Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

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Justification

I received an autographed copy of one of the other books in the series as a gift some time ago and decided to give Three Dark Crowns a go. The premise is intriguing--triplet queens are born with differing powers granted by a divine entity. At the age of 16, they essentially duel to the death for the throne over the course of a year. Each sister is possesses one of three gifts--the naturalist queen has an affinity for growing things and animals. The elemental queen controls fire, earth, wind, and water. The poisoner queen is immune to poison. After a feast celebrating their birthday, they begin their attempts at killing one another.

Response

(E) Three Dark Crowns starts off incredibly slow. The first three quarters of the novel are devoted to introducing the three queens, their love interests, and a few other relevant characters. I think it is worth getting through those first three quarters because the plot twist at the end grabbed me hook, line, and sinker. For a fantasy world, especially one made for young adults, to be successful, the lore needs to be easy to understand. The reader is going to be dropped in, no matter how well you set things up and explain them. The first quarter of the book was where I debated whether or not to DNF and move on because I was unclear on any of the lore. All in all, the characterization is well done and I found myself liking all three queens for differing reasons. They are all reasonably well developed, though I was questioning the addition of chapters devoted to certain side characters until the end of the book.

(D) I really enjoyed the fact that this was a very #ISupportWomensWrongs type of book. All three queens make at least one terrible choice, though Katherine's is in all ways, justifiable. This makes it incredibly difficult to choose a specific character to root for and I am sincerely hoping it works out that there is a fourth queen, since there is implications of other types of queens in the past that were born with other types of gifts. Though, I'm not sure how it could work out to have a happy ending, since a queen has to kill her sisters in order to ascend the throne. I feel like Blake is going to surprise me more than a few more times throughout this series.

(G) Overall, I think Blake is a decent writer--though I think she had too large an amount of lore and character development in the first book. I'm glad this is a series, though with the faster pace of the last quarter of book one, I was desperate to check out the second book and would have been whining over the wait had I read this when first released. Sitting at just over 400 pages, it's a reasonably short novel in the realm of fantasy novels. Had it been longer, I might have given up sooner and not finished reading it. As of right now, I am working through book two and the pace is well set. I have questions that have been answered and I keep developing more as I move through the plot. I think I'll end up finishing the series and I'll definitely try her other series as well.


Conclusion

I think people are justifiable in not finishing the book--it isn't unreadable by any means, but if you aren't enjoying something you aren't obligated to finish reading it. The premise is fantastic, but I will say that Blake can be a bit pretentious with the prose. Wholly appropriate for a high school aged audience. Since there is a brief sex scene that isn't wildly graphic, I don't think this is appropriate for a middle school library. Depending on the age of my child and their maturity level, I'd probably let my own kid read it.

Citation

Kendare, B. (2016). Three Dark Crowns. Quill Tree Books.

Genre: YA Fantasy