Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Renegade
SERIES: Kingmakers – Book Two
AUTHOR: Jaye McKenna
PUBLISHER: Mythe Weaver Press
LENGTH: 246 Pages
RELEASE DATE: January 22, 2019
BLURB:
After betraying his oath to the Khalshir Guild, Coryn is expecting to be sentenced to a painful execution. Instead, he’s sent out on an assassination job designed to test his loyalty. When the test demands a moral sacrifice Coryn can’t bring himself to make, he flees, only to end up in captivity with two outlanders.
Kai is determined to save his teenage cousin Adrian from an abusive father. Before he can come up with a plan, their long-lost grandfather kidnaps them and whisks them away to another world. Once there, Kai learns that Adrian possesses a power that makes him a valuable commodity, and that protecting him may be far more dangerous than facing down his drug-addicted uncle.
With the Guild hot on his trail, Coryn has no intention of getting entangled with his fellow captives, but when a chance for escape comes, he finds himself unable to abandon the pair to certain death. Reluctantly, Coryn takes Kai and Adrian under his wing, all the while struggling to deny his growing feelings for Kai.
Can Coryn evade the Guild long enough to help the cousins escape their grandfather and find a mythe-weaver powerful enough to send them home? And if he succeeds, will his heart survive losing the man he’s beginning to care for?
REVIEW:
The Kingmakers series is the second series I’m reading by this author at the same time, and I’ve got to be honest, at first, I was a little disgruntled and confused to read another series which references back hundreds of years to the events in the other series I’m currently reading by the author. But that went away quickly, once I got into the swing of these tales. As with the author’s other series that I’m also posting a review from this week, I needed to go back and reread the previous book in this series to bring myself up to date. I read too much, or it might be that brain issue I had a few years ago, but regardless, I find it hard to remember all the characters and all the storylines in all the series I’m currently reading. So… I have to reread them. In the case of this author, that is never a chore.
Renegade follows along after the events in Khalshir, which I reviewed previously (here) with a very short, I believe three week break. This time we’re focusing on the other assassin, Coryn, and where he goes after his crush went off and fell in love and ran off to a kingdom over the mountains. Coryn is off on a new mission for the Khalshir Guild and this time he can’t screw it up… because if he does, he will be ‘retired’, which is the Khalshir Guild term for being forced to consume a poison which will kill him over an extended time while he screams the entire time. It doesn’t sound pleasant when described, and you can’t blame him for not choosing that option. The mission goes horribly wrong though when he discovers he was lied to and the woman he is supposed to assassinate isn’t a woman but an innocent young girl. Soon he is on the run from both the soldier’s in the girl’s country, but also from the Khalshir.
Then came chapter two. I was like WTF. It was set in Minneapolis! I thought at first that I had opened the wrong book, but kept reading and all was explained. No spoilers there. In fact, no more spoilers of any kind.
I loved this book, and highly recommend reading both books in the series back to back. I now need to wait for book three. It is obvious that there will be one, but when???
If you like fantasy and magic, and you aren’t reading Jaye McKenna’s books, you are doing yourself a disservice, pick one up today.
RATING: 
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