Review: One Dark Throne

One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Now THIS is more like what I expected from the first book! Plots and schemes and darkness and blood and attacks and drama and savagery.

Much more entertaining than the first book!

Warning: This review contains unhidden spoilers for the previous book. Continue reading at your own risk.

So! Where do we begin??

Oh, that's right! Katherine is back from the dead, Mirabella has fallen from grace and Arsinoe is, GASP! actually a poisoner!

One of my biggest issues with the first book was that it felt quite dull and slow at times; that's absolutely not the case here. We get straight into the action, as the queens are finally trying to kill each other and it's getting nasty. Kat in particular has become a total savage and I love it. She's putting in the most effort to kill her sisters and seems to have totally embraced her dark side. Arsinoe is still pretty chill, just going along with things, and Mira is still trying to be a hero and fight the system. So they're very different girls and you'll inevitably pick one over the others as your fave.

The boys also have a bit more screen time in this one so prepare to have your heart squeezed a little. Where Joseph was the talk of the town in the last book, Billy has now stepped up as leading man and his relationship with Arsinoe comes close to #relationshipgoals just because of how snarky they are to each other. They're adorable.

It's just a much more fun ride, and we're finally starting to see some more of the darkness that the story brings. There's still a lot that's not explained which is incredibly frustrating - there's no world building to explain how this society has come about, and there's no background on how Arsinoe could possibly have ended up somewhere she shouldn't have. It leads to the question of whether it means Kat is a naturalist or whether there were two poisoners or whether Kat has no power at all. It's just not explored at all which is disappointing.

I also had a lot of questions and doubts about some happenings, particularly surrounding Braddock, the BFF bear. The magic in this book doesn't really seem to have a lot of rules, and I feel like there were always options they didn't explore. But if you kind of ignore all the things you're not being told and just relax into the story it's actually a lot of fun. Nice and brutal. And a killer ending that totally makes up for the predictability of the first one.

So a much stronger installment in the series, and I'm hanging out for book three now, but I'm really hoping we get a bit more history!


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