This was a great debut novel. This book immediately starts out with Anji killing a king and the story continues from there. This was a fast paced and captivating fantasy. I really liked Anji’s character and her development throughout the story. If you are looking for a high stakes fantasy, you may want to check this one out when it’s released on May 13.

Thank you to Tor Books for the gifted arc.

This was one of my highly anticipated reads for 2025, and it did not disappoint. From the very first page, I knew this would be a winner. What a stellar debut!

While Anji's country is falling into the hands of an evil religious cult, she is presented with an opportunity to kill the King she holds responsible for the death of her parents. She is no trained assassin but her story reveals a history and a destiny that will surprise and endear her to readers. Enter the fabled mercenaries of the Menagerie, especially the Hawk an aging swordswoman who is surly, perhaps due to the drug she is addicted to but who has her own reasons for keeping Anji alive and out of the hands of her fellow bounty hunters, if only long enough to collect the reward herself.
With the rest of the Menagerie hot on their trail an unlikely alliance begins and a race against death that will decide not only Anji's fate, and but that of a kingdom.

Simply put I loved this book and there is a " but " coming. While the story is engrossing, the characters well fleshed out and the world building immersive, the detail of the violent acts is excessive. It is clear early on that Anji's captors have no regard for her well being other then she be alive for the bounty yet every time she is mistreated or a fight breaks out (which is often yet enjoyable), much of the extreme maiming, wounding and bleeding, frequently to just this side of death was for me gratuitous.

Anji Kills a King wastes absolutely no time. With a title like that there’s no reason to beat around the bush, but Evan Leikam doesn’t even bother with setting the scene before we’re watching Anji coping with cleanup and escape. It’s bold, it’s striking, and it makes for a pulse-pounding introduction to the land of Yem, where all is very much not well.

The pace never really slackens from there. Anji goes from hunted to more hunted as the news spreads of her defiant act, and of the staggering bounty on her head. The country’s impoverished masses are desperate for the cash, the zealots of a growing new religion are eager for the glory, and the Menagerie, the most famous bounty hunters in the land, have as many reasons as members for wanting Anji caught.

The Menagerie are all on the spectrum between zealot and sadist, and their pursuit of Anji makes for a truly propulsive narrative. I read this book largely over the course of two days, thrilled to be pulled into such a relentless plot. The character work is also excellent: Anji and the Hawk, the bounty hunter who captures Anji first and has the most complex motivations for bringing her in, are quite the duo. Their mutual mistrust only feeds their mutual curiosity, and it was as exciting to get tidbits of insight into their tragic pasts as it was to see them encounter new dangers.

It’s a book driven as much by concepts as by characters, though. Don’t get me wrong, Anji and the Hawk are both very well drawn, and I appreciated the care and attention Leikam took in attending to both Anji’s traumas and her resilience. Despite her nightmares, her fury, and her anguish, Anji retains a fierce capacity to care, especially for animals. She also keeps her snark, and the combination of the two made her very easy to root for. I also appreciated the minor characters peopling the journey. Jared and Berip are a welcome source of joy, and even characters we never meet, like some of Anji’s friends in the castle, are interesting and enrich the world.

Overall, though, this book’s main curiosity is as much with the concept of regicide as it is with Anji’s particular crime. I think it’s a concept SFF has avoided for too long, and desperately needs to reckon with: what do desperate quests and singular heroes actually achieve? When the Dark Lord falls, what happens next?

The opener actually sets the tone quite well: the king doesn’t matter at all, only the consequences of his death. It’s such a welcome departure from fantasy tropes that make everything about the lead-up to the confrontation with a wicked ruler, whose death will automatically fix everything. Here, Anji and the Hawk get to reckon with the aftermath of political violence. There are few systems in place to replace the king—no leadership, no infrastructure, and therefore, just a power vacuum that’s ripe for a new despot.


Anji Kills a King is ultimately about the high cost of rebellions and the low value of despots. Tyrants are nothing without the infrastructure that supports them or the zealots who obey them. The willingness of ordinary people to commit horrors, or do nothing as others commit them, is the real focus of this book.

Leikam does a great job thinking through how rebellion—rather than assassination—functions and where it can succeed or fail. He also does a compelling job of describing the compromises and risks individuals take on, and how those contribute to overall systems failing. The depiction of religious fervor are particularly bleak, although I’m not sure the theology makes as much of an impact as it could have.

