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mia_luvsreading's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Blood, and Violence
Moderate: Body horror, Death of parent, and Gore
Minor: Sexual content, Animal cruelty, and Animal death
pageafter_paige's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This final book wrapped up the series better than I had anticipated. I laughed, I cried (twice), and I screamed throughout the story! The character arcs came full circle and really tore my heart out. Even though romance isn’t the focus of the book I am always rooting for Billy and Arsinoe so without the bonus epilogue I would’ve been in limbo. Overall great series and I found this book very fast paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Infertility, Torture, Body horror, Grief, Murder, War, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Violence, Abandonment, Animal death, Blood, and Confinement
emtees's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I finished this book yesterday and normally I’d give myself a few days to think about it before putting down my thoughts. But this book keeps going down in my estimation every time I think about how it ended, so I needed to write down the good parts before I forget them. There were a lot of good parts - up until about 2/3 of the way through, I thought this was going to be my favorite book in this series - but the way so many of the character arcs ended left me very dissatisfied.
Five Dark Fates (don’t ask what those are, we’re never told, though if I had to guess I’d think maybe the five powers found on Fennbirn?) starts off in the aftermath of the disastrous meeting between the Undead Queen and the rebel faction which left Madrigal Millone dead, Katharine barely in control of the dead queens who possess her, and Jules in the thrall of her legion curse. Pietyr’s attempt to use low magic to free Katharine from the queens failed, leaving him in a coma and Katharine alone and increasingly desperate. It’s into this environment that Mirabella arrives to answer Katharine’s call for unity, partially because she doesn’t really believe in the rebellion and the need to bring an end to the line of triplet queens, but also because she wants to figure out the mystery of Madrigal’s last words: “she has the dead in her.” Her quest to figure out what is really wrong with Katharine and how much of the little sister she once loved is still in her leads her to investigate the history of Fennbirn’s queens and reforge her connection with her mentor Luca, the High Priestess who betrayed her. The more time Mirabella spends in the capital, the more she feels torn between her two sisters and the very different futures they support for the island they were all born to serve.
Meanwhile, with the rebellion, Arsinoe cares only about saving Jules. To find a way to free her best friend from the legion curse, Arsinoe finally embraces her nature as a poisoner. But while she may pretend not to care about the bigger political matters around her, the rebellion is still alive. Emilia, their war-gifted leader, is still determined to see Jules on the throne, and while Arsinoe is a potentially valuable ally, she also represents the old world that the rebellion wants to overthrow. And Mirabella’s defection has left Arsinoe caught between the sister she loves and the friend who has been her most loyal ally all her life.
Like I said, I really enjoyed this book for the majority of the time I was reading it. I really love these characters and the relationships between them. Kendare Blake does a great job with complicated friendships, whether it’s the difficult history and lingering love Mirabella has for both her sisters, the complex feelings of Arsinoe and Katharine for each other, the deep loyalty of Arsinoe and Jules or the sweet sisterhood between Mirabella, Bree and Elizabeth. I especially liked getting to see some of these relationships shift around. Arsinoe and Emilia will clearly never be friends, but I liked seeing their points of connection. I was glad that Bree and Elizabeth had come to care about Katharine, and I even enjoyed the brief alliance between Arsinoe and Pietyr. And Blake takes that same complexity to the larger groups - seeing Arsinoe try to find her place within the rebellion or Mirabella with the Temple that both raised and betrayed her were great.
It was also great to finally dig into the background of Fennbirn. Since the beginning of the series, there have been intriguing hints about this world, it’s Goddess and it’s magic: where did the line of queens come from and why are they locked into a cycle of sacrifice and death; what is the relationship between the queens and the Temple; what is the source of the mist that protects Fennbirn but keeps it isolated from the outside world. In this book, for the first time, it felt like the characters themselves were interested in these questions, and we got to learn more than we had before. Other than the question of the mist, none of these were really answered, but there was enough to hint at other stories in Fennbirn’s history. I wouldn’t mind if Kendare Blake decided to write more stories in this universe.
So that’s the good. What about the bad? Well, an unfortunately large percent of the plot of this story centers around terrible communication. There is an entire subplot in the middle of the book that only exists because Mirabella, for no good reason, ran off without leaving Arsinoe a note telling her where she was going, and even when they meet up again, she still won’t explain for reasons that make no sense. Arsinoe is also keeping a major secret from Mirabella - but one she has no problem sharing with just about everyone else. Luca holds the key to explaining one of the big mysteries of the story, but rather than just spit it out, she sends Mirabella on a library quest, I suspect just to take up more time in the book. That leads to another problem: a lot of this book involves characters trying to figure out the answers to questions the audience already knows. I was really interested in the story of Illiann and Daphne that was introduced in the previous book and wanted to know more about it; instead, we got to spend time in this book watching Mirabella and Katharine, separately, learn the same information Arsinoe got in the last one.
