Three Dark Crowns - Kendare Blake

 

Klappentext: 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.


Meine Meinung: This book came with my fourth Owlcrate box. First of all I have to say that it goes perfectly with the theme "Darkness". From the summary you will see that the basic of the story is really cruel and dark. Three sisters and one of them has to kill her two sisters to become the queen of Fennbirn. This is a centuries-old tradition.
Every family and the corresponding queen-to-be has a peculiarity which gaves her a special strenght. Katherine's specialty is poison. She can eat and drink it without dying. Some parts in the book are really tough to read because Katherine can't bear the poison as good as she should and so she suffers from the practice with it. And the reader suffers with her ;)
Arsinoe's power should be controlling animals. Everyone expect her to find a familiar, an animal she can control and have a deep connection with. I write "should" because her power hasn't appeared until now.
The last one is Mirabella. She is an elemental and is able to control fire, water, wind and so on. She is the only one that seems to have real power. But for it she has another weak point. In contrast to Katherine and Arsinoe she can remember the time before the three sisters were seperated. She has real memories and misses her sisters.


So far so good. The skeletal structure sounds very good.
Unfortunately the plot was to slow in the first half of the book. Many characters, little story. I also got the impression, that Blake brings too much indifferent topics into focus. The love stories for example...in a book like that, they should be a minor matter. Unfortunately the lovestory between Arsinoes best friend Jules and Joseph often bored me!
But in the second half it got better. Bit by bit we read about different intrigues from the three camps and none of them is the idea of one of the sisters. After a while the reader recognizes that Kathrine, Arsinoe and Mirabella are just chess pieces on a playing field.
I felt sorry for every young girl!


And then the end! When Beltane starts and the three sisters have to present theirself to the crowd, the story finally becomes really fascinating. It left me speechless for a short while because I didn't expect that plot twist.
Now I have to live with a huuuge cliffhanger until the second book will be published but the end corrected a lot of mistakes from the beginning for me. ;)


Would you read this book again? Yes.