King's Cage (Red Queen, 3)
The third book in the thrilling #1 New York Times bestselling series!
In this breathless third installment to Victoria Aveyard’s #1 New York Times bestselling Red Queen series, rebellion is rising and allegiances will be tested on every side. Perfect for fans of Lauren Robert's Powerless and George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.
Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother's web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.
As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare's heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.
When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down.
Discover more wonders in the world of Red Queen with Broken Throne: A Red Queen Collection, a companion novel with stories from fan favorites and new voices, featuring never-before-seen maps, flags, bonus scenes, journal entries, and much more exclusive content!
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
This series has been great and I can’t wait to start book 4! Love the main characters and their changes over time.
*There are only minor spoilers, as this is mostly a character review. If you are one of those people that doesn’t like having ANYTHING spoiled for you, don’t read it. It does have major Glass Sword spoilers.*
WOW. Wow wow wow. Victoria Aveyard delivers another spellbinding installment to the series, in which Mare suffers a long tenure under Maven's watch before finally being rescued and blazing back 100x stronger than before. Also, as more newbloods and new kingdoms and states are brought into the picture, we get a fuller sense of the world Norta is in, as well as an idea of the full scope and ability of the Scarlet Guard.
This review is mostly just going to be a character discussion. :)
Okay, so first- Mare Barrow.
What. A. Queen. I will admit, Glass Sword kind of alienated me from Mare because although I could see how realistically she was portrayed as dealing with loss by being a bitch, her actions and bullheadedness definitely got on my nerves at the end. I’m not at all Team Cal (or Team Maven for that matter), but the way she kept pushing him and everyone else away and her blind stubbornness conspired to make me hate her quite a bit. I remember recommending the series to my friends and going, “Yeah, Mare is great, and she’s very realistically portrayed. Like, VERY. Like she’s kind of a bitch.”
King’s Cage changed ALL of that. Although Mare spends the better part of the book imprisoned under Maven’s watch, this was the period when I really began to love her as a character. While the Silent Stone weighs on her physically and suffocates her mentally, her emotional turmoil over Maven is just as strong a weapon against her. She suffers for six months without even once the relief of using her lightning or of taking comfort in a friendly face. Being tested to her limits over and over reveals her core, and surprise! It’s not made up of her love for Cal, or even her hatred at the world after Shade’s death. At Mare Barrow’s core is an unbreakable will, hope and a determination to follow the right path. Evading the horrors of her own past as well as Maven’s many-sided manipulations of her is not easy. Neither is fighting her way through the emotional cloud that surrounds her whenever she deals with Maven. But Mare somehow manages to do both, and she does it like a queen.
At the end of all this, she is a Mess. She basically has PTSD, and no wonder- every touch on her wrists feels like the press of Silent Stone. It would be so easy to give up, as she realizes herself: relocate with her family away from the fighting and live her life content in the knowledge that she has given enough. But like a true queen (and a heroine of every YA novel ever), she obviously does not do that. Despite being physically and emotionally scarred, she re-dedicates herself to the effort and attempts to channel her emotions to a form best suited to the cause. Evangeline notes that her lightning is much stronger than before. Cameron confides in her because Mare has also gained the ability to be more well-rounded and caring. At the end of the book, despite having had so much taken away from her already, she does not hold on to Cal at any cost and instead follows her own “thread of steel”, using her determination to do what’s right even though it hurts her deeply. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, indeed. She’s grown as a person, as an icon of the rebellion, and as a friend. She considers what it will mean to other people before she does something like put herself in danger; she eagerly accepts instruction from other electricon newbloods on how to better wield her powers (would Glass Sword Mare ever?); and she makes the most of her time with everyone she has, somehow only now aware of the fragility of life and the importance of not pushing people away.
All in all- Mare Barrow is a queen. I cannot wait to see how this new version of her pans out in the next book.
A word on Maven. Although he bears his own scars from Elara roughhousing with his mind, his mother. Is. Dead. I never liked Maven, but throughout this book I was tempted to yell at him to wake up and smell the roses, or however the saying goes. Maven could have had a redemption arc without Elara’s influence, however slow. Or he could have become a super-villain, continuing with a vengeance on the path his mother started him on. Instead, he’s mostly just trapped in an awkward limbo where he lives in Elara’s shadow, wanting to get out of her influence but also to stay in it because his mind is so warped. He has some power, but is struggling to maintain it because of his weak character. But he’s not a weakling either, because he’s a master manipulator. He’s not a good character- he’s too evil for that. However, he’s not completely evil either, because of his failure to use Mare’s value as a prisoner to his advantage, as a truly evil person would have done. Throughout the book, Maven hovered somewhere on the edge of my consciousness- too good to pose a real threat, but too evil to be tucked away somewhere and forgotten about. It was interesting to see how Mare finally dissected her feelings for him and concluded that there was nothing left but a desire to kill him, but I also felt like that was a bit amiss because she does not feel blind hatred for him. A perfect example of what a strange, juxtaposed character Maven is- and maybe this mess was Aveyard’s intention all along, to show us that Maven has been broken so deeply that he doesn’t fit in any category now.
