Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns, 3)
#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, there is another queen 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 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.
Don't miss Five Dark Fates, the thrilling conclusion to the series!
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Community Reviews
Originally reviewed on Cyn's Workshop
Ah! Wow, this was such a good book. We’re just going to step away from professionalism in this review only because there were so many gut-wrenching scenes that made the novel so compelling.
The one thing that binds all the characters together is the fact that all the characters all want to do what they believe to be the best for everyone, those they love and the people of Fennbirn, and yet it doesn’t matter what they do everything continues to go wrong. Readers here can’t help but sympathize for Katherine, the poor girl who was thrown into a pit by the boy who thought he was saving her, who has the crown she has always wanted. All she wants is to be a good queen, a good queen for the people and herself. Readers are already familiar with her nature, she’s kind and gentle at heart, but her possession of the Dead Queens at times separates her from herself. All Katherine seeks is peace and prosperity, and yet with the mist surrounding the island attacking her reign, the fragile peace she seeks continues to slip out of her fingers. The Dead Queens within her provide so much tension because they whisper, they are this underlying character that the reader can’t see, but the reader can hear them, they can feel their malevolence reverberate off the pages of the novel, creating a haunting read.
For Arisnoe and Mirabella, their stories are united. They have escaped to the mainland and have their own haunting to content with. The Blue Queen, the queen who created the mist, is haunting the girls, leading back to Fennbirn. As the girls try to conform to the new lifestyle of the mainland that differs so much from the lives they have always known, they face those challenges as well as the haunting of the Blue Queen from eons ago. Their story is less tension driven but still powerful in its own way. These girls must face their own challenges, their peace or their friends?
There’s certainly a great deal of tension going on in the story as it unfolds, the horror and tragedy bleed off the pages luring the reader in. The characters have grown through the events of the previous novels, and the intermingling of narratives beyond their perspectives give more dimension and scope to the plot of the story. There’s more going on behind the scenes, and the reader can see it, they can explore and follow the plot as it unveils itself. Blake’s talent as a writer has only grown with this novel, creating a powerful third part to an already enthralling series. (★★★★☆ | A)
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Frankly, I found the title to be misleading. I expected it to be regarding the current Queens or even Jules, but to use the Blue Queen as the second queen for the naming of this book was unfortunate and disappointing. I kept expecting something to actually happen to Katharine in this book and for one of the other characters to take over and start their dark reign, but nothing even close to that happened.
I appreciate the bond attempting to be built between Mirabella and Arsinoe, but it kind of felt flat. With Arsinoe constantly commenting about how suited Mirabella is to the mainland and Mirabella constantly mentioning how she has to protect Arsinoe, it felt like a resentment-filled bond more than one fueled by sibling love.
I really liked the idea of Arsinoe and Mirabella needing to return to the island, though, I had wished it was more influenced by the need to be who they are. Mirabella, specifically, is heavily tied to her magic and was missing a part of herself in coming to the mainland so I wish that had been a larger dynamic for her throughout this book.
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