Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns, #1) in Hype or Like Friday

Sep 11, 2016 Sammi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

This book would have to be one of my favourite reads from 2016. That ending though!! Ugh!!
I need the next book STAT!!!!

The book starts off slow and there is a lot of characters, so if you aren’t paying attention you will be left behind! But soon enough you get swept up in this amazing world!

Three Black Witches are born in a glen,
sweet little triplets
will never be friends.

Three Black Witches, all fair to be seen

two to devour

and one to be queen

This book is the perfect start to, what I believe will ...more

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Jun 11, 2017 Danielle (Life of a Literary Nerd) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: cover-envy, fantasy

“Crowns are no longer won, they are made, through politics and alliances.”

I absolutely LOVED the overall vibe of the book. It was dark and twisted and filled with backstabbing and schemes. In the story we follow triplet queens, each gifted with a special kind of magic. Katharine, the poisoner queen; Arsinoe, the naturalist queen; and Mirabella, the elemental queen, and on their 16th birthday begins their fight to the death to become the ruling queen of Fennbirn, an isolated island nation. The c ...more

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Sep 29, 2016 Lila (Hardcover Haven) rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2016-most-anticipated

DNF. might come back to it later, but probably not.

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Dec 05, 2016 Meggy Chocolate'n'Waffles rated it it was ok

Rating 2,5/5

Publishers and writers need to be careful with their blurbs. When they sell me something with so much potential as Three Dark Crowns, they better deliver, and fast. Well, fast is the key word here. There is nothing fast about this book. But let’s go back to the start.

Three sisters doomed to kill each other so that there’s only one queen left to reign. Through different places and POV we are introduced to three young ladies raised in very different ways according to the house they be

Rating 2,5/5

Publishers and writers need to be careful with their blurbs. When they sell me something with so much potential as Three Dark Crowns, they better deliver, and fast. Well, fast is the key word here. There is nothing fast about this book. But let’s go back to the start.

Three sisters doomed to kill each other so that there’s only one queen left to reign. Through different places and POV we are introduced to three young ladies raised in very different ways according to the house they belong to.

Katharine the poisonous daughter has been suffering for years, left in the hands of two sisters who don’t want to see the power leave the hands of those who can kill with a drop. While at first I was intrigued and pitied poor Kat, the story of how petite and fragile she was soon bored me. Having a young man train her and magically turn her into a stronger and more beautiful version of herself was a real joke. From fragile she soon turns into a manipulative and seductive queen thanks to kisses sessions? It felt a little far-fetched but hey, this is fantasy and there’s love in the air, so let’s pretend it’s okay.

Mirabella is a strong and beautiful elementalist. As the only one whose gift has bloomed, she is slate to be the next queen. But Mirabella disagrees with the killing part of the tradition that have ruled around the island for centuries.

Arsinoe was my favorite. I am allowed to be biased, this is my review! Favorite in my heart doesn’t mean successful in the book. I always choose the wrong characters… Arsinoe’s gift must have been lost by the French post because she’s a naturalist without power. Joyful and funny, she can rely on her best friend Jule for support and tricks to keep her lack of power quiet.

Now, do you feel you know enough about the characters? Me too. Another thing you need to know is that all the side characters are interesting and useful (most of the time), which is always a good sign. I did feel the connection, or lack of, between the sisters was too inconsistent for me to feel the awful dilemma of killing your own blood to get a throne.

No one really wishes to be a queen.

The books then goes on and on about every sister’s life, with little development for so long I thought I was going to DNF the book. I should not be mean, things do happen. They go buy jewels and dresses. Kisses are exchanged. Friends talk and eat. People travel.

There’s a fair share of love. Friendships, romance, it spices things up a little. Not enough though, I wish I could have sparkled the pages with red chilli. Still I’m interested in how a certain love triangle, if it can be called this way, will end up. Team Mira or team Jule?

I do believe world-building and a strong characterization is essential to fantasy. I choose the genre to get immersed in something very different from reality and I need as much detail as possible to create the world in my head. But there is a difference between interesting information and general life dump. Three Dark Crowns was a little too heavy on the slow pace and too light on action for me to enjoy it as much as I had hoped.

Three born queens, two must die. A promise of blood, battles, and horrendous deaths. A scream for drama and manipulation and deadly plans. Well, you’ll have to wait for it. Wait for … 293 pages. Yes, you read that right.

I won’t go into details because if I do, you’ll be even more bored than I was when I was reading, as you’ll already know about the whys and hows. I would not be doing you a favor by revealing much about the reasons behind the One Queen rule and the traditions around it. But if you stick to the story, the last part will throw you into action and drama. Some action and lots of drama.

