kendare blake | Clatter & Clank

Notes on Diversity/Inclusion

At least in my reading, this is not a very diverse or inclusive book. As far as I can recall, there are no queer characters. Fennbirn seems like a pretty white place. I’m sure class distinctions exist, but since the plot follows three would-be queens, we’re seeing Fennbirn through the eyes of the haves–doomed haves, bitter haves–but they are still haves.

There is an argument to be made that the book, however obliquely, provides disability in the form of two of the three queens. Mirabella’s sanity is questioned more than once. The impact this has on Mirabella, and the way this colors how others treat her in turn, is a decent reflection of the stigma many people with mental health issues face. And there is Katharine, the poisoner queen: her training requires her to imbibe poison after poison, leaving her frail and weak. The fragility of her body leaves her in a state of chronic pain and fatigue, which is itself a form of disability.

Content Warnings for Book

Katharine’s training, mentioned above, is laced with emotional and physical abuse. I’d argue that the training itself is abusive, since her guardians are feeding a child poison from a very young age, but on top of that, Katharine is pinched, and bruised, and belittled. Later she is subjected to emotional manipulation by yet another guardian (this time turned lover).

There is HELLA gaslighting in this book, y’all.

Mirabella is pretty much constantly subjected to gaslighting by everyone, all the time (see note above about her mental health).

Arsinoe ends up on the receiving end of gaslighting by her best friend Jules. Arsinoe, the naturalist queen, is far outstripped in naturalist magic by Jules, and turns to charms and spells–“low magic”– to make her powers appear greater than they are in her demonstration. Though this struck me as an entirely sensible course of action, Jules tells Arsinoe it’s beneath her and that she should be ashamed of herself.

Review

Book summary (from Goodreads):

When kingdom come, there will be one.

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.

The great strength of Three Dark Crowns is its worldbuilding. Fennbirn has weight and history. There is depth and detail here that satisfied my atlas-loving genealogy-craving nerdself. With every reveal of the intricacies of the setup, with every exception and twist, I wanted to know more history. I wanted to know about the great naturalist queens, and how the poisoner families had come to power in recent reigns, and how the elementalists hadn’t just blown them all to smithereens already.

The great weakness of me as a reader is that I overthink everything. So, even with worldbuilding as deep as this, there are still holes. There will always be holes. And when I am as delighted by the worldbuilding as I was with Three Dark Crowns, the seams will show a little harder. When I am left asking questions, I will be a little more bitter. The late-stage reveals of the book felt overly convenient and contrived given how thorough and organic the worldbuilding was throughout. Especially the final reveal, which had me questioning the supposed and demonstrated intelligence of a great many characters. If this was the case the whole time, then how was everything supposed to work?

All of this is to say that Three Dark Crowns is exactly my kind of book: it is a sprawling, slow, and intensely character focused secondary world fantasy novel. It has very clear stakes: there are three potential queens, and only the most powerful will survive*. The book puts you right into the brains of each of the three queens, forcing you to sympathize with each, daring you to pick and root for a favorite. As each queen makes preparations for her last year of training, and possibly her last year alive, you learn more and more about the land they might rule if they live.

Each of the contender queens is well-drawn and compelling. Katharine has to her advantage the political machinations of the poisoner families, but alas, she is not herself a very strong poisoner. Mirabella is an enormously strong elementalist–but she is apparently unstable. And then there is Arsinoe, the underdog. The naturalists have no political power, and Arsinoe, though clever and quick, has no solid grasp of naturalist magic. All three queens have strengths, and all three queens have weaknesses. It’s anyone’s throne.

Blake takes her time with the book. Instead of urgency, she works with dread. She lets the inevitability of two people’s deaths permeate the pages, and we watch as each of the would-be queens deals with this horrible finality in her own way.

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Goodreads | Amazon

Notes on Diversity:
There is a sliver of diversity here, but it’s probably not what you’re looking for.

The Jewish character is smart, but Very Wrong and Stubborn.

Literally the only person of color in the entire book is a voodoo-using evil bogeyman ghost out to kill people. He is Black. And evil. And he eats animals sometimes.

