Three Dark Crowns by Kendare BlakeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is another great story and fantasy novel concept, with 3 strong and unique female leads.
The concept: triplet queens are separated from age 6 and trained (in quite different ways), until they reach the age of sixteen, at which time, one will kill the other 2 with her powers and ascend to the throne.
The story is told in 3rd person, but it follows all 3 stories separately, until they start to combine.
My only minor complaint is that when listening to the audiobook (which has an excellent reader: Amy Landon), there is nothing to mark the changes between the 3 separate stories. I often found myself suddenly flailing, when it would transition to a new batch of characters, without warning. The confusion would sometimes turn me into a poor listener, and I would get distracted trying to sort out what was happening, then have to rewind.
In addition, there is a character called Madrigal in one world, and another called Mirabelle in another. Since those 2 worlds tended to always follow each other in the story, this confused me about 30% of the time, for about 50% of the book. I think it’s a simple author misstep of giving 2 somewhat prominent characters’ names that are way too similar. Don’t get me wrong. I like both names. I just found myself constantly rewinding and confused each time we switched perspectives. This could just be me being a bad listener, and maybe those who read the story in print won’t have any difficulties with this similarity.
Despite this, I still enjoyed this story and really invested into these characters, even some of the side characters. I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good fantasy novel, accompanied by a dose of angst.
POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT:
One final thing to note is that there is (from my perspective) an obvious twist in this story, though I am an avid reader and expect some readers will not see it coming. However, despite the sly clues about the upcoming twist, I was still happy when it finally occurred, so it wasn’t a situation where I saw it coming and was therefore bored. It’s more like the author was clever about dropping only the tiniest hints, which had me expecting this twist throughout, but I continued to be unsure if and when it would ever occur. At one point, I even started doubting myself, so I didn’t mind this in the way I mind stories that are painfully obvious without reason. This story had its reasons, and overall, that worked for me, particularly since it made me hope for something that changed the game in an interesting way.
Pages: 398
