Retro Review: Three Dark Crowns
/When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.
It took way too long for this story to click into place, and when it did, it was only-sorta-barely satisfying enough. I was into the premise (very, very, very Game of Thrones-ish) and the writing is ... pretty good, but I completely understand why many did not finish. The number of characters is off-putting, especially at the beginning, and the lack of action causes things to really drag. Pacing, pacing, pacing.
I don't mean to be entirely negative. Blake earns points for a fun ending and some interesting loose ends. I liked the mood, the atmosphere, and the fairy tale tone. There's a sense that we started reading this story through a magnifying lens and our view will now expand rapidly until we get some history/context. Intriguing! And the book tastes awesome - it's got that spicy fantasy flavor everyone knows and loves. At the end of the day, though, it just didn't satisfy my hunger.
I think I might read on, hoping that some of the issues resolve themselves in book 2. Oh, and I would ask for fewer empty romantic subplots but I'm not so sure that's a Blake thing. That just may be a YA fantasy thing.