Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake Review+Discussion

Three Dark Crowns tells the story of three sister Queens on the island of Fennbirn. Each Queen is born with the promise of a gift (Mirabella controls the elements, Arsinoe will be able to control animals and grow plants, and Katherine will be able to have immunity against poison). In order to determine who is the one Queen the sisters must battle to the death over the course of a year. This novel tells the story of the four months leading up to the festival of Beltane which marks the beginning of the battle between the Queens.

I'd personally give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. Though I did enjoy reading this book and the premise has potential I just didn't feel connected to this novel or it's characters. Hopefully the second book really develops on all this missed potential.

I found the writing of the book to be a little bit iffy, sometimes it was difficult to tell who was speaking or who a character was referring to with the excessive use of "she".

There were also some plot holes to the story and some bits added in that were not necessary or didn't seem to make any sense.

The characters were also kind of one dimensional and the author clearly favoured Arsinoe and cared less for Mirabella as her point of view was used the least and her character was the least developed even though there was a lot of potential to her.

All in all this isn't a book I'd recommend unfortunately.
Spoilers under the cut!

I knew Arsinoe was the poisoner and Katherine was the naturalist from the moment she talked about Sweetheart the snake so that ending had no effect on me whatsoever.

A lot of things happened in this book that were not really necessary or just didn't make sense. Like that little story about Genevieve abusing Katherine over enjoying making poisons. Her goal in life is to become a poisoner so why would Genevieve be upset over it. Or Elizabeth loosing her hand. Mirabella was upset over it for a minute and it had no lasting effect. Or the entire character of Luke, a baker/designer running a bookstore in a fishing town?

There were redundancies in the writing where a character would think the same thing over and over again but in different ways like when you're trying to up the word count of an essay. Other times the characters would be having conversations between themselves and you'd hear what the character was thinking but they wouldn't say it in the conversation yet the other character somehow knew exactly was the character was  referring to.

Personally I felt that Arsinoe was annoying and Katherine was unnaturally oblivious. Mirabella was the only character of any interest to me yet her point of view was the least used. Even then she made obviously stupid mistakes like running away, I understand that that event was needed for the whole Joseph romance but I think it could have been better executed. The romances were cringey and lacking depth.

All of that being said I think I might read the second book in the hopes that it will be better now that Arsinoe is aware of her gift. However I'll go into it with low expectations.

UPDATE
I made it about 3/4 through the next book and just decided that it wasn't worth continuing unfortunately.