Reviews with content warning for Blood - Four Dead Queens

Not amazing-definitely a YA ending-but still good. The main thing I found weird was the worldbuilding:
No one has ever tried to assassinate the queens before? Really?
Queenly Law is also so weird it seems to have been included for the sole purpose of highlighting the problems with the monarchy.
Also, I don't get the quadrants. I get how Archia, for instance, happens-it's an island, so there are it's borders, it's great agriculturally(main export) and that plus isolation leads to it's culture. Eonia and Toria I can kind of get- the cultures and main exports are there for logical reasons, although the borders are arbitrary, but how did you get to the point where Ludia cant produce food but has this huge culture of entertainment-how did that happen?
My main problem is that I had so many problems with Queenly Law and the divided quadrants that I could have read this book from the villian's perspective with minor changes to the motives and the villian being a morally grey protagonist.

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bookishbutterfly's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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piperclover's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I didn't realize this was going to be a deep intense fantasy plot line so I was unsure for a while if I would like it bc I usually go for more light hearted whimsical fantasy but I enjoyed this so much. The only reasons I can't give this 5 stars is that at 75% of the book we were at the peak tension building up to the climax and then we hit the obligatory makeout scene that killed so much tension and was absolutely not the right time for it. I hate that so so much.

The other reason is that there are up to 5 povs simultaneously until the very end and on top of that there's multiple timelines and eventually they do merge and everything makes sense but I don't appreciate that personally bc it makes it hard for me to keep track of. The narrators are really good at distinguishing the voices so it wasn't necessarily that I had trouble keeping track of who was who, it was just that everyone had so much information and there were so many different moving parts. I really loved though that all of the POVs except Keralie's were in third person. But because we got so many POVs from so many different people it really stood out that we didn't get a single POV from the love interest. We were in on everything except him which makes no sense and really bothered me.

The main character and the love interest are both really interesting and I love the character growth that they both went through and I really enjoyed the ending. I really enjoyed the story itself.

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katherinek's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I was so pleasantly surprised by this! I loved the back and forth between characters and I only predicted one of the plot twists/reveals. It's the kind of book where every time you think you know what's going on it turns out to be completely wrong.

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themoodreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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liz_ross's review against another edition

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lighthearted mysterious relaxing tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

"Loving someone means risking your heart being broken. But those moments you are together triumph over any hardship."

I saw this book for the first time on Goodreads. I felt in love with its cover right away. And I knew I wouldn't rest until I read it. It wasn't just because I was in love with the cover, though, you know? It was also that unshakable feeling that this book was going to be great.

And it was. Really, really great. I am sure that by now you already know how much I love having the chance to guess who the murderer is when there's one, but end up really upset if I ever do guess who s/he was too early. Because if I do, then I am just there, reading and yelling at the characters because they are too stupid to see what's right in front of them.

That's why I know this book is really great. Because even after I was so sure I had guessed everything there was to guess, I still wanted to keep reading. That urge to read this book till its last page hadn't vanished. And I am so glad I kept reading, because, yes, I had guessed everything right, but I hadn't guessed everything there was to guess. I had not guessed a tiny detail and we all know that in books sometimes it's the tiny details that make the difference between a good book and a great book. That wasn't exactly the case - the detail wasn't that 💫WOW💫 -, but it made everything even better.

Of course, the book isn't a bed of roses ~~(I have never understood this expression - how can a bed of roses be a good thing?!)~~. For starters, the world doesn't get enough development. I liked the concept and I think it could have been really great - it may not have been the most original idea for a world that I have ever seen, but it had its own interesting twist -, but it is just not developed enough. And honestly, if it was to develop the whole world and the background that led to its current political situation so little, we would have been far better with no development at all. It just raises way more questions than it answers - I mean, how was spliting the kindgom in quarters the solution to their problems?!.

Then there's Keralie. I do like her character. Just as I like all the other characters. They were well-written and had a really great development. And they have amazing personalities that make the book even more interesting. But there's this one thing about Keralie that bothered me through the whole book - HOW CAN SOMEONE WHO KEEPS TELLING ME THAT SHE FEELS BEYOND GUILTY ABOUT HER CHOICES SEEM SO GUILT-FREE ALL THE TIME?! Yes, what happened was a tragic accident and definitely not her fault. But she blames herself, or at least she keeps telling the reader that she does, and yet we never see that in her actions (or her thoughts) except when it is convenient to the plot.

And do you know what else I don't like, even if I like the characters? The romantic relationship. It is pointless. You have no doubts you'll have a love interest since the moment you read Keralie's description of Varin. But throughout the book, you can't help but wonder why is this love interest here. Not the character in himself, Varin is great, but the character as a love interest. Is it because this is a Fantasy and <i>all</i> Fantasy books need a love interest? Is it too add 💫drama💫? Because if it is, it failed miserably. WHY IS IT IN THE BOOK? All the other relationships I can understand and their amazing dynamics add something to the book. But Keralie and Varin's? I really can't understand that one.

