What do you think?
Rate this book
Slinger #2
Royalslinger: discover the Slinger series - Pokemon meets Amari and the Night Brothers!
Graci Kim is back with the final book in her exciting and fantastical Slinger duology where dragons and phoenixes roam the skies of Seoul; meals magically appear based on your mood; and dreams literally come to life.
“A mind-blowingly original fantasy adventure—Graci Kim has done it again!”—Rick Riordan, New York Times #1 best-selling author of Percy Jackson and The Olympians
“A definite must-read for anyone who loves stories of found family, clever magic, and learning to embrace your true self. Also: I want a bloom dragon!”— Shannon Messenger, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series
After successfully passing the Annual Royal Slinger Trials, Aria is about to kick off her second year of training at the Royal League of Dreamslingers. All she and her bloom dragon, Rio, have to do is pass the final Fellowship exam and they’ll finally become fully-fledged Fellows.
But before training can begin, the king of Royal Hanguk cancels the exam, and instead commands Aria and the other novices to reclaim the Touch of Death—a powerful ancient relic that was stolen from the kingdom. And by Aria’s mother, no less.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Aria experiences a devastating loss and considers going to horrific lengths to cope . . . even potentially joining the freedom slingers—a rogue and dangerous faction of dreamslingers. How will Aria choose to deal with her grief? And will her decisions result in the end of the League?
“A mind-blowingly original fantasy adventure—Graci Kim has done it again!”—Rick Riordan, New York Times #1 best-selling author of Percy Jackson and The Olympians
“A definite must-read for anyone who loves stories of found family, clever magic, and learning to embrace your true self. Also: I want a bloom dragon!”— Shannon Messenger, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series
After successfully passing the Annual Royal Slinger Trials, Aria is about to kick off her second year of training at the Royal League of Dreamslingers. All she and her bloom dragon, Rio, have to do is pass the final Fellowship exam and they’ll finally become fully-fledged Fellows.
But before training can begin, the king of Royal Hanguk cancels the exam, and instead commands Aria and the other novices to reclaim the Touch of Death—a powerful ancient relic that was stolen from the kingdom. And by Aria’s mother, no less.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Aria experiences a devastating loss and considers going to horrific lengths to cope . . . even potentially joining the freedom slingers—a rogue and dangerous faction of dreamslingers. How will Aria choose to deal with her grief? And will her decisions result in the end of the League?
- GenresFantasy
235 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 21, 2026
About the author
Graci Kim
6 books636 followersGraci Kim is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of the Gifted Clans series: The Last Fallen Star, The Last Fallen Moon, and The Last Fallen Realm. Featured in TIME Magazine for Kids, and dubbed a “sparkling yarn” by Entertainment Weekly, the Korean mythology-inspired trilogy is being translated into multiple languages.
The Last Fallen Star was named a 2021 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Children’s Book, an Amazon Best Book, an Indigo Best Book, a Barnes & Noble Young Reader Pick, and a Whitcoulls’ Kids Top 50. In 2022, Graci was awarded the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent.
The first book in her new series, Dreamslinger (think X-Men meets Pokémon, set in a Korean magic school) will be published in April 2025.
In a previous life, Graci was a New Zealand diplomat, a cooking show host, and once ran a business that turned children’s drawings into cuddly toys. She now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with her husband and daughter. You can follow her on Instagram (@gracikimwrites), join her newsletter at gracikim dot com.
The Last Fallen Star was named a 2021 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Children’s Book, an Amazon Best Book, an Indigo Best Book, a Barnes & Noble Young Reader Pick, and a Whitcoulls’ Kids Top 50. In 2022, Graci was awarded the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent.
The first book in her new series, Dreamslinger (think X-Men meets Pokémon, set in a Korean magic school) will be published in April 2025.
In a previous life, Graci was a New Zealand diplomat, a cooking show host, and once ran a business that turned children’s drawings into cuddly toys. She now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with her husband and daughter. You can follow her on Instagram (@gracikimwrites), join her newsletter at gracikim dot com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Royalslinger arrives as the conclusion to Graci Kim's Slinger duology, and it brings with it the ambitious premise of a Seoul-set fantasy steeped in Korean mythology, a young dreamslinger named Aria navigating grief and forbidden magic, and a world of bloom dragons and rogue slingers. Unfortunately, the execution falls short in ways that are difficult to overlook.
Seoul is a city of extraordinary texture—layered history, sensory richness, a genuinely atmospheric urban landscape. As someone who has visited, I found myself repeatedly waiting for the book to bring it to life, and repeatedly disappointed. The city functions more as a backdrop label than a living environment. Readers who have never been will not come away with a felt sense of place, and they deserve better.
