• Two Dark Reigns

  • Three Dark Crowns Series, Book 3
  • By: Kendare Blake
  • Narrated by: Amy Landon
  • Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (801 ratings)

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Two Dark Reigns  By  cover art

Two Dark Reigns

By: Kendare Blake
Narrated by: Amy Landon
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Publisher's summary

Number one New York Times best-selling 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, they aren’t the only queens 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 or not 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, coming in September!

©2018 Kendare Blake (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Hurried ending

I was really enjoying the story I feel like it ended abruptly. I hope the next book is better.

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Good

I really wanted the storyline to speed up. I think she should have made it a trilogy.

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How does this end???

This series is a lot! A lot of characters and a lot of story! Looking forward to the end to see how this all shakes out!

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Total Cliffhanger!

This book is total chaos! And ends in shambles!! What is happening?! Guess that's how they get you to read the next one... So, now that I'm completely invested in these characters, they go and muck them all up. Whose on whose side and whose going to die? Because you know they can't all survive, we learned that no main character is safe in book 2... Love the narrator, great emotional depth and smoothlessly switches between characters. On to the conclusion.

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**Review contains spoilers!**

I enjoyed starting to read Two Dark Reigns by Kendare Blake. I'm still listening to the audiobooks because I like the narrator's voice. I was excited to learn about places in this world other than Fennbirn and dive more deeply into the island's mysteries by learning more about its history. I was not, however, very interested in some of the new characters - namely, Billy's mother and his sister, Jane.

Billy's family are what I'll call "society people" on the mainland. His mother is quite proper and snooty. She has someone in mind for Billy to marry. After escaping from Fennbirn, Arsinoe and Mirabella are staying w/ Billy and his family, and Arsinoe being Arsinoe, she borrows Billy's clothes to wear, never wears a dress, goes out in public alone, and never carries a parasol, which is all pretty scandalous to Billy's mother. Jane seems curious about the queens and isn't at all mean, but she's also kind of a bubblehead and in no way interesting. Billy does stand up for Arsinoe and tries to keep his mother at bay, but there isn't enough Billy in the first third of this book in my opinion because he is essentially the queens' only protector and support on the mainland. I understand the point is to show how much Arsinoe and Mirabella don't fit in on the mainland (Mirabella fits in significantly better than Arsinoe because she at least wears dresses and acts like a lady but still feels out of place), but I could have done w/o the entire Billy's family story line. After repeated admonishments of Arsinoe by Billy's mother, it was beating a dead horse.

Back on Fennbirn, Jules is hiding out w/ the warriors of Bastian City. Emilia Vatros is a warrior from a famous war-gifted clan. She first meets Jules at the Queens' Duel and, along w/ a band of other warriors, helps Jules, Joseph, Billy, Arsinoe, and Mirabella escape the Volroy. In Two Dark Reigns, Jules's story progresses quite slowly. She practices using her war gift by training w/ Emilia and isn't otherwise certain of her path. Emilia and her sight-gifted friend, Mathilde, an oracle from Sunpool, unexpectedly announce in a tavern that Jules is the "legion queen" based on a prophecy that she once was a queen and may be again. Jules is shocked by this and reluctant to take any kind of a leadership role or have people follow her based on this prophecy. Emilia begins planning a rebellion against the crown to usurp Katharine and put Jules on the throne.

Meanwhile, Katharine is turning out to be a pretty good Queen Crowned. She isn't a ruthless tyrant like I expected based on her behavior during the events of the Ascension Year. What makes her act cruelly are the dead queens inside her that she brought back from the Breccia Domain after Pietyr pushed her in. I actually kind of feel badly for Katharine for what she's going through. Not only is she full of dead queens, but also the Mist has begun to rise against the island. It kills sailors and merchants who try to sail through it, and it comes ashore, engulfs people, and rips them apart. People who disappear into the Mist wash up on shore a short time later, their bodies extremely decayed as if they had been dead for a long time. We don't know yet, even in Five Dark Fates, why the Mist is rising, but on the mainland, Arsinoe is having dreams - more like visions - about the last Blue Queen, Illiann.

Illiann is a rare fourth-born daughter of a Queen Crowned - a Blue Queen - born about 400 years ago. When a fourth daughter is born, she automatically becomes the future Queen Crowned, and her sisters are killed in infancy. However, Arsinoe learns by dreaming through the eyes of a woman named Daphne that at least one of Illiann's sisters lived. Daphne's real name is Roxane, and she is Illiann's sister. She was sent on a raft to die in the wilderness but was found by citizens of Centra, a country that's part of the larger mainland, and is taken to be raised as a "foundling," essentially a ward, of the wealthy Redville family of Centra. Later, her foster brother, Henry Redville, becomes one of the suitors to Queen Illiann, which is how Daphne meets and befriends Illiann, but neither of them seems to realize they're sisters. I mean, why would they? Daphne isn't her real name (but she doesn't know that because she was raised by the Redvilles). She wasn't raised on Fennbirn, and although she was born an elemental, she is unaware of her gift, having been raised off the island.