However, these problems weren't enough to make me not enjoy the book as much as I did. And do you know why? Because Scholte is a hell of a writer. You could have guessed that already in the beginning of my review - she had to be really good to make me want to keep reading a book when I was sure there was nothing else to know that I hadn't already guessed. But right now, you can't have any doubts that she is indeed good - otherwise these three issues together would have made the book a little less enjoyable.

Scholte wrote a book with a plot that I saw for the first time - a murder mystery set in a fantasy world. It wasn't the hardest mystery to solve and it wasn't the most well-developed fantasy world I ever saw, but the two things together made it unique. Not only that but she managed to have six different perspectives in her book, all but one in the third person, and have it make sense. Which would have been hard on its own, but she also set for a complex timeline that would jump from the present to the past without warning (which I still don't understand why as the book would have been just as good with a straight timeline). And she made it work. Wonderfully, may I add, because the book really profited from it - thanks to that, to an amazign set of characters and to an amazing writing style, Scholte managed to write a really interesting, addicting book, I had no trouble reading till the end.

Overall, this book has problems, which may make the book less enjoyable for many readers. And that's obviously understandable. But it also has great things - like the attempt to join two genres you rarely see together and the whole mystery, which may be easy to solve but is definitely interesting. And the great writing style also helps. It may not be a complex book I am sure many may come looking for, but it is a funny, light read that may definitely help you get out of a reading slump.

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nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There are a lot of things to like about Four Dead Queens. Unfortunately, there are also things to dislike and sadly, I’m here to tell you that the popular observations about this book are true, and it’s a huge detriment to its overall enjoyability. I don’t regret reading Four Dead Queens – it surprised me sometimes, disappointed me other times, but was an interesting adventure overall.

I’ll start with the biggest thing, the thing all the reviews are talking about. Four Dead Queens is lacking in execution. It’s all over the place with six different POVs, messy pacing, and too many things it’s trying to accomplish. Either side of the story would have been sufficient in itself. I get how there are so many different perspectives to any event, but the reader doesn’t need to know so many of them. It muddles the plot. The story is not quite about Keralie, not quite about the Keralie/Varin love story, not quite about a coup, and not quite about Queen Marguerite’s big secret. Scholte seems to have struggled for balance between all these things – while it’s important to have subplots, all of these things are given similar weights in the story and fade in and out in importance at different times. It makes the book feel like it has four halfhearted plots instead of one strong central plot and three interesting subplots. In that way, it was difficult to be attentive for the first three-quarters of the story. Nothing was really moving.

On the other hand, Scholte had some interesting world building in Four Dead Queens. The idea of the quadrants mixes fantasy with science fiction and plays with a few favorite tropes to build something different than a lot of fantasy books coming out right now. The world building is stronger in the beginning, when the queens are not dead (I’m sorry, it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the title) – as the story progresses, it fades to focus on a single quadrant with a few nods to another. As such, Four Dead Queens left a lot of areas unexplored. Given the already scattered nature of the book, I understand that choice, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I would have liked to see more.

Eonia, on the other hand, is a bit overall sketchy. There are a lot of ableist views in the quadrant, the most blatant one being assigned “death dates”. This is the quadrants way of preserving resources – they kill citizens when they reach an age where they become a “burden to society”. This includes older citizens, but also people with disabilities. I don’t think I need to explain why that is extremely problematic. The view is challenged within the book, but not removed. Adding to this, there is rhetoric around life being fuller without a disability. There arena’s to this throughout the book as a cure is sought, but it plays in heaviest at the end when one character assures another they are looking for a way to remove the disability. This creates an extremely problematic precedent that those with disabilities not only have less value, but are somehow less than whole and cannot be happy. This is very much untrue – there are many paths to a happy ending.

I will give Scholte some points for tricking me and not following the path I expected for the first two thirds of the book. I was dead certain that events were going to go a certain way and characters’ secrets would be revealed and I was completely wrong. I’m still (as always) unimpressed with the love story, but character progression took a different path and I can respect that twist.

The end of the book tied up very nicely with a ribbon. It rushed through events at a pace I would have appreciated earlier in the novel. The lack of questioning about certain outlandish comments and overly convenient events annoyed me as a reader, but for someone swept up in the story, I don’t think they would have thought twice about it. The ending was too clean and easy and folks are way too accepting of certain things and it didn’t play believably to me at all.

Ultimately, Four Dead Queens was an interesting read, but I don’t think I would have picked it up if it hadn’t come in a book box such a long time ago.

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malloryfitz's review against another edition

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1.75

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