DNF Review – Crown of Salt and Bone (The Azantian Trilogy, Book 3) by Katherine Quinn (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 449 pages
Publisher:‎ City Owl Press
Release Date: September 26, 2023
ASIN: B0CFG9ZP6R
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in The Azantian Trilogy
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 3/5 stars

“After losing the love of her life on an island of horrors, Margrete Wood opens a portal to the Underworld. She’s claimed her full powers, becoming a powerful goddess, and she’ll use her new magic to steal Bash’s soul back from the realm of the dead.E

Darius, the God of the Sea, has waited centuries for Margrete to return. She’s the reincarnation of the woman he once loved, and he’s hellbent on wiping away Bash’s memory. But the Underworld is filled with ruthless gods and corrupt bargains, and when Margrete makes a deal with the God of Death himself to get her king back, Darius agrees to help—for a steep price.

With monsters of the deep to slay and a death god to appease, Margrete is forced to work with her enemy before time runs out and everything she loves is destroyed. For good, this time.”

Series Info/Source: This is the third book in The Azantian Trilogy. I got a book for this on ebook from NetGalley for review.

Thoughts: I got about 20% of the way into this one and was really struggling so I ended up setting this aside. I just couldn’t remember any of the side characters. There isn’t much recapping in the book, so I was perplexed about what was happening. Would have been nice to have some little tidbits to jog my memory or a list of characters at the front of the book.

This book starts with Margrete and a bunch of other characters confronting the other gods in Death’s realm. Margrete is trying to bring Bash back from the dead.

I remember Bash and Margrete and remember I found them to be a bit too lovingly annoying in the second book. This book throws a whole bunch of gods at the reader right at the beginning. I couldn’t place them in my mind and couldn’t really figure out why we cared. All the side characters were similar for me, I could kind of vaguely remember them but didn’t understand why they were taking certain actions.

I don’t have time to go back and re-read the second book and honestly I didn’t like the second book in this series enough to ever want to re-read it. So this is one I ended up setting aside and just giving three stars. I was going to try to push through, but I just don’t have the patience for it right now and want to read something I will enjoy.

Actually the more I think about it, I think that it was the writing that made this hard to get back into. I just read the 2nd Poppy War book from R.F. Kuang which has loads more characters than this book and I didn’t struggle with that one at all despite the fact I read the first book a long time ago. It literally took Kuang a couple of paragraphs to re-introduce us to the key characters and that was page space well spent.

My Summary (3/5): Overall I didn’t enjoy this and struggled to get back into the story and remember any of the side characters. I would only recommend picking this up if you remember the 2nd book really well or if you have the time to go back and re-read the second book in the series. To be fair I didn’t absolutely love the 2nd book in this series either, so keep that in mind when reading my thoughts on this one.