Three Dark Crowns {Kendare Blake}

#TheReadingQuest: A Book Set in a Different World √

“I want revenge,” she whispers, and her fingers trail bloody streaks down Natalia’s arms. “And then I want my crown.”

Rating: ѱ ѱ ѱ ѱ ѱ ѱ {6/10}

NON-SPOILERY SECTION

Had I not been on holiday, I am certain I would have read the Three Dark Crowns in one sitting. I flew through this – above all else, this novel was a fast and enjoyable read. I think this may be my favourite Kendare Blake book I’ve read, though that does not mean it is wholly without flaw. It was jam-packed with characters, world-building and plot twists, which was great, but unfortunately it left little time for minor character development and caused some unwanted confusion.

This book, in my opinion, would have done better with about a 100 pages more, just to be able to be fleshed out a little more. However I do understand that we will have three more books for that – and I am pretty excited for the next instalment – One Dark Throne.

I am quite pleased to have picked this up as part of The Reading Quest because it fits in nicely with the feel of the challenge – the adventures of the three queens are compelling and grand, and all the while you are reading, you can hear the tick tock of the clock, counting down the days until the queens must face each other.

I have mentioned in a previous post that the Three Dark Crowns would be the Fungeon Book Club Book of the Month for August. You guys don’t know what that is yet, so let me give you a brief idea. Basically, me and two other bookish nerds, who also happen to be two of my best friends, decided to collaborate each month and buddy read a book of our choosing. We have only been planning and setting up for this for a couple of weeks and we had hoped that this book could be the first on our list. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the girls couldn’t read this in time, so we have had to postpone the launch of the book club. Hopefully, a proper launch will happen at the end of September or October at the latest. I’ve decided to tell you guys about this though, so that you can look forward to our collabs. And now, back onto the actual review!

Short & Sweet

Three Dark Crowns is a story of a mystical land. A land where in each generation, triplets are born to a ruling queen. These triplets should posses powers stronger than any of the common people and when they come of age, they must face each other in a quest for the throne. Only one queen can survive and rule the lands.

Queen Katherine is a poisoner queen. After a long line of strong, proud poisoner queens, Katherine is expected to carry on the ruling of the Black Council. However Katherine’s gift is weak – the common people whisper about the frail, pale queen, who cannot stand any poison at all.

Queen Arsinoe is a naturalist queen. She should be able to bloom any plant or flower, and she should be able to control a glorious familiar, an animal which bends to her will. However Arsinoe can do none of those things and is rumoured to be an ugly, savage thing, not dignified enough to be a ruling queen.

Queen Mirabella is an elemental queen. She can command storms and lightening, make fire and water bend to her will. Her beauty and grace know no bounds, and she is rumoured to be the strongest elemental born in generations. Mirabella has the love of the people and the priestesses and everyone knows she should be queen.

The Ascension Year is here. The three queens have come of age. They must showcase their powers, court the best king-consorts and fight their sisters to the death. With such an uneven spread of gifts and powers, the battle seems predetermined. But this is only the beginning.

Cover

The cover design is very simple. Had I been judging the book based solely on the cover, it would not get a lot of praise. The reason I picked this up was the synopsis alone. The cover, with the simple golden crown and some red roses thrown in there screams amateur hour to me. YA books released around 5-10 years ago had the simplistic image, black and red thing going on, and that was a trend that grew boring quickly. I can’t say that I am a fan – it doesn’t tell me anything else other than what I already know from the title, and it does not draw attention. But at least we didn’t get a female face on it – a trend that I loathe very much.

SPOILERY SECTION

Okay, so while I enjoyed this book, and I think it has some potential, I find much fault in the characters of this book. I will go through the three main characters in isolation, and then do a quick review of some side characters of note. But I must say that, in my humble opinion, this book simply included too many characters. I kept confusing Luca with Sara and Joseph with Matthew for a good half of the book, and there were many more that I confused with others. But firstly, I will talk about the main queens.

I feel as if we got to know the least about Katherine, and yet she was my favourite queen. Maybe because she did not question whether she could kill the other queens like Mirabella did and she did not try to run like both of her sisters. Despite being the weakest, despite getting the worst upbringing, she somehow remained the strongest (in terms of willpower, not necessarily gift). She was also the warmest out of the three, though you can only notice that later. She bared Genevieve’s bullying and Natalia’s plots. She did her duty and though she failed again and again, she was told she was weak and ugly and incapable, she kept on trying, and that is something I admire very much.

We did not get to see her interact with the other two queens, so I am curious how that goes in the next book. Her relationships remained few, which may be why I enjoyed her chapters so much – I was not confused by an onslaught of unnecessary characters. Pietyr was a big enigma for me, but I did not see his betrayal coming, therefore I enjoyed the twist. Also, unlike Joseph and Billy, Pietyr had more of a different personality – he was charming and seductive and cryptic but also ambitious. That made him stand out, and in turn, improved Katherine’s storyline.

Katherine’s character development was humongous. She sheds her vulnerability and grows into herself, thanks to Pietyr. And then due to his betrayal, she finally becomes a true poisoner queen. Poised, proud and deadly. I am pretty excited to see how dark Katherine can get in book two, and I am definitely a supporter of hers – she had been underestimated for way too long.