If those were the only problems, I would have been okay with a book that stretched its story out unnecessarily to get to a satisfying ending. But instead we got deeply unsatisfying endings for the majority of the characters and a very weak wrap-up to the plot.
Spoilers for the ending of Five Dark Fates: I went into the book expecting Katharine and Mirabella to die. Katherine has been a tragic character from the beginning, and once she decided that the dead queens possessing her had to be defeated, I thought she would die to do it. And while I knew Mirabella wouldn’t be queen - too many people kept insisting she was born for it for the story to actually end that predictably - I was also sure she wasn’t going to get the happy ending as a teacher on the mainland that she’d dreamed of. Mirabella was too sure that she had been born to serve the island and I thought she would do so by dying to stop the mist. So for both of them, I expected a sad ending… but I also expected one that had a point. Instead, Mirabella was killed by Katharine, not to stop the mist or save anyone, but so she couldn’t be possessed. And the writing of that scene was so awkward - her death came out of nowhere, right when it seemed she and Katharine were finally going to get some answers about the Goddess and the cycle of queens, and it was written to deliberately obscure that I guess she asked Katharine to kill her? That’s revealed later like it was a big surprise but it sure didn’t feel like one. And the timing meant that Mirabella ended up having no role at all in the climax of the story. (Yes, she wrote Arsinoe a note telling her to… do exactly what Arsinoe had already planned to do anyway. So helpful.)
Katharine’s death was equally pointless. It seemed that she had accepted that she had to let Arsinoe kill her to destroy the queens, but then Arsinoe managed to exorcise the queens out of her with low magic. So instead Katharine died by… falling off a building trying to save Arsinoe? And then the mist killed the queens for… reasons…. None of it felt like a satisfying end for any of these characters or relationships. Not to mention all the worldbuilding around the dead queens, Illiann and Daphne, the mist… none of that really went anywhere. The magic apparently just sorted itself out.
I was happy to see Jules end up as queen - I’m always here for a disabled heroine - but her storyline felt like it kind of fell apart at the end too. Jules accepting her legion curse as the only way to defeat the dead queens: great. Jules’s legion curse then just disappearing because I guess she’d used it for what it was meant for? Uh, sure. (And are she and Emilia getting together or not? I know that’s not the most important thing but there was such build up around that relationship and then it never got resolved. I appreciate Jules having difficulty moving on from Joseph but it felt like there was a scene missing here.)
Arsinoe was the one main character who did have a satisfying ending. Arsinoe was the queen who always expected to die and who never fought for anything but her own survival and that of her friends, so it was nice to see her finally embrace her power - and her low magic! - and step up as a queen. I was glad she survived, glad she doesn’t have to be a ruling queen, and glad that she and Billy will probably end up together after all they’ve gone through, even though the last-minute drama over their relationship felt unnecessary. I still wish her connection with Daphne felt like it had any kind of point or resolution.
I would still read more Kendare Blake books but I’m not sure I’d recommend this series without a serious warning that the ending is not a satisfying one.
Five Dark Fates (don’t ask what those are, we’re never told, though if I had to guess I’d think maybe the five powers found on Fennbirn?) starts off in the aftermath of the disastrous meeting between the Undead Queen and the rebel faction which left Madrigal Millone dead, Katharine barely in control of the dead queens who possess her, and Jules in the thrall of her legion curse. Pietyr’s attempt to use low magic to free Katharine from the queens failed, leaving him in a coma and Katharine alone and increasingly desperate. It’s into this environment that Mirabella arrives to answer Katharine’s call for unity, partially because she doesn’t really believe in the rebellion and the need to bring an end to the line of triplet queens, but also because she wants to figure out the mystery of Madrigal’s last words: “she has the dead in her.” Her quest to figure out what is really wrong with Katharine and how much of the little sister she once loved is still in her leads her to investigate the history of Fennbirn’s queens and reforge her connection with her mentor Luca, the High Priestess who betrayed her. The more time Mirabella spends in the capital, the more she feels torn between her two sisters and the very different futures they support for the island they were all born to serve.
Meanwhile, with the rebellion, Arsinoe cares only about saving Jules. To find a way to free her best friend from the legion curse, Arsinoe finally embraces her nature as a poisoner. But while she may pretend not to care about the bigger political matters around her, the rebellion is still alive. Emilia, their war-gifted leader, is still determined to see Jules on the throne, and while Arsinoe is a potentially valuable ally, she also represents the old world that the rebellion wants to overthrow. And Mirabella’s defection has left Arsinoe caught between the sister she loves and the friend who has been her most loyal ally all her life.
