Title: One Dark Throne
Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher/Year:  HarperCollings 9/19/17
Length:   464 Pages
Series:  Three Dark Crowns #2

Overview

The battle for the crown has begun, but which of the three sisters will prevail?

With the unforgettable events of the Quickening behind them and the Ascension Year underway, all bets are off. Katharine, once the weak and feeble sister, is stronger than ever before. Arsinoe, after discovering the truth about her powers, must figure out how to make her secret talent work in her favor without anyone finding out. And Mirabella, once thought to be the strongest sister of all and the certain Queen Crowned, faces attacks like never before—ones that put those around her in danger she can’t seem to prevent.

In this enthralling sequel to Kendare Blake’s New York Times bestselling Three Dark Crowns, Fennbirn’s deadliest queens must face the one thing standing in their way of the crown: each other.

My Thoughts

This is an interesting series – there are so many ways that the story could go and i think that the path that this one has taken is one that’s dynamic and exciting.  Where we left off in book 1 we knew that there were battles to be fought, resulting in the death of 2 of the queens.  Only one could survive.  Well, this second installment gives us the journey that they go on now that they are actively pursuing the end goal.  At the direction of those around them.

Katherine, Arsinoe and Mirabella are all such different girls – which is expected yet unexpected knowing that they are triplets.  We start to learn more about what goes on in their lives and the alliances that they are making with the suitors and others who are around them, all in the hopes of gaining affection if they are to survive.  There’s so much cunning and back stabbing (figuratively and literally) in this book between them that it’s a wonder that any are left standing at all.

The nice thing that our author does is that she makes the secondary characters incredibly important to the story.  Each sister has a band of friends and family surrounding her that really make the story progress – showing us how each girl goes from innocent to someone who knows who they are internally and wants to make sure the world knows it as well.

There’s also the fact that we learn that some of the gifts that we thought were the ones assigned at birth really aren’t the true ones – and i feel like that makes it that much more compelling.  Mira is the same, but seeing how weak or missing both Katherine and Arsinoe’s gifts were, it’s no surprise that there’s a bit more to the story – yet we don’t truly find out the full back story or what gifts should have manifested in both.

Katherine is a mystery now to this day – she was thrown into the Breccia and she comes back as the undead queen – and yet we’re still not sure what that means.  Arsinoe resorts to low magic to make anything happen around her and that has it’s consequences.

We are left at the end of this story with deaths, a divide among those who remain alive, and a divide from the island hopefully back to the mainland.  There’s really no sense what this all means for the future – and i think that’s the allure.  We’re left on such a cliff here that i can’t even speculate what’s going to happen.  We know that happy endings are impossible in this world and i think that we’re just hoping for something that makes the island less of a war zone.  So on that note, i see there’s a prequel coming out and then the third installment at some point so i’ll have to be patient.  Enjoy!