Review: The Three Black Crowns- Kendare Blake

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Three sisters with different powers who need to kill each other to take the throne. This is the striking basic premise of three black crowns, which at first seemed a very promising start to a saga that mixes elements that are very popular nowadays: the war for the throne and supernatural powers.

And perhaps it is this mixture that the saga shows, but not in this first volume. Kendare Blake delivers a very juvenile plot in this book, where the day of the battle just surrounds the events and the real focus is the daily life of the young queens. The main objective should be the day of the battle between the three queens, where only one will come out alive and take the throne, however this is not exactly what is presented.

The first problem with the work is in the presentation of the characters. With the narrative divided between the queens of the kingdom, each chapter focusing on one of them, the customs and the different existing kingdoms are played in the plot to have some details released throughout the reading, which results in a little confusion in the reader, which ends up taking a while to catch the rhythm of the story.

Katharine is the first queen presented, with the power of poisoning. The youngest of the sisters - who are considered sisters only because they were born on the same day and thus chosen for the positions, as tradition says - she has the difficult mission of proving herself strong when in fact she is one of the weakest poisoners of her family. Kingdom.

Already Mirabella is an Elemental Queen, who appears to be the strongest of the three. However, the beautiful and strong queen is the only one who doesn't want to fight and is also the only one to dream and remember the time when she was united with the sisters and the bond that the trio had.

Finally, we have arsinoe, the naturalistic queen who actually has no powers - a fact that everyone tries to mask. This should be the most interesting character, being charismatic and having a well-placed dilemma, but she shares so much focus with her creator. Jules, which ends up being played in the background and at times causing a conflict of information that can confuse the reader who is not fully aware of the events.

Basically, the work fails to focus on the wrong subject. Having a great battle looming, three female protagonists and a great chance to deliver an empowerment book, the plot ends up being summed up in internal conflicts and – a lot of – romance. The reader wants to see fights, bloodshed and perhaps an interesting twist, but ends up having only kisses, intrigue due to flirtations and politics that involves the conquests of the suitors.

There are also some proofreading errors that damage the overall understanding - I had to go back several times to realize this. Name changes happen with some frequency, especially in relation to Arsinoe and Jules, which greatly hinder the understanding of a conflict presented. A few other exchanges, like blonde hair turning red in the next paragraph, also happen, but these are more irrelevant.

It is worth mentioning that three black crowns seems to be just a bad start to a good saga. It is clear that the narrative takes a long time in the explanations and tries to show the sentimental side of the poor friends who need to kill themselves, but there are some events near the end that give the plot a gear and promise to finally deliver what the reader wanted to see in the next volumes. .

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