Like I said, I really enjoyed this book for the majority of the time I was reading it. I really love these characters and the relationships between them. Kendare Blake does a great job with complicated friendships, whether it’s the difficult history and lingering love Mirabella has for both her sisters, the complex feelings of Arsinoe and Katharine for each other, the deep loyalty of Arsinoe and Jules or the sweet sisterhood between Mirabella, Bree and Elizabeth. I especially liked getting to see some of these relationships shift around. Arsinoe and Emilia will clearly never be friends, but I liked seeing their points of connection. I was glad that Bree and Elizabeth had come to care about Katharine, and I even enjoyed the brief alliance between Arsinoe and Pietyr. And Blake takes that same complexity to the larger groups - seeing Arsinoe try to find her place within the rebellion or Mirabella with the Temple that both raised and betrayed her were great.
It was also great to finally dig into the background of Fennbirn. Since the beginning of the series, there have been intriguing hints about this world, it’s Goddess and it’s magic: where did the line of queens come from and why are they locked into a cycle of sacrifice and death; what is the relationship between the queens and the Temple; what is the source of the mist that protects Fennbirn but keeps it isolated from the outside world. In this book, for the first time, it felt like the characters themselves were interested in these questions, and we got to learn more than we had before. Other than the question of the mist, none of these were really answered, but there was enough to hint at other stories in Fennbirn’s history. I wouldn’t mind if Kendare Blake decided to write more stories in this universe.
So that’s the good. What about the bad? Well, an unfortunately large percent of the plot of this story centers around terrible communication. There is an entire subplot in the middle of the book that only exists because Mirabella, for no good reason, ran off without leaving Arsinoe a note telling her where she was going, and even when they meet up again, she still won’t explain for reasons that make no sense. Arsinoe is also keeping a major secret from Mirabella - but one she has no problem sharing with just about everyone else. Luca holds the key to explaining one of the big mysteries of the story, but rather than just spit it out, she sends Mirabella on a library quest, I suspect just to take up more time in the book. That leads to another problem: a lot of this book involves characters trying to figure out the answers to questions the audience already knows. I was really interested in the story of Illiann and Daphne that was introduced in the previous book and wanted to know more about it; instead, we got to spend time in this book watching Mirabella and Katharine, separately, learn the same information Arsinoe got in the last one.
If those were the only problems, I would have been okay with a book that stretched its story out unnecessarily to get to a satisfying ending. But instead we got deeply unsatisfying endings for the majority of the characters and a very weak wrap-up to the plot.
Spoilers for the ending of Five Dark Fates:
Katharine’s death was equally pointless. It seemed that she had accepted that she had to let Arsinoe kill her to destroy the queens, but then Arsinoe managed to exorcise the queens out of her with low magic. So instead Katharine died by… falling off a building trying to save Arsinoe? And then the mist killed the queens for… reasons…. None of it felt like a satisfying end for any of these characters or relationships. Not to mention all the worldbuilding around the dead queens, Illiann and Daphne, the mist… none of that really went anywhere. The magic apparently just sorted itself out.
I was happy to see Jules end up as queen - I’m always here for a disabled heroine - but her storyline felt like it kind of fell apart at the end too. Jules accepting her legion curse as the only way to defeat the dead queens: great. Jules’s legion curse then just disappearing because I guess she’d used it for what it was meant for? Uh, sure. (And are she and Emilia getting together or not? I know that’s not the most important thing but there was such build up around that relationship and then it never got resolved. I appreciate Jules having difficulty moving on from Joseph but it felt like there was a scene missing here.)
Arsinoe was the one main character who did have a satisfying ending. Arsinoe was the queen who always expected to die and who never fought for anything but her own survival and that of her friends, so it was nice to see her finally embrace her power - and her low magic! - and step up as a queen. I was glad she survived, glad she doesn’t have to be a ruling queen, and glad that she and Billy will probably end up together after all they’ve gone through, even though the last-minute drama over their relationship felt unnecessary. I still wish her connection with Daphne felt like it had any kind of point or resolution.
I would still read more Kendare Blake books but I’m not sure I’d recommend this series without a serious warning that the ending is not a satisfying one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Death of parent
reckless_counsel's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Death, and Death of parent
emily_mh's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
The best way to sum up my feelings about this book (and this series as a whole, really) is that nothing feels developed enough. It's like a cake. The core elements - the flour, sugar, eggs, etc. - are there, and they're good, but it wasn't put in the oven long enough so everything about it seems underbaked. Like you're about to sneeze and you know it's gonna be a good one, but it never comes. Or a 2D drawing that was meant to be a 3D rendering.
In terms of specifics, the ending action was pretty good.Although the most important chapter in the whole book, where Katherine changes allegiance and Mirabella dies, came across as a sketch or an outline, so didn't feel like the momentous event that it was. Mira dying at this point before she could really made an impact also just turned her into a non-character for me. But apart from that, I don't have much else to say.
In terms of specifics, the ending action was pretty good.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, War, and Self harm
Moderate: Death of parent, Cannibalism, Ableism, Child abuse, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, Torture, and Body horror
Minor: Child death, Grief, Alcohol, Sexual content, Infertility, Vomit, Confinement, Medical content, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Pregnancy
Illness, loss of a loved one
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