I did have a theory that Katherine may be a naturalist instead, and that Sweetheart was her familiar, but she probably would have recognised that Sweetheart died if that were true. She would not be fooled by the second snake. I don’t know what it is about her, but I feel like we have many more plot twists coming from Katherine.

Arsinoe was a curious character. I did not actively dislike her, but she bothered me in many scenes. While Katherine was just as weak as Arsinoe, it was the naturalists moping that frustrated me. She was quite selfish, in my opinion – even when Jules and everyone else was doing everything in their power to save her, she kept saying that she was going to die. She could have at least tried harder, for their sake. And when she tried escaping alongside Billy, knowing just what it cost Jules, Joseph and Caragh the first time around, she truly showed how selfish she was.

I am glad that she wasn’t openly jealous of Jules – that would have been a terrible plot point, because the strength of that friendship was what made Arsinoe sufferable. Which is why I didn’t understand why she followed Madrigal so much, knowing that Jules would not approve. And the whole love spell they did, which obviously caused Joseph to cheat with Mirabella, was something Arsinoe should have never allowed. I was shocked to see that Arsinoe never told Jules about the spell. She should admit her blame, but even on Jules’ deathbed, Arsinoe never considered it, instead focusing on her new-found abilities.

As a side note, after recently suffering a devastating bear attack, why in the hell did they thing that the bear trick on Beltane would work? That was such a terrible plan! All three queens’ plans were pretty bad. The priestesses’ plans were based on hopes of a crowd massacre, which could have gone wrong in so many ways. As mentioned above, the bear fake-out was so dangerous. Katherine’s poisoned food fake-out was not a bad plan per se, and it definitely worked, but I wish we had seen just how exactly Natalia had managed to swap the food under the priestesses’ noses. It was a bit of a fake-out, not to show us that. I also wish we could have seen just how Jules ensnared the bear. That would have made for a more exciting chapter.

Now, back to Arsinoe’s characterisation. I don’t really understand her relationship with Billy. I like their friendship – it developed quite naturally, which worked well alongside Billy’s and Joseph’s friendship. But I am unsure whether Kendare Blake is trying to make them a thing. If so, I don’t really see this becoming a budding romance, especially seeing as Billy is a carbon copy of Joseph.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the addition of the naturalist queen. She was definitely raised differently from the other two queens and had other priorities. I just don’t see how Arsinoe could inspire such devotion and gain so many allies. Her personality was more dull than Katherine’s, who had no friends at all. Though as a last note on Arsinoe, I must say that the face injury and her defiance in front of the crowds at the Disembarking did seem very cool and softened me towards her a little. I may grow to like her more in the following books, if her character keeps developing in this direction. The whole poisoner queen reveal was so unexpected – I loved the twist! I hope Arsinoe actually manages to use this well. I also hope that the second book explains how this came to be and how it was missed when the queens were just children.

Queen Mirabella was not my favourite. She had been given the most advantages – her power, her beauty and so much support – and yet she could not use any of her gifts right. She did not deserve the support of the temple and Luca, as she was not ruthless enough to kill her sisters like a true queen would. As the only one to retain her memories, she was too weak with love for her sisters. I like this addition but I somehow felt throughout the novel that Arsinoe should have been the one second-guessing the Beltane ritual, with the way she was raised. Mirabella was raised to follow the rules and respect tradition – she already carried herself like a ruling queen and was treated as such, so I feel like she should have been the most emotionless one of the three.

She also did not know how to use her powers well – she could control the elements sure, but once she decided to escape, she never once used her powers to aid in that escape. With such a strong gift, she could have disappeared quite quickly. She also doesn’t plan, or didn’t at least until the end of the book, to use her powers against her sisters, so they seemed wasted on her.

Lastly, she also did not know how to use her beauty. At the beginning, Natalia worries that all the suitors will support Mirabella, because Katherine looks too weak and Arsinoe is too ugly. But once the actual Disembarking happens, it is Arsinoe’s defiance that draws attention, and Katherine’s warmth that catches the eye, not Mirabella’s regal look. She only uses her beauty to ensnare a boy who already loves another, and I am pretty sure is under Madrigal’s spell.

I quite enjoyed the way Kendare Blake twisted things around. Mirabella, who by all means looks like a winner already, turns out to be the weakest queen in my opinion. As Luca plans to make this A Sacrificial Year, it is exactly the opposite that happens – Mirabella weakens as her sisters gain more power and confidence.

All three main characters had good and bad sides, but I enjoyed reading about them all, and leaning this new world. My main issue lies with he fact that because we had so many side characters, there was no time to develop their unique voices and personalities. Most of them seemed the same and so I could not form an attachment to any. When Elizabeth lost her hand, I could not care less because I could not tell her apart from Bree and the other priestesses. This is a big flaw in the book which kept taking me out of the reading zone. I had to trace things back just to understand who is who and which camp they belong to. I hope that there will be more time to develop these in the following book. If this issue is resolved, I really think that this series has potential to become something truly great.

Overall, I loved the ending of the book the most. The twists kept coming and I am so interested to see how it all develops in One Dark Throne, which I believe will be released on the 21st of September. I will be reading it as soon as it is out, because I am invested in these queens, so look forward to my review for the next instalment. Thanks for reading this post and supporting my blog! Please let me know what you guys though of this novel own below in the comments – I’d love to know which queen was your favourite and why!

Love, Ostrich