Cal. Not going to spend much time on him- a hot mess, as usual, this one. (Haha. Hot. Get it?) It’s usually pretty hard for me to dislike a character that the narrator/main character loves, but Tiberias VII did it for me. List of Reasons Why I Despised Cal in This Book:
-Sending Nanny blindly into danger. Yes, I know it was her choice in the end and all, but DUDE. He’s supposed to be a /war strategist/, of all things! Think of the bigger picture, beyond your own love, for half a second! Did not forgive him for that.
-His master flaws: indecision and hypocrisy. Even though he supposedly picks a side, his regret over being forced to kill fellow Silvers is as apparent as his lack of even a fraction of that feeling for the Reds he commands. Even Mare notes this! He’s a hypocrite! (Yes, I know Aveyard meant for us to recognize these flaws in him and view him as a realistic, if imperfect, character. It still makes me hate him.)
-The ending; goodBYE, Calore. I hope you get your throne. I hope you suffer through your illusion of power and superiority while the Scarlet Guard’s master plan plays out and you become a pawn. You did not deserve to be the one who breaks Mare’s heart.
Aaaaand finally, to end on a positive note, EVANGELINE SAMOS.
EASILY my favorite character (after Mare, of course). Yeah, she’s evil, but whoever said you couldn’t love evil characters?? I like lists, so here’s a List of Reasons Why I Love Evangeline Samos:
1) She’s a lesbian, hello?? In a genre where lesbians and f/f in general are pathetically underrepresented, Evangeline is a godsend. I’m going to need to see more of her relationship with Elane in the next one, please and thank you. Maybe even show us how their personalities fit together and all that jazz? Seriously, just cut out all the overrated Mare/Cal bits and give me more of my wonderfully gay steel princess.
2) A (legitimately) conflicted character with... emotions? *gasp* While she is a steelworker, her heart is certainly not made of steel. Some of you may have hated her at the end with the whole wineglass thing, but she was just doing what Maven could never do- act decisively to secure her power. She wants power, and so she does what she has to for it. Then she does what Cal would never think to do and reminds herself to send a healer to the maid later, showing her compassion as well as the fact that she was only doing what she had to do.
3) Another example of a strong character that tries to break out of the role she was ‘made’ for. I’ve never been a fan of characters following social norms or parental decrees blindly (obviously), so when Evangeline acknowledged her rebellious emotions and looked for ways to avoid her fate, I was all for it. She can’t contemplate openly defying her father yet, but I’m 100% sure it’s coming. And somehow I just know she’ll succeed. I know it. This girl is not dying on me.
Highkey hoping something happens with Evangeline and Mare in the next book- two strong, badass female leads = #couplegoals- but I don’t actually think it will, as Evangeline seems pretty attached to Elane and Mare is, unfortunately, straight. (I think. Surprise us, Victoria.)
Whew- a long review for a long, wonderfully captivating book. I cannot wait for book four- 2018 is too far awaaaay. Just give us the title at least, @ Victoria Aveyard, and I will take it and fantasize and be content.
WOW. Wow wow wow. Victoria Aveyard delivers another spellbinding installment to the series, in which Mare suffers a long tenure under Maven's watch before finally being rescued and blazing back 100x stronger than before. Also, as more newbloods and new kingdoms and states are brought into the picture, we get a fuller sense of the world Norta is in, as well as an idea of the full scope and ability of the Scarlet Guard.
This review is mostly just going to be a character discussion. :)
Okay, so first- Mare Barrow.
What. A. Queen. I will admit, Glass Sword kind of alienated me from Mare because although I could see how realistically she was portrayed as dealing with loss by being a bitch, her actions and bullheadedness definitely got on my nerves at the end. I’m not at all Team Cal (or Team Maven for that matter), but the way she kept pushing him and everyone else away and her blind stubbornness conspired to make me hate her quite a bit. I remember recommending the series to my friends and going, “Yeah, Mare is great, and she’s very realistically portrayed. Like, VERY. Like she’s kind of a bitch.”
King’s Cage changed ALL of that. Although Mare spends the better part of the book imprisoned under Maven’s watch, this was the period when I really began to love her as a character. While the Silent Stone weighs on her physically and suffocates her mentally, her emotional turmoil over Maven is just as strong a weapon against her. She suffers for six months without even once the relief of using her lightning or of taking comfort in a friendly face. Being tested to her limits over and over reveals her core, and surprise! It’s not made up of her love for Cal, or even her hatred at the world after Shade’s death. At Mare Barrow’s core is an unbreakable will, hope and a determination to follow the right path. Evading the horrors of her own past as well as Maven’s many-sided manipulations of her is not easy. Neither is fighting her way through the emotional cloud that surrounds her whenever she deals with Maven. But Mare somehow manages to do both, and she does it like a queen.
