Not gonna lie—I had a bit of a standoff with Three Dark Crowns. It felt more like a prologue than a full story. But I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did. What starts as a brutal premise blooms into a beautifully messy saga of power, sisterhood, trauma, and identity. If you love complex relationships and aren’t afraid of a little bloodletting (literal and emotional), this series might just cast a spell on you.

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The Covers

Beautiful illustrations with lots of symbolism woven into the artwork. The Three Dark Crowns series is beautifully consistent. Each cover adds a dimension to the story that helps build the mood. The typography is hard to read when it overlaps the illustrations, but it is the same typeface and treatment across books. This begs the question – when is it okay to be inconsistent to ensure legibility? If the small imperfections annoy you, perhaps consider the alternative covers of the box set with redrawn cover art and matching publishers marks. 

Interior

The layout of these books is also beautiful. They are easy to read. The designer added some delightful iconography to help readers differentiate between locations. They are all consistent about typography and stylistic details. The maps evolve as the story does. Books 2-4 also include character listings to keep the cast fresh in the reader’s mind. 

Did the design affect whether I bought the book?

This series was gifted to me by another reader who DNF’ed the first book. 

The characters are interesting, and have a sense of realism and dimensionality that you don’t always get in young adult books. Throughout the series, the characters show steady development and at times surprise you. I’ll admit that early on I didn’t like most of the teens, but as the series progressed, they grew on me.

The relationships aren’t simple. They are very messy and complicated and interwoven, just like in real life. How the characters feel and act doesn’t always make perfect sense, but in that way is totally relatable.

The pace throughout the Three Dark Crowns series was brisk and steady. The plot advances rapidly enough to keep you on your toes. Despite being more fantasy-oriented, this series reads a little bit like a thriller because there is constantly something happening and a general sense of urgency. The third-person point of view keeps the reader emotionally distant from all of the characters.

The Three Dark Crowns series touches on miriad topics. 

Addiction, in this case, to power/magic. There is emphasis on the “price” of low magic and how it might hurt the user or the ones that they love. In addition, there is lots of cutting and blood-letting in the name of low-magic, but this may be triggering for some readers.

Different kinds of love – friendship, family, romantic, and different manifestations of each. I am generally hesitant about the validity of true love in stories of teenagers, simply due to the lack of life experience that they have. However, perhaps being raised to kill or die and knowing that your life expectancy is very short regardless of the outcome would change the bonds that a person forms. And in this kind of state, wouldn’t those who befriend you have that same knowledge and altered perspective, and their love be more likely to be true? Who gets attached to someone they think will be gone from their life very soon? Those who mean it.

Sisterhood. Over the series, this is explored through the queens, the foster families, the real families, sisters in arms, and even across adversaries of the same ilk like Luca and Natalia.

Coming to terms with who you are. Your gifts might not look like what you expected, but they are yours, and you can choose to develop them or let them slip away.

Otherness and the subtleties of prejudice – Arrons have a specific look and demand that their household staff change their hair color to look the same, mainlanders vs. islanders, different factions of gifts form into different communities that only intermingle at ceremonies. None of these things is addressed in terms of resolution, but their existence paints a picture of the socio-political environment that the series takes place in.

The Three Dark Crowns series as a whole takes a very female-centric point of view. There is a Goddess, only queens and their much lesser, un-magic, king consorts, families are led by their women-matriarchs and oldest females. The family takes the mother’s name. On the mainland, they are referred to as witches. Oddly, it doesn’t read as feminist as the political system still manages to pit women against each other at every level. Traditional gender traits seem to be completely reversed – men who cry and sing while women are stoic and hard working. I am a little disappointed that we don’t see any stereotypically feminine traits in positions of power, making it seem like the stereotypically masculine traits are essential for success even when dressed as a woman.

Admittedly, I had a bit of a beef with that first story…it didn’t have much story, but acted like a lengthy prologue to the actual story. However, when taken as a whole, I enjoyed the plot, the pace, and the complex relationships of the Three Dark Crowns series.

If you like the first book, Three Dark Crowns, I’d recommend reading the whole series. Each book gets progressively better, and the fourth book, Five Dark Fates, ties everything up nicely.

May be triggering to those sensitive to abuse, cutting, addictive behaviors, etc.

When you start a book series, do you think about how they will look on your bookshelf? 

May your life be as full as your bookshelf and as long as your TBR list.

Happy Reading!