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ihateprozac 's review for:
Four Dead Queens
by Astrid Scholte
2 stars. This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2019 and folks.....it was not good.
Four Dead Queens is honestly just not well written, especially given the huge amount of hype and marketing budget surrounding it.
The writing style is amateur, which I can take it with a pinch of salt given this is a debut. The writing and dialogue are overly formal, and there's no elegance or nuance to the way characters say things: they say it, yell it, or just randomly burst into tears. The amount of sudden crying and yelling could rival Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way from the My Immortal days (if you know, you know)
The world building and exposition are clunky as hell. It's a total info dump, to the point where there are literally a dozen "Queenly Laws" included at the start of the novel, in chapter headers, and in every queen-related conversation. I think if you create a dozen laws and you still find yourself having to remind the reader, your lore needs finessing.
And in spite of how much Astrid Scholte threw at me, I still had so many questions about the rules of this world - particularly Eonia. The Eonia tech had so many holes in it that I was permanently scratching my head or rolling my eyes! Because honestly, if the Eonians had And of course
Sidenote: if you segregate your world into factions, it's easy to find yourself with an awkward redheaded stepchild. We've seen it with Harry Potter and Hufflepuffs, and Divergent and Amity. The world here is segmented into technology, art, agriculture, and.........Hufflepuffs with boats.
I can forgive amateur writing or world building if the characters are solid. But unfortunately the characters are two-dimensional and suffer from telling rather than showing. Keralie is billed as this sassy master thief with a tragic past, and the author reminds you of this at every. possible. opportunity. She's meant to have this tragic and complex back story, which actually comes across as impulsive bratty behaviour. And while she's apparently great at thieving, there's no elegance or sleight of hand shown in the thievery scenes; we're just meant to take it at face value.
ALSO if you're going to include a character who literally has a lock pick on their sleeve,. And don't even get me started on that bracelet which seems impractical to the point of defying space and time!
This was billed as a murder mystery, but unfortunately author reveals the killer very early on. (Just in case you'd couldn't put it together from the clues and terribly small pool of suspects.) The mystery then sees a couple twists and turns, but it's all resolved very conveniently. I was left wanting.
Also, this book buries its gays and people of colour and I wasn't here for it.
This was all round dissatisfying and disappointing as hell. :(
Four Dead Queens is honestly just not well written, especially given the huge amount of hype and marketing budget surrounding it.
The writing style is amateur, which I can take it with a pinch of salt given this is a debut. The writing and dialogue are overly formal, and there's no elegance or nuance to the way characters say things: they say it, yell it, or just randomly burst into tears. The amount of sudden crying and yelling could rival Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way from the My Immortal days (if you know, you know)
The world building and exposition are clunky as hell. It's a total info dump, to the point where there are literally a dozen "Queenly Laws" included at the start of the novel, in chapter headers, and in every queen-related conversation. I think if you create a dozen laws and you still find yourself having to remind the reader, your lore needs finessing.
And in spite of how much Astrid Scholte threw at me, I still had so many questions about the rules of this world - particularly Eonia. The Eonia tech had so many holes in it that I was permanently scratching my head or rolling my eyes! Because honestly, if the Eonians had
Spoiler
created HIDRA by tweaking a doctor to be immune to disease, why couldn't you just tweak more doctors to be immune to disease, and then take blood from them?Spoiler
the Eonian-created chips just haaaaaaappened to have mind control abilities that explain away the whole murder plot and exonerate the protagonist.Sidenote: if you segregate your world into factions, it's easy to find yourself with an awkward redheaded stepchild. We've seen it with Harry Potter and Hufflepuffs, and Divergent and Amity. The world here is segmented into technology, art, agriculture, and.........Hufflepuffs with boats.
I can forgive amateur writing or world building if the characters are solid. But unfortunately the characters are two-dimensional and suffer from telling rather than showing. Keralie is billed as this sassy master thief with a tragic past, and the author reminds you of this at every. possible. opportunity. She's meant to have this tragic and complex back story, which actually comes across as impulsive bratty behaviour. And while she's apparently great at thieving, there's no elegance or sleight of hand shown in the thievery scenes; we're just meant to take it at face value.
ALSO if you're going to include a character who literally has a lock pick on their sleeve,
Spoiler
you're going to have to do some misdirection when she blatantly doesn't unpick a door that could save a dying personThis was billed as a murder mystery, but unfortunately author reveals the killer very early on. (Just in case you'd couldn't put it together from the clues and terribly small pool of suspects.) The mystery then sees a couple twists and turns, but it's all resolved very conveniently. I was left wanting.
Also, this book buries its gays and people of colour and I wasn't here for it.
This was all round dissatisfying and disappointing as hell. :(