Three Dark Crowns: Book Review

Last year, I decided to give myself the best birthday present ever: A subscription to OwlCrate. Each month they send out a recent release book along with other bookish goods. September’s box came with Three Dark Crowns (hereafter TDC) by Kendare Blake.

Look! Look! It’s my photo instead of a stock one!

The premise of the book is interesting: Every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born to the current queen and her consort. Each of the triplets is born with one of the gifts of the island – Poisoners who have the ability to resist poisons; Naturalists, who can bloom flowers, heal or destroy the living, and form bonds with animal familiars; and Elementals, who can manipulate the natural world. There are a few other gifts–seers and warriors, but those are less common. The triplets are split up at the age of six to be raised in separate cities and trained in their gifts. Ten years later, they meet again to spend a year killing the others. The survivor becomes the Queen of the island, and the cycle begins again.

In the generation of TDC, all three sisters are keeping secrets. Mirabella, a fierce elemental with gifts so strong that she has become the favorite, doesn’t want to kill her beloved sisters. Katharine, supremely gifted at concocting poisons, is not as immune to them as a poisoner should be. Then there is Arsinoe, who is protected by the most powerful naturalist on the island, but cannot make a flower bloom, let alone call an animal familiar.

I fear I have already spoiled too much, so I will move on to what I didn’t like. The book moves between the homes of the three young queens, and they each have families that protect them. There are so many characters all at once that it’s difficult to keep them straight. Throw in animal familiars with very human names, and I found myself repeatedly flipping back to chapter titles and the map in the beginning of the book to help keep track. I also had trouble keeping the voices of the characters and the three locations separate. They all sounded similar, but once I became more familiar with the characters, the changes in location became easier to recognize.

The good about the book outweighs the negative. The storyline is full of intrigue of both human relationship and political types. The mythology of the island is easy to follow if fairly… conveniently revealed. However, I’d rather have this gradual presentation than a giant info-dump. About halfway through, the storylines tie together in an even deeper way that creates question upon question and leaves room for a few interesting reveals.

Honestly, without the surprises, I would probably give this book a 3 star review. But with the way the story revs up toward the end, I award TDC 4 Stars. I now can’t wait until the sequel, (which is finished but no release date has been revealed). Alas, books with sequels keep me patient.

Book at a Glance:

Title: Three Dark Crowns 

Author: Kendare Blake

Rating: 4/5 Stars ; Worth the buy

Publisher: Harper Teen

Other books you might know by the author: Anna Dressed in Blood ; Slasher Girls and Monster Boys (multi-author anthology)

Genre: YA Fantasy

Read the First Three Chapters here: http://www.epicreads.com/blog/read-the-first-3-chapters-of-three-dark-crowns/

Book Trailer: And it’s a pretty decent one, too, although it doesn’t reveal much.

Video Book synopsis: Mostly because I spent the first 1/3 of the book mispronouncing everyone’s name. You’re welcome.

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The Nine Lives of Chloe King – Book vs. T.V.

abcFamily and I have a tenuous relationship to begin with. I’m hot then cold about them–their television shows, their movies, how they covertly sell sex to twelve-year-olds. But I was bored one day, and after watching Pretty Little Liars, Hulu recommended The Nine Lives of Chloe King.  The show looked moderately interesting, so I let it play.

The people are pretty and the fashion is right up my alley. Despite some initial drags in plot, the characters remained interesting enough to keep me watching all the other episodes. And the finale–! Well, abcFamily ‘seasons’ are never long enough. I’m looking forward to the next set. And so now we come to the book.

3 book collection

The Nine Lives of Chloe King, a 3 book series (The Fallen, The Stolen, and The Chosen) by Liz Braswell, originally published in 2004 inspired the abcFamily show. Now, I’m not naive–I know that often producers and writers of television shows will take the base idea from a book and then adapt the plotline of the show to better serve their purposes and fit the target audience. I figured the show was interesting and what with the cliff-hanger ending, I needed to know more about the story–however it went. So, I sucked it up and bought the 3 books in their combined form for my Kindle (also available in paperback) and started reading right away.