I might have had a better experience had I known this was the first book in a series. I expected a standalone, silly me. It's not a bad book, it's a slow book with plenty of potential.

So choose a side, pray for your queen, and drink lots of tea to help you with the length of the book.

This review was originally published on my blog as a part of the Hype or Like Friday group activity. ...more

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Nov 24, 2016 Larkin (Wonderfilled Reads) rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club-botm, finished-series, high-fantasy, reviewed-on-blog, own, romance, young-adult, multiple-pov, cover-love, harper-teen

I enjoyed this book, even though it wasn't full of action until the last 60 pages or so. I think my biggest problem was that I kind of hated most of the characters, except for Arsinoe. The other 2 sisters annoyed me and I didn't really care for many of the side characters. Honestly, I'd much rather have the entire story told from Arsinoe's POV.

Overall, this book was just alright - not awesome, not terrible, just alright. I do plan to continue on with the rest of the series though to see where i ...more

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Nov 15, 2016 Ami rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, young-adult

Strange and dark, with an intriguing premise that made me overlook its faults. This review first posted on my blog, luvtoread: https://luvtoread.com/2016/11/25/thre...
Taking us into a bizarre world in which triplets battle to the death for a crown, Three Dark Crowns tells the story of Katharine, who is immune to poison, Arsinoe, a naturalist who can control plants and animals, and Mirabella, an elemental who can control the weather, fire, and water to name a few things. There are rules to the “ Strange and dark, with an intriguing premise that made me overlook its faults. This review first posted on my blog, luvtoread: https://luvtoread.com/2016/11/25/thre...
Taking us into a bizarre world in which triplets battle to the death for a crown, Three Dark Crowns tells the story of Katharine, who is immune to poison, Arsinoe, a naturalist who can control plants and animals, and Mirabella, an elemental who can control the weather, fire, and water to name a few things. There are rules to the “battle”, and the triplets must wait until they are sixteen to start trying to kill their sisters, with the winner becoming queen.
Raised apart from each other, and schooled in their specialties, the triplets don’t have a particular love for each other, as they were separated at an early age and are trained to kill in order to be queen.
Out of the three sisters, Arsinoe probably was the most likeable; she seems carefree and down-to-earth and genuinely cares for her friends. Katherine was a bit too obsessed with learning how to seduce for me to really care for her (why must this be a lesson she needs to learn??). Although, I did love the fact that her favorite piece of “jewelry” was her very poisonous pet coral snake worn as a bracelet. And Mirabella, well, Mirabella was fine, she was probably the kindest of the sisters, and seems to be the one sister willing to try to not fight and instead be friends, but then she goes and has sex with a random guy (who of course isn’t random) on the beach after he washes ashore. It was just way too much of insta-love for me, and was flat-out irritating, and brought a weird love triangle into the mix that I just didn’t care about.
With mention of the three different gifts (poison, naturalist, and elemental), there is also mention of “rare” gifts: the war gift and the sight gift. Neither of these gifts were ever explained, but were mentioned enough for me to think, “ok, which of the sisters will have these gifts”, but again, nothing was ever explained. Since there is a sequel to this book, maybe I’ll find out more about these gifts later. I hope so, as they sound interesting.
If the idea of three sisters with magical gifts battling for a crown interests you, then you might really like this book! I admit to being a bit irritated that women are always pitted against other women (or girls against other girls), so this was frustrating to read. But I do hope that there might be a twist to this plot in the next book.
Three Dark Crowns had some predictable parts, but other scenes weren’t predictable at all, and the book was unusual and intriguing enough for me to like it and read it fairly quickly.
I do have one recommendation for those who want to read Three Dark Crowns: you may want to wait until the sequel is available (Fall 2017 I believe), as the book leaves off on a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers now make me weary and I’m almost to the point of giving up series books until the whole series is published. That’s how irritated I am with cliffhanger endings.
While it may sound like this book really irritated me, and it certainly did in parts, overall I really did enjoy it, and I liked the darkness and unusual aspects of the book. I’ll definitely read the sequel!
Bottom Line: Unusual, dark, and intriguing. Has its faults, but I still enjoyed it. ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 Dana rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, 2016-favorites, fantasy

Actual rating: 4.5 stars, rounded down

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Nov 15, 2016 Maddie A. rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Full review posted on Of Reading and Random Things

My biggest issue with Three Dark Crowns is that it is SO slow at the beginning. It took me a long time to get through the first three-quarters of the book and I was seriously considering DNF-ing it. By the time the pace picked up towards the end, it did get very exciting and plot twists were popping up that I didn’t see coming, but I wasn’t as invested in the story as I would’ve been if more than the first half didn’t bore me so much. The main ch ...more

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