Full disclosure: I have a master’s in religious studies, so I am far more attentive and interested than your average reader. Now, with that said, I think Anji Kills a King could have done more to describe the religions at work in the world. One of those religions is in decline, presumably because it doesn’t really meet the needs of the people—it features a pantheon that’s quite literally absent. However, adherents seem to be nice, and focused mainly on feeding the hungry. It seems reasonable that a religion of simple kindness might not enough in a time of strife, but is that the case?

The new religion on the rise is also vague in both its tenets and its appeal. Leikam is definitely critiquing the intolerance and hypocrisy of religion in our world, but does so without enough specificity in Anji’s world. Literally every adherent of this religion seems horrible, so what’s the appeal? I think a deeper mythos or theology would have helped flesh out the world and the motivations of the antagonists.

Outside of my likely-just-personal questions about religion, there were also some slight discrepancies of tone. Early on, Anji gets wildly drunk while on the run, which is so boneheaded I was expecting the narrative to be a little lighter than it ended up being. Instead, if it’s not outright grimdark, it’s certainly in the neighborhood. Children face harm and death in several poignant scenes, and there’s no shortage of suffering for adult, either. Anji’s journey is one of exhaustion, emotional devastation, and near-starvation, all of it a reminder of the dire condition of the country.

Anji Kills a King stays messy and morally complex until the bitter end. I loved that there were no easy answers for interpersonal or international issues. I will say that the penultimate confrontation was a bit odd, so much so that even Anji herself questioned it. This fight would have solved a surprising number of problems—or could have, had there been more focus on it rather than on whether Anji would be delivered to the authorities. The final reveal also felt a little forced. It made the Hawk’s motivations murkier even as it cleared up a few final logistical questions. However, I think those issues are less important than the overall ending, which was very satisfying and still left room for more. Leikam’s willingness to let things be complicated, rather than uniformly grim or perfectly tied up in a bow, shows a nice confidence in the characters and the narrative.

I look forward to picking up the next book as soon as it’s available. But for now, Anji Kills a King will be published May 13, 2025.

Thank you for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I might be in the minority here but...

I feel really bad for this one because I was kindly gifted the e-arc for a review.
*minor spoilers ahead*

But I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the book once I set it down. It felt like such a drag to get through. In the first 30% there’s the inciting incident (which we don’t get a bunch of detail about) and then Anji is on the run…only to stop in a small town, get wasted and get captured by the Hawk.
I’m sorry but if she had planned to kill the king and worked her way to that point without any suspicion, it felt wrong for her to have been captured so easily...I get that you could read into it as she is flawed...blah blah but I just didn't believe it.

Additionally she talks big talk against the Hawk when we have little to no background on how she could possibly back up her claims of being able to beat the Hawk if given the chance…

It just felt unbelievable and I was bored of their constant bickering and the slow “travel.”

In the end, I just didn’t feel attached to either of them to continue on.

Something about "the packaging" isn't working quite right. It feels "aimed at" a younger (teen) crowd, but it definitely is not with all the swearing and snark within the text, but then the writing itself just feels so young---and the dissonance is putting me off. I stopped reading after chapter 2 (9%). I think this book would have been better served had the focus been "teens with adult crossover potential." I'd imagine this will end up very niche in terms of fan base.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC.

Anji Kills a King is a prodigious, unputdownable fantasy debut; The Rundown meets Christopher Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief in this whirlwind adventure that yearns to be devoured. Leikam is going to make a ton of Top Reads of 2025 lists - guaranteed.

A pissy laundress murders one little tyrannical king and all hell breaks loose. She’s immediately caught by a grumpy bounty hunter who spits, like, a lot, and they make their way across a frozen tundra while fighting off cultists, endless bugs, fantasy-meth, and being cold literally all the time. The plot dips and weaves but doesn’t leave any holes, just a lot of “oh my god”s from all the trauma strewn around like so much confetti. Should Anji have killed the king? I’m not really sure (and neither is she) but we got this book out of it, so probably.

This debut epic fantasy novel by Evan Leikam is so inventive. The detail and world-building is remarkable and the plot and pacing make it a page turner. I loved the characters and how effortlessly they are brought to life. Anji is an imperfect hero (best kind) and, as readers, we are keenly aware of her emotional trauma. The book is filled with recognizable social commentary, which makes it all the more fascinating. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

This book immediately drew me in and started right in the middle of the action: the moment that Anji kills the king. I really enjoyed Anji as a character, and while I initially disliked the Hawk, she grew on me, too. Anji and the Hawk's dynamic reminded me a lot of Arya and the Hound's dynamic in Game of Thrones, which was so much fun. A lot of this book was focused on the journey itself and the banter between Anji and anyone she ever encountered, but it looks like the next book is going to focus a lot more on the revolution and the worldbuilding.