Title: The Young Queens
Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: December 26th 2017
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Synopsis: Three black witches, born to a descending queen. One would rise to become queen in her place. Perhaps the strongest of the three. Perhaps the cleverest. Or perhaps it would be the girl born under the best shield of luck.
Katharine, Arsinoe and Mirabella – three young queens born to fulfil their destiny – to fight to the death to win the crown. But before they were poisoner, elemental and naturalist, they were children, sisters and friends . . .
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My Thoughts
Warning: There may be spoilers for Three Dark Crowns and One Dark Throne. If you have not read this book and do not wish to be spoiled, please don’t read this! Thank you.
The short story begins after Queen Camille has given birth to the triplets, Mirabella, Arsinoe, and Katharine. It’s still disconcerting to me how cold queens can be to their children. We get to see why she chose to make it seem that Katharine was a poisoner and Arsinoe was a naturalist, even though they were born the opposite. But for me, her reason was not enough for what they would end up going through living in the wrong roles. It just made me sadder. Especially for Katharine, a child who didn’t have the poisoner ability, and yet was forced to ingest it in order for her “powers” to come out.
The story then cuts ahead six years later to the Claiming, the day when the sisters leave each other for their new houses. I thought this short story was going to show the sisters when they were younger and how they played with each other. We get like eight pages of them together, and then they are split apart. I really wanted to see more of them together. There aren’t many, if any, flashbacks, and while Mirabella does try to remember, it’s not like we read about her memories. We do learn a lot about Arsinoe trying to leave the island with Jules and Joseph, and Caragh’s banishment. We also kind of get to see how Jules met Camden.
I found how information was given was really random, which was the same with the other books. Out of the blue, a character is able to describe in detail a queen that lived ten generations ago. And all about the Blue Queen. I don’t get it. I also wish that the story focused on different parts, like Katharine and maybe more on Jules. I think with the different chapters and the locations they focus on, I started to prefer reading about certain characters, and that stuck around with this short story.
This story did not make me like Mirabella anymore than I had before. I really do not like her. I don’t like that she’s the “chosen one”, and while that comes with their own set of struggles, I didn’t think she endured the way her other sisters did. I do feel bad for her for certain things, like how the Westwoods treated her for three years after she joined them, but I don’t feel sympathetic towards her.
As a short story, it was interesting seeing the lives of the young queens before the events of Three Dark Queens. I did like getting to learn about more characters, like Caragh. But the story didn’t really cover what I thought it would. If you’re looking for more from this world, pick this short story up. But definitely do it after you’ve read Three Dark Crowns, maybe even after One Dark Throne.
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