I recently finished reading ‘Three Dark Crowns’ by Kendare Blake. It’s a YA fantasy with a darker tone, and a really intriguing concept. It’s a very good book, and I highly enjoyed it, as evidenced by the fact that I managed to read the whole thing in a day. As an introduction, the blurb says:
In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic.
Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers.
Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache.
Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.
But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.
If you haven’t given it a try yet, then I highly recommend it. And, more than just being an entertaining story, this book also taught me a few things about good writing, such as raising the tension, raising the stakes, and keeping readers hooked and emotionally invested. So today I thought I’d share a few thoughts on what I picked up from reading this book. For anyone who hasn’t read the book, don’t worry. I won’t be sharing any spoilers, or discussing details outside of what is mentioned in the blurb, so read on!
Make all your POV characters as likable as possible, especially if you’re going to pit them against each other
In order to become queen, Mirabella, Katharine and Arsinoe must fight to the death, and we, the readers, get to follow all sides of the story through multiple POVs. Which is a lot more emotionally gripping when all three girls are equally likable, and equally deserving of surviving. It’s so much easier to read about a fight between characters when you only like one of them, but when you love them all? Heartbreaking, intriguing, and emotional. It’s a great way to keep people hooked as they race to see how this will be resolved.
Up the stakes at the end of the book to leave readers hanging on for book two
Of course we all know that if there is going to be a second book, then you have to leave it in such a way that readers are waiting breathlessly to see how it ends. ‘Three Dark Crowns’ does an exceptional job of this. By the last page, every major character in the book has fought hard, been hit with a curve-ball, and is given a new reason to fight harder, and a new motivation. Suddenly the stakes have been raised for everyone, and the book ends in a more tense and gripping place than it began in. Readers can be left with the book’s story line having been concluded, while everything is in place for an even more dramatic book two.
Duty and tradition can be way stronger motivators than pure evil
The main concept of this book isn’t something that has just been invented. This fight between queens has been going on for hundreds of generations. People fight and kill each other because of tradition and duty. Characters act based on their sense of duty and their need to adhere to traditions. This makes for much more nuanced characters, people who aren’t ‘evil’, just making bad decisions in the name of duty. These characters are compelling, precisely because they’re not ‘evil’. We can relate, or at least understand why they do what they do. And that makes for far more compelling storytelling.
These are three of the most important things I learned from reading ‘Three Dark Crowns’. If you haven’t read the book yet, do give it a go. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I read it, and, after all, it did inspire a blog posts, so maybe that’s a recommendation to you? This is a new style of post for me, so like me know if you enjoyed it and whether you’d like to see more like it in the future, because I’d love any excuse to read more excellent books and call it work!
Have you read ‘Three Dark Crowns’? If you did, what did you think? If you haven’t, are you planning too? Which of these points struck you the most? Let’s chat down in the comments!
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