Anji Kills a King by Evan Leikam
Whole plot kicks off because a girl does something impulsive for basically no reason, and the Furious Five from Kung Fu Panda go after her. It’s a little 🤏 bit bloodier than Kung Fu Panda, though.
I guess this book was never actively bad, but I never actively cared either. My copy of the book has my name written and crossed out and rewritten in it, so I couldn't not finish it, but I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about where a story was going to go, actually. Anji is a debut novel, and maybe I'd try other things from Evan in the future but certainly not any sequels to this.
"She kIlLeD fOr A cAuSe. Will she die for it too?" I ducking hate marketing. That girl killed for no cause at all. Sexy ass cover and title, though. Also, "fast-paced" books with minimal substance are bad. Go figure.
Read: April 5, 2026
Rating: ★★ / 5
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So there's a funky Goodreads feature I've never used before that lets you post to a blog. As it turns out, I have this website from 2008 just sitting around. Sometimes content comes around that makes me want to make my opinion known, like S02 E07 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians or the dolphin FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman episode. Maybe also the Project Hail Mary movie, which I obviously have very chill feelings about.
I've been writing reviews on some platform or another about some media or another on and off since maybe 2017. If you look hard enough, you can find book reviews, movie reviews, kdrama reviews, and television reviews somewheree on the internet written by me. Do I have any authority to criticize any of these things? Not a single bit. Maybe I'll even expand into video game reviews and Google restaurant reviews. The world really is my oyster (I don't eat oysters).
The thing about writing reviews is that I don't do it for the benefit of other people (which is good, because not many people are reading anyway). They basically function as a record of my life, and I guess I don't want to keep pretending they are objective. So this page isn't necessarily about literature or media. It's about me. Might as well consolidate everything in one place.
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AND if I'm writing about me, I can't not tell you the tale of how I found Evan Leikam a.k.a. Book Reviews Kill on Instagram and was interested in his book because I thought the title was cool. You might think I totally set myself up for disappointment by buying an "influencer book," but I barely even followed Evan when this book was announced, and I was already interested based on the title. The title, the cover, the early reviews... they all got me. It's also not some small-time publisher; it's literally Tor.
I'm not saying that I think the book deal wasn't legit. Anji Kills a King had
some polarizing reviews from the beginning, but I can definitely
understand the appeal to some extent. It starts with a bang, has a
decent structure, and I guess some people might think there is good
"banter." Maybe it can fulfill somebody's culty drug addiction story
itch. Whoa, I just realized that this book is culty, and I hate cults,
and everything makes sense now. I know why I hate it: I have no culty
drug addiction story itch (one of the reasons why Severance will never truly be my thing).
I was in a delicate state already when Joe Abercrombie's The Devils book tour skipped Boston. I wanted to go to an event, okay? Leave me alone. The book signing was at Belmont Books (very cool store, very tiny fantasy section) in Belmont, MA (crazy). This all happened in May 2025. Only took me a year to open this book.
(Joe Abercrombie is doing a signing in Brookline later this month. Very exciting for me. My first author event ever, for Rick Riordan of course, was also in Brookline.)
I made a friend at Evan's event too. I meet plenty of people in life that like to read, but meeting somebody that's interested in the same genres is quite rare. It was cool. Though making friends at this point in life basically feels like dating, at least if you meet one-on-one. Like our first time hanging out was meeting for coffee and going for a walk through a graveyard while figuring out what things we had in common and avoiding controversial topics. If anybody has better suggestions for me (re: making friends), I'll take them. This new friend told me that Anji was going to be the next book she read, but she was in fact a liar (joke).
I'm honestly usually not a hater, but I was thinking recently about books I do dislike. One example: Recursion by Blake Crouch. The books are super different: Recursion is a sci-fi thriller, while Anji Kills a King is a depressing version of a fantasy romp. The one common feature to me is that these are both fast-paced books with not a lot going on underneath. Anji tries harder at having substance, but doesn't really succeed.
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In other news, I bought shoes this weekend, which is something I haven't done since March 2022. Long overdue. I also recently went for a short hike at Mt. Agamenticus with said new shoes (not hiking shoes) and watched The Drama in theaters. Review to come for The Drama. The hike gets a 10/10.
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