DNF Review – Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns, Book 1) by Kendare Blake (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 432 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-0062385444
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Three Dark Crowns series
Source: Swapped through Paperbackswap.com
Rating: 3/5 stars
“In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.
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.
This is the first book in the Three Dark Crowns series. This is another one I am setting aside (I know two this week). I read the first 100 pages and just could not get into this story. I really enjoyed Blake’s “Anna Dress in Blood” series, but did not enjoy her Goddess War series.
The book switches between the three heirs to the throne (three sisters) and each chapter for them is very long (about 20-30 pages). By the time you get to the next heir I had started to forget what happened to the previous one. It takes a long time to introduce the sisters and the multitudes of characters surrounding them. Finally around 90 pages in introductions are getting wrapped up….
I was also not a fan of the premise of these three sisters fighting to the death…although I could have possibly got into that if anything had happened. In the first 100 pages nothing happens and it’s very very boring. This was another book for me where I would pick it up, read a couple pages, and then look for something else…absolutely anything else…to do.
Overall this was definitely not the book for me which made me a bit sad. Between this book and “Antigoddess” I think I am done picking up books from Blake. Oh, well on to something else.