At the end of all this, she is a Mess. She basically has PTSD, and no wonder- every touch on her wrists feels like the press of Silent Stone. It would be so easy to give up, as she realizes herself: relocate with her family away from the fighting and live her life content in the knowledge that she has given enough. But like a true queen (and a heroine of every YA novel ever), she obviously does not do that. Despite being physically and emotionally scarred, she re-dedicates herself to the effort and attempts to channel her emotions to a form best suited to the cause. Evangeline notes that her lightning is much stronger than before. Cameron confides in her because Mare has also gained the ability to be more well-rounded and caring. At the end of the book, despite having had so much taken away from her already, she does not hold on to Cal at any cost and instead follows her own “thread of steel”, using her determination to do what’s right even though it hurts her deeply. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, indeed. She’s grown as a person, as an icon of the rebellion, and as a friend. She considers what it will mean to other people before she does something like put herself in danger; she eagerly accepts instruction from other electricon newbloods on how to better wield her powers (would Glass Sword Mare ever?); and she makes the most of her time with everyone she has, somehow only now aware of the fragility of life and the importance of not pushing people away.
All in all- Mare Barrow is a queen. I cannot wait to see how this new version of her pans out in the next book.
A word on Maven. Although he bears his own scars from Elara roughhousing with his mind, his mother. Is. Dead. I never liked Maven, but throughout this book I was tempted to yell at him to wake up and smell the roses, or however the saying goes. Maven could have had a redemption arc without Elara’s influence, however slow. Or he could have become a super-villain, continuing with a vengeance on the path his mother started him on. Instead, he’s mostly just trapped in an awkward limbo where he lives in Elara’s shadow, wanting to get out of her influence but also to stay in it because his mind is so warped. He has some power, but is struggling to maintain it because of his weak character. But he’s not a weakling either, because he’s a master manipulator. He’s not a good character- he’s too evil for that. However, he’s not completely evil either, because of his failure to use Mare’s value as a prisoner to his advantage, as a truly evil person would have done. Throughout the book, Maven hovered somewhere on the edge of my consciousness- too good to pose a real threat, but too evil to be tucked away somewhere and forgotten about. It was interesting to see how Mare finally dissected her feelings for him and concluded that there was nothing left but a desire to kill him, but I also felt like that was a bit amiss because she does not feel blind hatred for him. A perfect example of what a strange, juxtaposed character Maven is- and maybe this mess was Aveyard’s intention all along, to show us that Maven has been broken so deeply that he doesn’t fit in any category now.
Cal. Not going to spend much time on him- a hot mess, as usual, this one. (Haha. Hot. Get it?) It’s usually pretty hard for me to dislike a character that the narrator/main character loves, but Tiberias VII did it for me. List of Reasons Why I Despised Cal in This Book:
-Sending Nanny blindly into danger. Yes, I know it was her choice in the end and all, but DUDE. He’s supposed to be a /war strategist/, of all things! Think of the bigger picture, beyond your own love, for half a second! Did not forgive him for that.
-His master flaws: indecision and hypocrisy. Even though he supposedly picks a side, his regret over being forced to kill fellow Silvers is as apparent as his lack of even a fraction of that feeling for the Reds he commands. Even Mare notes this! He’s a hypocrite! (Yes, I know Aveyard meant for us to recognize these flaws in him and view him as a realistic, if imperfect, character. It still makes me hate him.)
-The ending; goodBYE, Calore. I hope you get your throne. I hope you suffer through your illusion of power and superiority while the Scarlet Guard’s master plan plays out and you become a pawn. You did not deserve to be the one who breaks Mare’s heart.
Aaaaand finally, to end on a positive note, EVANGELINE SAMOS.
EASILY my favorite character (after Mare, of course). Yeah, she’s evil, but whoever said you couldn’t love evil characters?? I like lists, so here’s a List of Reasons Why I Love Evangeline Samos:
1) She’s a lesbian, hello?? In a genre where lesbians and f/f in general are pathetically underrepresented, Evangeline is a godsend. I’m going to need to see more of her relationship with Elane in the next one, please and thank you. Maybe even show us how their personalities fit together and all that jazz? Seriously, just cut out all the overrated Mare/Cal bits and give me more of my wonderfully gay steel princess.
2) A (legitimately) conflicted character with... emotions? *gasp* While she is a steelworker, her heart is certainly not made of steel. Some of you may have hated her at the end with the whole wineglass thing, but she was just doing what Maven could never do- act decisively to secure her power. She wants power, and so she does what she has to for it. Then she does what Cal would never think to do and reminds herself to send a healer to the maid later, showing her compassion as well as the fact that she was only doing what she had to do.
3) Another example of a strong character that tries to break out of the role she was ‘made’ for. I’ve never been a fan of characters following social norms or parental decrees blindly (obviously), so when Evangeline acknowledged her rebellious emotions and looked for ways to avoid her fate, I was all for it. She can’t contemplate openly defying her father yet, but I’m 100% sure it’s coming. And somehow I just know she’ll succeed. I know it. This girl is not dying on me.
Highkey hoping something happens with Evangeline and Mare in the next book- two strong, badass female leads = #couplegoals- but I don’t actually think it will, as Evangeline seems pretty attached to Elane and Mare is, unfortunately, straight. (I think. Surprise us, Victoria.)
Whew- a long review for a long, wonderfully captivating book. I cannot wait for book four- 2018 is too far awaaaay. Just give us the title at least, @ Victoria Aveyard, and I will take it and fantasize and be content.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.