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A review by lawbooks600
Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake
3.0
Trigger warnings: Blood depiction, animal attack, near-death experiences, poisoning
6.5/10, I picked this up from one of the two libraries I go to and I didn't know what to expect at first since this is the first book in a series and from an author I've never read from, I was sick and tired of realistic books so I switched to a fantasy, however I found like 90% of it underwhelming and tedious to read and the remaining 10% was at breakneck speed with so much action and a cliffhanger so where do I even begin? Did I mention this was nothing what I expected since I thought I was going to get a fight to the death instead nothing much happens at all. It starts with the main characters Mirabella, Katharine and Arsinoe and they are all queens living in the same collective place but different locations which I liked however the world building is just lacking since I had so many questions like how did these countries come to be, why is it that once every few hundred years two queens are born with such weak gifts and only one is born with a strong gift and she is called a White-Handed Queen and people call the year that happens a "Sacrificial Year" where the strong queen doesn't have to kill the other queens but then what is the Blue Queen then? So hard to wrap my head around. As I said before this was a slow burn because in the first 300 pages nothing much happens except the book telling me what is happening right now in Katharine, Mirabella and Arsinoe's lives and all the other characters as well, I had two main problems with this. First off none of them are developed or fleshed out and second off there are just too many of them, why do I have to keep track of every single minor character like Jules, Elizabeth, Bree, you get the idea. In the end there was a festival called a Gave Noir where someone must kill two queens but surprisingly all of them survive ending this on a cliffhanger. Wow. I'm not sure if I want to read from this series or from this author again.
6.5/10, I picked this up from one of the two libraries I go to and I didn't know what to expect at first since this is the first book in a series and from an author I've never read from, I was sick and tired of realistic books so I switched to a fantasy, however I found like 90% of it underwhelming and tedious to read and the remaining 10% was at breakneck speed with so much action and a cliffhanger so where do I even begin? Did I mention this was nothing what I expected since I thought I was going to get a fight to the death instead nothing much happens at all. It starts with the main characters Mirabella, Katharine and Arsinoe and they are all queens living in the same collective place but different locations which I liked however the world building is just lacking since I had so many questions like how did these countries come to be, why is it that once every few hundred years two queens are born with such weak gifts and only one is born with a strong gift and she is called a White-Handed Queen and people call the year that happens a "Sacrificial Year" where the strong queen doesn't have to kill the other queens but then what is the Blue Queen then? So hard to wrap my head around. As I said before this was a slow burn because in the first 300 pages nothing much happens except the book telling me what is happening right now in Katharine, Mirabella and Arsinoe's lives and all the other characters as well, I had two main problems with this. First off none of them are developed or fleshed out and second off there are just too many of them, why do I have to keep track of every single minor character like Jules, Elizabeth, Bree, you get the idea. In the end there was a festival called a Gave Noir where someone must kill two queens but surprisingly all of them survive ending this on a cliffhanger. Wow. I'm not sure if I want to read from this series or from this author again.