurb. Where was all the plotting and turmoil and power plays? Not on the page, and frankly, it needed to be. There’s low angst, and then there’s low stakes, and then there’s this sequel to the sweet Gary of a Hundred Days, which could have made the background high stakes tensions a lot higher without compromising Gary’s adorkability and innocence. Instead, this book is Gary’s Sex Education Magnus-style, with some more gentle and tender and comically awkward Gary moments sprinkled in between.

Despite my disappointment that I didn’t get more character or world building, there were some bright moments in the story: Gary does come into his own in the end, the implications being owed to Magnus teaching Gary not to be afraid to ask for what he wants. Gary does stand up against those who helped to plot his demise; he does get his happily ever after. He also makes himself a best friend in Callin, who gets his own interesting development that may figure into another book in the series. If Isabel Murray writes it, I will read it with the hope that Callin will be offered a more complex storyline.

Gary the Once and Former King comes down to this: it wasn’t necessary to read this book. It doesn’t add anything of depth or value to what I already knew about Gary and Magnus. It’s light on plot and heavy on the erotic, so if that’s your cuppa, you won’t be disappointed in the least.