What I wasn’t fully prepared for was the extent to which I would be underwhelmed by the novel as a whole. For the length of the entire first book I wanted to quit reading because the title character behaved like an annoying, shallow teen. Which would have been fine, had the writing been better and had she changed in a more dramatic way. The characterization is confusing–Chloe describes herself and other people describe her with an obscene list of virtues–kind, selfless, all that.

However, her actions and inner monologues seem to indicate that she is incredibly self-absorbed and shallow. Teens are by nature self-absorbed. In fact all humans are, but Chloe seems to project her faults onto her friends or judge them with a double standard. And speaking of friends Paul and Amy… neither was particularly likeable. Perhaps the former is less annoying, but the characterization for all the characters was so poor and in Chloe’s case, confusing, that the reader is not given the chance to like them. In the final novel, I can’t tell if Chloe is actually growing and maturing or if the author finally manages to write Chloe exhibiting traits that the reader was supposed to believe Chloe had in the first place.

However, In the show, the quirkiness of Amy and Paul is lovable, just as Chloe in the show comes off as a worthwhile human being, despite her many wrong choices.

Alyec/Alek is another show character that came out of the television… better. The cockiness is the same, to be sure, but book Alyec is intensely shallow, and Chloe describes him more than once as dim-witted. There is no need for Chloe to choose between Brian and Alyec, because Alyec never comes across as a strong contender for Chloe’s affections–just a substitute that she can actually make out with.

And speaking of making out–sex is all the characters talk about in their down-time. ALL. It’s nothing as explicit as an adult romance novel, but half the time I was wondering if Chloe even liked either of the boys or if she just wanted to have sex with them. Often the focus on hormones and sex overshadowed the whole cat people thing.

Some other differences: The show puts more focus on Chloe as the Uniter. In the book, she’s called The Chosen One and while it’s important and her destiny, there’s less mysticism surrounding it.

Chloe’s dad plays a much bigger part in the T.V. show.

Television Chloe gets along a lot better with her mom (shocking, as it’s abcFamily). She also has empathy powers.

The Mai in the book are more organized and are described as cult-like by more than one character, which is an element that I’m hoping the show will explore in terms of the pride’s leader. Yes, they are called a pride.

The pride leader is a man in the novels, and the character of Jasmine does not exist in the book. I’m assuming the scriptwriters used Jasmine to replace the character of Kim, who is the best and most interesting character in the Chloe King books. She’s a girl Chloe’s age and nearly her foil. She provides a contrast, representing a Mai who grew up in the pride and devotes herself to the ancient Egyptian spirituality. Kim’s integration into Chloe’s life, her lack of social skills, and her discoveries in the human world provides much of the book’s humor. Kim also acts as Chloe’s guide, and helps her to grow and mature. Did I mention that she has cat ears and permanently-out claws?

The book is unfocused in terms of character.  What little characterization there is does nothing to help me like the characters (except Kim). The writing is also… dry. It’s rarely funny (again, with the exception of Kim) and rarely touching. The entire book, like the main character, comes off as shallow. It’s a shame, really, because the idea is interesting.

I can positively state that the only reason I finished reading it is because I paid $9.99 for it on Amazon, which (if you’re insanely curious) is the price of the 3-book paperback at Target. The one quality moment of the book came at the very end of the series and made me not dislike it quite that much.

The show is doing a much better job. The young actors are charming and the writers are spicing up the plot and developing the characters so that the series stays exiting.

I don’t know how long the show will last, but  I will continue watching, and I applaud the writers for making it better than the book. I don’t like to dislike or criticize a book this much, but I can’t ignore that it didn’t do it’s job–entertain the reader. So I recommend watching the show instead of reading the book.

Wow, that’s one thing I’d never thought I’d say.

Click for abcFamily's Chloe King website

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