One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake is book two in the Three Dark Crowns fantasy series. I reviewed book one, Three Dark Crowns, last week and absolutely loved it! I didn’t love One Dark Throne quite as much but it was still really good. This review will have some semi spoilers but I won’t give details.

Synopsis:

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:

• Rating– 

Everything I enjoyed about the first book, I enjoyed in this one. The writing was still great, and I still loved all the characters. However, and I’m not sure why, this one didn’t grab my attention as much. It’s not uncommon for the middle books in a series to slightly drag but this book shouldn’t have because it was pretty action packed.

If I had to pinpoint why I was less into the story, I would say it was because of the type of action; not that there wasn’t enough of it. I’m a very character driven reader. I prefer lots of emotion and relationship drama and less large scale, world or political drama. This book dives more into the politics of the world and big events happen but we get less of the characters on a personal level.

However, the last 20% of the book was just… wow. There were two major character deaths that I absolutely did not expect and I can’t wait to get into the next book to see how those deaths will affect the other characters. There were also some very interesting twists in Katharine’s development and as of right now, she’s my favorite character.

Final Thoughts:

So far, this series is excellent. If you’ve been looking for a dark YA fantasy, you HAVE to read these books. I am going to put this series on hold for a bit so that I can read and review all my Christmas books, but I will be diving back into it as soon as possible! Thanks for reading and have a great day!