But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.
The last queen standing gets the crown.
I don’t really know what I was expecting from this book, but it turned out to be pretty good.
It starts off kind of dull and cold and miserable, but it soon perks up and by the time I was a couple of chapters in, I was really enjoying it.
I think the miserable beginning is down to the viewpoint it’s told from - the book alternates chapters between the three sisters and Katharine the Poisoner is up first. She’s not having an amazing time eating poison every day, so I think that’s why the beginning of the book is a bit miserable. Once we get on to Arsinoe in the next segment, things get a bit happier.
I liked the three sisters - they had enough similarities and differences to make things interesting and to make me want to keep reading, but for me the best aspect was the worldbuilding. It was really thoughtful and slightly creepy. The story is set on this island where people are gifted with different abilities, like the ability to eat poison without getting sick, or the ability to bloom flowers or ripen fruit with a wave of your hand. And that’s fine, but when outsiders visit from the mainland, you start to see how outsiders view the island, and that’s when it gets really interesting.
The plot itself is slow-moving at first and for the first three quarters of the book there isn’t a great deal that happens. I still found it very readable, though, as I was really into the characters and the relationships between them and also the setting and background of the island’s traditions. The last quarter of the book ramps the action up a lot, but I’d have preferred a bit more tension/plot in the beginning.
I didn’t realise this was a series - if I had I’d have waited a bit before reading it as the next book isn’t out for a while yet (September in the UK, I think?). I really want to read it as Three Dark Crowns ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and I’m itching to find out what happens next.
4 stars