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Review:
Cas Lowood is a ghost hunter, like his father before. He is training, honing the edge of his talents, because he needs to be as good as possible when he goes up against the ghost that took down his dad. He’s only seventeen, but he’s been at this for three years, and he’s nearly ready. This next hunt is his final test: Anna Dressed In Blood. She’s supposed to be vicious. The stories about her are chilling. He can’t wait to go after her.

But when he gets to Thunder Bay Ontario–with his witch mother and their witchy cat in tow–nothing goes according to plan. Anna is a force, and deadly, but there is more to her than he expected. Civilians get involved, and it turns out he needs their help. And then everything goes sideways.

Anna Dressed In Blood is a well-written book that, for me, had several fatal flaws and suffered in comparison to other, better works tackling similar themes. Blake can write, and she has a knack for characterization. The book was well-paced and readable, the characters are generally well-rounded. Carmel, especially, surprises and delights. Blake has talents; this book was not the book for me.

The premise (extremely masculine but very sensitive teenage boy goes ghost-huntin’) bore such a strong resemblance, especially in the opening pages, that I couldn’t help comparing it to Supernatural.

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Supernatural has a lot of problems–the women keep dying. The people of color keep dying. But as a show that explores just how toxic masculinity can be it is pretty damn good. This is clearly a theme Blake was trying to explore in Anna Dressed In Blood; as Cas slowly picks up his entourage, and even more slowly begins to regard them as friends, he opens up new vulnerabilities.

The difference between Cas Lowood and the Winchester brothers is that Cas never actually had to do any of the things he’s doing. He decided to put this pressure on himself. We are told, in the book, that he is very special and must fight all these ghosts with his very special ghost hunting knife to which–maybe, it remains unclear–he is blood-bound. But his mother clearly wishes he wouldn’t do this, even as she enables him.

(Sidebar: Dear Cas’s mom–stop enabling him. Why are you enabling him? Since he was fourteen he has been doing this shit that got your husband killed? You’re just…letting him do this? What the shit, you’re a witch. And a parent. Put your foot down. Do not move him around multiple countries allowing him to murder dead people, which is clearly very dangerous. It is well-established that John Winchester was a shitty parent do you want to be like John Winchester, lady??)

Dean and Sam were forced into this life. They had no choice. There was no normalcy for them, and on top of that, they are not in high school. Watching the show, I do have to navigate around questions like really, though, when do you do your homework if you are out ghost hunting all night. And, having been forced into that life, the Winchesters’ emotional arcs are more defined and starker than Cas’s.

Then it turns out it’s less a Gory Horrible ghost story than this kind of ghost story:

but gender flipped and they’re in high school

Yeah. The kind with kissin’.

I mean, Anna is still pretty destructive, but not when it comes to Cas1. He uncovers her Tragic Past (of course she has a Tragic Past) and then promptly falls in love with her. And she likes him back. And they canoodle and stuff. And…all his friends and his mom are cool with it.

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Why are they cool with it? How is this a sustainable relationship? Things Go Down at the end, but things would go down one way or the other. Did Cas see himself as a seventy year old man with ghost-Anna on his arm? Was he planning to introduce her to people? What if she was tied to the town–was he going to leave and return occasionally? Just…no one brought up any “hey, friend, your girlfriend is a ghost, that is an interesting life choice” conversations at all.

This part of the book really pales in comparison to Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria. Like Cas, Jevick falls for a ghost. Unlike Cas, he realized very quickly how limiting their different experiences of existence are for their budding relationship. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet portrayal of love. If you are looking for a love story about a man and a ghost, that’s what I would point you to. But it’s an extraordinarily different book than this one (not horror at all, for starters).

With all of this I doubt I ever would have become an Anna Dressed in Blood superfan, but I would have rated it a solid four stars had there not been a few glaring plot holes and dangling plot threads. The worldbuilding felt half fleshed out. The plot moved–but on inspection key pieces just happened and didn’t make much sense. Anna’s murder, especially made little sense to me (specific questions are spoilery and under a cut here). Same with the final Big Bad.

3 stars