***The Review has spoilers from One Dark Throne and the first book Three Dark Crowns. Read both books first and then come back. Thank you***
The Ascension year has started and Katharine, Arsinoe and Mirabella are not messing around. From the very beginning we are deep into plans, schemes and our right combat from the sisters. They are all are pissed and have good reason too. They have all been betrayed in one way or another and that’s after they were raised to kill or be killed. I do wonder, in all of their lessons on how to control their powers and how to kill their sisters, how many lessons did they get about actually governing should they win the crown? I sort of get the feeling that’s sort of an afterthought but I digress. Arsinoe has discovered that she isn’t actually a Naturalist but a poisoner, which should have been obvious considering her name. Right? It looks and and sounds like arsenic. Katharine has survived the Breccia Domain and wants revenge on everyone, especially Pieytr and Mirabella is hurt that Arsinoe sent her bear to kill her at Beltane after she saved her life. This was a very intense read from the beginning which was good. The first book was kinda slow in places as it tried to flesh out it’s world. Now with all of that out the way, it really has found it’s footing. The Sisters are interesting and complex characters. I found myself wanted all of them to win, well maybe not Katharine, she really has flipped her lid. Which is shame since she spells her name right. The fourth girl in the story, Jules, Arsinoe’s best friend and protector is the strongest Naturalist of her generation and maybe she is that because there wasn’t a Naturalist Queen born since both Arsinoe and Katharine are poisoners. She is also legion cursed, which seems to mean she was born with two gifts and that often makes the person go mad and is often killed at birth. Her second gift is War, which has been mostly dorment for many years that people don’t really know what she is capable of. I want to like Jules but I just can’t seem to care that much about her. She seems to be the classic YA character that doesn’t have much of a personality outside of her love interest or in this case, her best friend, Arsinoe. And when she is fretting over Arsinoe she’s moping about Joseph. She still is trying to forgive him for sleeping with Mirabella and honestly, I kinda like Joseph and Mirabella together better. Their relationship may have been only physical and facilitated by Arsinoe’s low magic but to me they had more chemistry and passion in their few scenes together then Joseph and Jules did in their many. I did get their feel that they loved each other but they loved who they were before Joseph was banished and now feel like they have to hold on to that then discover on who they are now. Maybe now that Jules will be on her own without Arsinoe or Joseph we will get to know more about her. I hope so since she obviously has a big part to play in how this story turns out. I like that fact that Kendare Blake is going to drag out their Ascension year beyond this book and that we have a crowned Queen but also the beginning a possible rebellion. What happens when more then one Queen survives? And what is really down in the Breccia Domain? Is Jules really going to be the end of Fennbirn? So many questions that can’t wait to find out the answers to.
This was a lot of fun to read and I really want to play Warcross. Marie Lu or someone make that happen! Emika Chen is a hacker and bounty hunter. Her father died when she was eleven and learned how to hack while in foster care. She admires Hideo Tanaka, the creator of Warcross because he created Warcross when he was younger then she was and now at 21 owns his own company and a billionaire. Emika’s life is not going so well. She has less then $13 to her name and is facing eviction due to being 3 months behind in rent. In a moment of desperation she hacked in during the opening ceremony of the Warcross Championships. The next day she is on a plane to Tokyo and is hired by Hideo to track down a hacker named Zero. Emika goes under cover as a player in the games so she can track down Zero and figure out who he is and what he is trying to do. Emika is smart and quickly figures out that one of her own teammates is working with Zero. She tells her findings to Hideo and because this is a YA novel, sparks fly because again YA novel, Hideo is hot! I figured out who Zero was about halfway through the books but the beauty of it, it didn’t spoil the ending. There are secrets in the game of Warcross that no matter how much a character opens up, we still don’t know all the facts. This book was fast paced and full of twists and turns. I do hope that in the next book that we get to know more about Emika’s teammates Asher, Roshan, Hammy and Ren because I feel like we just scratched the surface of who they are. I’m really interested in seeing where Emika goes now that she knows the truth of what happened but is not really sure that it’s truly a bad thing. I don’t want to say too much because it will spoil the ending but it will start some conversations. So yes, go read it.
There are so many great quotes from Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands that it needed a post of it’s own. Serene-Heart-in the-Chaos-of-Battle has the best quotes. In Other Lands takes many tropes and turns them on their head. One is gender roles. In Serene’s Elven culture, women Elves take on more of what we in the human world would consider male roles. This often brings up hilarious misunderstandings and some hard truths. Here are just a couple
2 Women, So Many Books 