The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner (2015)

Dill has a bad reputation around town and it isn’t his fault. All he’s done in his life is follow his parent’s rules and beliefs, even if it labeled him as an outsider. That was before his father got busted for being involved in some not-so-legal activities involving minors and left him and his mother with a pile of debt. Through it all, Lydia and Travis has stuck by him. Travis’ life isn’t going so hot either, so he spends all of his time in fantasy novels and carries around his staff in real life. Lydia’s real life is fantasy, internet famous and has a pass to any college she wants to go to. Right now, despite their issues, they’re comfortable. Although as they know too well though, nothing lasts forever and everything is going to come crashing down eventually.

Ever since its release in 2015, The Serpent King has been both critically appraised and a favorite among book lovers. Being the stubborn person I am, I refused to give into the hype and read it. Plus, I never took the time to read the synopsis and always thought it was some weird fantasy novel. I completely forgot about this book until last week when I was shelving it at my library and took a chance with it.

Immediately, I was completely sucked into the story. For some authors, you can totally tell it’s their debut book but I could’ve swore Jeff Zentner has been writing for ages. This is a book about real life. About the fact that things fall apart and sometimes there’s nothing you can do except sit there and watch your life go out the window. There isn’t really any plot to this book, which I’ve noticed usually happen with my favorite books. It’s simply following Dill, Lydia, and Travis over their senior year and what happens within that tim.

That being said, the pacing of The Serpent King was a little funky. Overall, the novel takes place over a year but in a very choppy way. For the first 100 pages or so, only four days are documented. Then, all of a sudden, three months have passed and it’s now winter. This worked both as an advantage and disadvantage. First, in the first 100 pages, Zentner provided a really good opportunity to establish the characters and their personality traits. On the other hand, the rest of the book and storyline was then crunched because their was only so much left to cover the whole year.

The Serpent King is told from three different perspectives: Dill, Lydia, and Travis. Normally, when I read books from multiple points of view I always have my favorite but I truly enjoyed every perspective (besides Lydia’s toward the end). I also appreciated that every character’s voice was individual and unique. I never was mixing up their perspectives and each was distinct. In general, I also liked the characters themselves. I loved how honest Dill was with his situation and I could definitely identify with Travis’ love of books. I did have a little bit of trouble with Lydia. I felt that she had her head in the clouds the whole time and was super spoiled. She pushed to get her way in every situation and when it didn’t go her way she acted like the victim.

This book is full of tragedies, but there’s one big one that happens in the last third of the book that’s supposed to shake everything up. Personally, I thought the character’s reaction to the tragedy was quite odd. For about 30 pages, it was what consumed the story and then there was almost no mention of it. Now, everybody reacts differently to trauma but I was kind of blown away with how they acted.

Regardless, I really enjoyed The Serpent King. So much, in fact, that I just picked up Jeff Zentner’s new book. Goodbye Days.

4 Stars