In addition to the dreams/visions Arsinoe is experiencing, a black shadow - the specter of the Blue Queen - appears to Arsinoe. The specter points across the sea toward Fennbirn and croaks, "Go." After using low magic to get the specter to appear to Mirabella as well, the sisters and Billy eventually decide they must return to Fennbirn for some as yet unknown reason. It isn't clear yet why the specter and dreams are appearing to Arsinoe but not Mirabella. Arsinoe is instructed to go to Mount Horn, a place of significance because the Black Cottage is located at the base of the mountain. Once Arsinoe reaches the cave on Mount Horn, the specter of the Blue Queen reveals the truth - Queen Illiann fell from a cliff to her death during a battle between Fennbirn and Salkades, another mainland country (I don't know what the battle is about or what caused it), creating the Mist (nay, she *became* the Mist itself), and Daphne takes on Illiann's identity and reigns until she bears the next set of triplet queens. No one ever knows it's not Illiann. To destroy the Mist, Daphne tells Arsinoe, another elemental queen - Mirabella - must die. This explains why Mirabella is not privy to the dreams/visions Arsinoe is having.

Queen Katharine is dealing w/ the dead queens inside her, the Mist rising, and the "legion queen" rebellion. High Priestess Luca, who is now a member of the Black Council, suggests inviting Mirabella to align w/ the crown because Mirabella respects Fennbirn's history and traditions, and Luca believes she will support a queen of the blood staying on the throne as opposed to supporting the rebellion and the usurpation of the throne by a non-queen. While Katharine is skeptical, she writes to Mirabella w/ this offer. Two Dark Reigns ends w/ Mirabella headed for Indrid Down. She tells Luca, however, that she will not interfere in island business and Katharine will have to fight her own battles.

There's a lot to unpack in Two Dark Reigns. Some of the peripheral plot lines seem a bit much without a clear purpose and don't add significant value to the overall plot. There's a whole Milone family plot line w/ Madrigal having Matthew Sandrin's baby, a son named Fennbirn, that I didn't go into here. Unsure about the value of this plot line, even as I'm reading Five Dark Fates. It seems to me that it only shows that a lot of things on the island are changing. Typically, Milone women always have two daughters. Madrigal's son breaks this "curse." I also didn't go into Katharine's capture of Madrigal in hopes that Jules will agree to exchange herself for her mother, ending the rebellion. During what is supposed to be the exchange, the Mist rises, and the dead queens force Katharine to kill Madrigal, which unbinds Jules's legion curse. Her war gift is unleashed, and Jules loses control, injuring her cougar familiar, Camden, and bursting every blood vessel in her eyes. I believe it's Emilia who knocks Jules unconscious so they can escape, and once they are back in Sunpool, the oracle city, Jules is chained in a room because she's out of control. In Five Dark Fates, Arsinoe is eventually able to tether Jules's legion curse to Emilia, and Jules recovers. Again, not sure how valuable this plot line is except to show the nature of the legion curse and just how powerful Jules's gifts are unless they are bound or tethered. The dual gift does drive Jules mad for a time, but we've been told that this happens since we first learned about the legion curse. Poor Jules suffers so much - the legion curse, Joseph's death, Madrigal's murder by Katharine, and now she's the reluctant figurehead of the rebellion. Let's not even get into the dead queens invading Pietyr's body and rendering him unconscious. I'm not sure yet what the purpose of that plot line is.

I'm well on my way to finishing the series, and maybe some of my remaining questions will be answered, but with only one book left, I'm not sure how all of this will end up fitting together. The whole Blue Queen plot line is disjointed, and I feel like I'm still missing important details that perhaps have yet to be revealed.

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kept me on my toes. never knew what to expect

loveeeee this series!!! cant wait to know what's next!!! this series has me completely blown away. will definitely be recommending

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not as good as the first.

Someone said the ending was rushed and it definitely was. The story is missing depth, the new characters introduced don’t have as much breadth of character as the first book. You’re left having to read the third book (which I was going to anyway) but you could have stopped at the first book because that one ended in a perfect and satisfying way.

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    3 out of 5 stars

Slow to start. Loved the ending

I worried that this would happen with this series, if it would start to feel like the plot was dragging. But overall I enjoyed the book. It just wasn’t as good as the others.

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Amazing

i loved it so much. every morning i would listen to it and it was the perfect start of my day. i can't believe i was so against listening to books!

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Loved it 🖤🖤🖤!!

OMG I'm listening to it again!! Amy Landon did a phenomenal job. I love the way she brought the book to life for me.. I hope you enjoy, fantastic read!!!

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