Two dark reigns – Kendare Blake (review)

Title: Two dark reigns (Three dark crowns #3).

Author: Kendare Blake.

Format: Hardcover.

Publisher: Harperteen.

Page count: 447.

Release day: September 4^th 2018.

Genre: YA, fantasy.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

*Be aware that this is book three, and contains spoilers for book  one and two!*

(See my review for book one here, and book two here!)

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake returns with the highly anticipated third book in the Three Dark Crowns series! And while Arsinoe, Mirabella, and Katharine all have their own scores to settle, they aren’t the only queens stirring things up on Fennbirn Island.

Queen Katharine has waited her entire life to wear the crown. But now that she finally has it, the murmurs of dissent grow louder by the day. There’s also the alarming issue of whether or not her sisters are actually dead—or if they’re waiting in the wings to usurp the throne.

Mirabella and Arsinoe are alive, but in hiding on the mainland and dealing with a nightmare of their own: being visited repeatedly by a specter they think might be the fabled Blue Queen. Though she says nothing, her rotting, bony finger pointing out to sea is clear enough: return to Fennbirn.

Jules, too, is in a strange place—in disguise. And her only confidants, a war-gifted girl named Emilia and her oracle friend Mathilde, are urging her to take on a role she can’t imagine filling: a legion-cursed queen who will lead a rebel army to Katharine’s doorstep.

This is an uprising that the mysterious Blue Queen may have more to do with than anyone could have guessed—or expected.

Rating:

Characters: 6/10

Atmosphere: 7/10

Writing: 7/10

Plot: 6/10

Intrigue: 7/10

Logic: 6/10

Enjoyment: 7/10

Average: 6.6 (which means 3 stars!)

My thoughts:

I’m really enjoying this series, but it is not the best one ever?!

The series is taking a different direction from what I expected when I read book one! Which is good I guess, since what I expected would not be enough for a four books series!

The plot is expanding a lot, which on the one side I really enjoyed, but it also meant quite a lot of new characters got introduced, and that became a bit confusing at times! (There are also two people called Lucian? They are not big characters, but that makes it really hard!)

I like that the relations between the queens keep shifting, especially something that happened at the end of this one really makes me want to pick up the next one ASAP!

The plot is a bit slower in this one, but I feel like it was really setting up for a grand finale in Five Dark Fates!

I really love the setting and the magic system of this world. This island is just so interesting! I especially love the elemental and naturalist magic, and I loved seeing more of it. At the end of book two we also got introduced to a fourth type of magic, and I really liked that we got to explore that more in this book. This exploration is also the main plot of this book!

This book switches between POVs a lot! Each chapter has the name of the location, and we will follow a character in that location. But since the characters are traveling around their locations keep changing, and it is sometimes a bit hard to know from whose perspective we are reading! Personally I didn’t mind it too much, but I can definitely see it being a problem for some readers!

Have you read this book? What did you think?