The word ‘mudang' is tossed about like an iceberg lettuce salad with cheap dressing. Shamanic tradition in Korea is genuinely rich and nuanced, and the mudang figure deserves more than passive mention. Similarly, the mythology underpinning this world—which has real potential to introduce young readers to Korean folklore—is presented in a grossly oversimplified way for a book marketed on its cultural grounding. This is a missed opportunity. Kim is clearly a writer with a beautiful sense of imagination in the process of blooming. It seems that she is just getting started and I hope her future work gives more atmosphere and mythological fidelity.
The compound word constructions (dreamslingers, bloomslingers, dreampanion) accumulate in a way that starts to feel more like corporate branding than world-building. It felt like a sophomoric stylistic choice, and others may find it charming— but overall, it pulled focus from the story itself. The UNESCO-recognized 600-year-old traditional folk song and cultural anthem, Arirang is often associated with the emotions of han (sorrow, longing, traumatic injustice) and hung (resilient joy). It is a poignant song of love, separation, and endurance, symbolizing the resilience and shared history of the Korean people across both North and South. There are mentions of this song without incorporating the contextual emotional themes into the story.
The novel does take on weighty themes—grief, forbidden magic, dangerous alliances, a rogue faction operating outside sanctioned power—and these are exactly the kinds of themes that young readers respond to when given the chance. I kept waiting for the bass to drop and the layering, rhythmic density, and texture to evolve. But the prose is so stripped of descriptive interiority and tension, that the emotional stakes never quite land. By the end of the book, it had the effect on me that was akin to when I thought That Darn Cat would be the most awesome movie ever just because there was a cat in it… but it turned out to be the most flat, monotonous movie I’ve ever seen in my life. This tendency to conflate accessibility with simplicity seems to signal that young readers can’t be trusted to engage with complexity.
Young readers are more capable than this book gives them credit for. My friends' children are capable of understanding mythology. For example, a friend has been reading from Legendary Creatures: Mythical Beasts and Spirits from Around the World by Adam Auerbach to her three-year-old and shared that he is now obsessed with a Japanese folkloric creature. Another friend, who has experience as a primary school teacher, reads Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones to his daughter. She is younger than middle-grade and enjoys such books.
Royalslinger will find its audience, and Kim's commitment to centering Korean culture in fantasy for young readers is genuinely commendable in intention. But as someone with a background in global studies (Technological, Cultural, Political, Economic, and Environmental Globalization; innovative approaches to understanding of power, exchange, creativity, and social life), including studies of the Korean Language and East Asian cultural anthropology, work with the United Nations Development Programme, and a long-standing interest in mythology and speculative fiction, I'd hoped for something with more cultural richness, more delightful prose, and more faith in its readers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced review copy.
Seoul is a city of extraordinary texture—layered history, sensory richness, a genuinely atmospheric urban landscape. As someone who has visited, I found myself repeatedly waiting for the book to bring it to life, and repeatedly disappointed. The city functions more as a backdrop label than a living environment. Readers who have never been will not come away with a felt sense of place, and they deserve better.
The word ‘mudang' is tossed about like an iceberg lettuce salad with cheap dressing. Shamanic tradition in Korea is genuinely rich and nuanced, and the mudang figure deserves more than passive mention. Similarly, the mythology underpinning this world—which has real potential to introduce young readers to Korean folklore—is presented in a grossly oversimplified way for a book marketed on its cultural grounding. This is a missed opportunity. Kim is clearly a writer with a beautiful sense of imagination in the process of blooming. It seems that she is just getting started and I hope her future work gives more atmosphere and mythological fidelity.
The compound word constructions (dreamslingers, bloomslingers, dreampanion) accumulate in a way that starts to feel more like corporate branding than world-building. It felt like a sophomoric stylistic choice, and others may find it charming— but overall, it pulled focus from the story itself. The UNESCO-recognized 600-year-old traditional folk song and cultural anthem, Arirang is often associated with the emotions of han (sorrow, longing, traumatic injustice) and hung (resilient joy). It is a poignant song of love, separation, and endurance, symbolizing the resilience and shared history of the Korean people across both North and South. There are mentions of this song without incorporating the contextual emotional themes into the story.
The novel does take on weighty themes—grief, forbidden magic, dangerous alliances, a rogue faction operating outside sanctioned power—and these are exactly the kinds of themes that young readers respond to when given the chance. I kept waiting for the bass to drop and the layering, rhythmic density, and texture to evolve. But the prose is so stripped of descriptive interiority and tension, that the emotional stakes never quite land. By the end of the book, it had the effect on me that was akin to when I thought That Darn Cat would be the most awesome movie ever just because there was a cat in it… but it turned out to be the most flat, monotonous movie I’ve ever seen in my life. This tendency to conflate accessibility with simplicity seems to signal that young readers can’t be trusted to engage with complexity.
