Two Dark Reigns by Kendare Blake

Like most avid readers, I'm a sucker for series. The opportunity to spend more time in a world we love, with the characters we love, and the chance to delay the inevitable goodbye we all must bid stories in the end brings out the literary glutton in the best of us. That's why reading Two Dark Reigns, the third book of the Three Dark Crowns series was a given. I was hopefully trepidatious...or was it trepidatiously hopeful...that this entry would live up to its predecessors. *Spoiler Alert* It does. By the way, if you're reading this and you haven't yet read Three Dark Crowns and One Dark Throne, you deserve to get spoiled.

Rather than picking up where we left, instead Kendare Blake sends us back 400 years to when the Blue Queen was born to a War Queen who was as badass as her moniker suggests:

Philomene...smiled.'It is like a War Queen to bleed so much. But I still think I will die of this.'

We learn that a Blue Queen is fourth born following the series' historically titular triplets, and that the other three must be immediately killed (including the Oracle Queen, who is always drowned at birth), as there is no competition for the crown of a Blue Queen. I know, pretty harsh.

From there we join Arsinoe and Mirabella, who have been living on the mainland with Billy since their narrow escape months earlier. Their gifts have all but faded away since they left the island and rather than the revered queens they once were regarded as, they are viewed as odd misfits, unaccustomed with the culture and with no land or wealth to their names. We witness Katherine's rule, where the death of her King Consort, whom she accidentally poisoned when consummating their marriage, is covered up, and we learn that Jules has been hiding among the War-gifted since taking a stand against Katherine and revealing that she is Legion Cursed.

The true essence of the book becomes apparent quite quickly, without chapters of filler and over-exposition: Arsinoe is plagued by dreams of queens from long ago that urge her to return to the island for answers; Katherine's reign is disrupted by the abnormal (and homicidal) actions of the mist that had previously offered only protection to the island and its people; and Jules is chosen for a higher purpose by the people who take umbrage with yet another Poisoner Queen.

This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the story to the author and share the Good and the Bad of Two Dark Reigns.

The Good:

-Arsinoe and Mirabella's Relationship: 

Maybe it's because I'm the youngest of four, but nothing in this book­—or entire series—warms my wary heart more than the love Mirabella has for Arsinoe. The things she is willing to endure and relinquish to stay with her "little sister" and keep her safe and sound is better than any of the love stories in the series. She once felt that way for Katherine, and I'm hopeful that maybe she will again.

-Katherine's Rule: 

I was the first person to be dubious of Katherine's intentions as Queen, and I was pleasantly surprised. At the end of Thrones, Katherine was all but dead inside, with poisonous thoughts and a cold heart, but that seems to have changed. She still has the Dead Queens within her, clawing at her very psyche for the chance to quench their thirst for bloodlust and revenge, but she recognizes this and does her best to keep them at bay for the sake of a harmonious reign and happy kingdom. So much so that I legitimately feel badly for her that the mist is causing such chaos and turning her people against her.

-The Expansion of the Universe: 

We got to know the Poisoners, Elementals, and Naturalists well in the first two books, but now we have the opportunity to explore the War-gifted and, to a lesser effect, the Sight-gifted, as well as the completely oblivious mainlanders. I really enjoy this universe and am hungry for any new morsels that expand it even further and flush out the areas we've only read about in passing. I hope this continues in the next book.

The Bad:

-The "Twist": 

I use that word lightly and in quotations because I cannot fathom how we were not meant to see the big reveal of whom and what Arsinoe was dreaming about coming. It was obvious to me within five paragraphs where this plot was going and I felt a bit disappointed that there wasn't a greater truth hiding in plain sight.

-Madrigal...Again: 

I already dragged Madrigal enough in my One Dark Throne review, but I couldn't leave her out of this "bad". I can only hope it is Blake's intention that we despise this woman, though that wouldn't account for the concern we're meant to have when her life in endangered. When it comes to Madrigal, Katherine says it best, "She is so lovely, but of so little substance."

TL;DR: If you've already read Three Dark Crowns and One Dark Throne, there's plenty more fantasy, drama, action, heartbreak, joy, and intrigue where that came from in Two Dark Reigns. If you haven't read either, you may as well join the Oracle Queens.