Young readers are more capable than this book gives them credit for. My friends' children are capable of understanding mythology. For example, a friend has been reading from Legendary Creatures: Mythical Beasts and Spirits from Around the World by Adam Auerbach to her three-year-old and shared that he is now obsessed with a Japanese folkloric creature. Another friend, who has experience as a primary school teacher, reads Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones to his daughter. She is younger than middle-grade and enjoys such books.
Royalslinger will find its audience, and Kim's commitment to centering Korean culture in fantasy for young readers is genuinely commendable in intention. But as someone with a background in global studies (Technological, Cultural, Political, Economic, and Environmental Globalization; innovative approaches to understanding of power, exchange, creativity, and social life), including studies of the Korean Language and East Asian cultural anthropology, work with the United Nations Development Programme, and a long-standing interest in mythology and speculative fiction, I'd hoped for something with more cultural richness, more delightful prose, and more faith in its readers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced review copy.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you, NetGalley and Disney Publishing Worldwide, for allowing me to read Royalslinger in exchange for my honest review. #Royalslinger #NetGalley
At first, this story was hard to get into. I appreciated that this story picked up where the last one left off. I wish there were some kind of recap for those who might have forgotten details from the other story. As I kept reading, things were coming back to me. from the first book. Aria and her friends are now novices and in the midst of their training when a "war" breaks out among the freeslingers, anti-slingers, and the league over the ancient relic of death. Meanwhile, the turmoil of each group is brewing in the background a significant event happens to Aria that leaves her to question everything and everyone. To find out more, read Royalslinger today.
Overall note, the story builds, and characters grow throughout this novel, and the ending is a decent ending.
At first, this story was hard to get into. I appreciated that this story picked up where the last one left off. I wish there were some kind of recap for those who might have forgotten details from the other story. As I kept reading, things were coming back to me. from the first book. Aria and her friends are now novices and in the midst of their training when a "war" breaks out among the freeslingers, anti-slingers, and the league over the ancient relic of death. Meanwhile, the turmoil of each group is brewing in the background a significant event happens to Aria that leaves her to question everything and everyone. To find out more, read Royalslinger today.
Overall note, the story builds, and characters grow throughout this novel, and the ending is a decent ending.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"Royalslinger" is a middle grade fantasy full of magic, friendship and adventure. This is the sequel to Graci Kim's Dreamslinger and it picks up right where the first book left off. The story is Korean inspired and weaves Korean folklore into the fantasy in a way that was very intriguing for my middle grade reader.
I read this book with my tween and we both enjoyed. Graci Kim is one of her favorite author, so she was especially excited. Here is her review:
Royalslinger is an amazing book filled with magic, friendship, grief and teamwork. I really liked Dreamslinger and was excited to return to the world and following Aria's story even further. My favorite part was when Aria got reunited with her bloom dragon Rio.
Thank you Graci Kim, Disney Publishing Worldwide and NetGalley for a copy of "Royalslinger" in exchange for my honest review.
I read this book with my tween and we both enjoyed. Graci Kim is one of her favorite author, so she was especially excited. Here is her review:
Royalslinger is an amazing book filled with magic, friendship, grief and teamwork. I really liked Dreamslinger and was excited to return to the world and following Aria's story even further. My favorite part was when Aria got reunited with her bloom dragon Rio.
Thank you Graci Kim, Disney Publishing Worldwide and NetGalley for a copy of "Royalslinger" in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was excited to receive an early copy of Royalslinger from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review. I enjoyed the first book Dreamslinger where we meet Aria, Tui, Lion, and her dreampanion Rio. The sequel Royalslinger is six months after the first book. The story went in a different direction then I thought it would but I enjoyed the journey it took us on. The lesson that the story portrays is an important one. I hope everyone enjoys Royalslinger and the conclusion to The Slinger series.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Great follow up to the joy that was Dreamslinger! Graci Kim does an incredible job fleshing out the world she's dropped us in and I'm here for every step of this journey!
The only downside is having to wait for the next one!
The only downside is having to wait for the next one!
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
July 31, 2026
This mifdle grade series is SO good! I actually prefer this sequel to the first book. I will definitely be picking up more books by this author.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. This was another action packed read by Graci Kim. I like how Aria and her friends keep going no matter what and they realize there’s always another way; even if it doesn’t seem like it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews