title: Four Dead Queens
Goodreads | The Storygraph
author: Astrid Sholte
buy from…your local indie or my bookshop affiliate
publishing: February 26th 2019 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
format: hardcover
source: library
genre: YA; Fantasy; Mystery
Seventeen-year-old Keralie Corrington may seem harmless, but in fact, she’s one of Quadara’s most skilled thieves and a liar. Varin, on the other hand, is an honest, upstanding citizen of Quadara’s most enlightened region, Eonia. Varin runs afoul of Keralie when she steals a package from him, putting his life in danger. When Varin attempts to retrieve the package, he and Keralie find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that leaves all four of Quadara’s queens dead.
With no other choices and on the run from Keralie’s former employer, the two decide to join forces, endeavoring to discover who has killed the queens and save their own lives in the process. When their reluctant partnership blooms into a tenuous romance, they must overcome their own dark secrets in hopes of a future together that seemed impossible just days before. But first they have to stay alive and untangle the secrets behind the nation’s four dead queens.
thoughts
I can’t quite remember where I discovered this title. I’m guessing it was my Goodreads feed that landed it on my TBR? Either way, I was excited to dive into this debut that was advertised as a fantasy YA but the plot of a mystery. Mysteries are probably my all time favorite way to drive a plot, so needless to say my interest was piqued.
I enjoyed Sholte’s world building. The maps and the list of laws at the beginning of the book in some ways feels a bit juvenile (reminds me of Warrior Cats lol) but did help me as I needed to reference it to understand this, at times, quite complicated novel. I also thought that the illustrations of the queens were cute but did little help distinguish their written ages; the illustrations portray the queens as all quite young when, according to the text, this was not the case. Inversely, the races of the queens as portrayed in the illustrations was never built upon in the text, which leads me to believe that this was a “performative” measure and left a sour taste in my mouth.
Four Dead Queens is told in alternating timelines, first the timeline of our thieving protagonist Keralie, and then the timelines of the four Queens, each awaiting their demise. Typically, I’m a fan of alternating timelines because they are a great tool to slowly feed information to the reader, but the execution in Four Dead Queens was more confusing then a useful device. Timelines, aside, I absolutely ADORED the protagonist; she is flawed but has clear motivations. I quickly became just as invested in her destination as I was in the mystery of the Queen’s murders. But… as much as I loved our protagonist, the romance sub-plot she participated in felt SO CLICHE and I dreaded it coming the whole time. I was really hoping that their relationship would stay platonic; given that they’ve only known each other for days! ~Chemistry~ aside, this is an unfortunate example of the YA #instalove the genre is criticized for.
As for the plot with the Queens, I wished frequently that we had gotten to know them more as characters, particularly the ones that are killed quickly. Though backstories are revealed as the book went along, I didn’t have the same compassion and investment in their plot as I did our protagonist. Related to this, it was shocked and disappointed that the only queer characters in this novel were killed. There is a larger conversation in media today about the strange trope to constantly kill of queer characters; this critique goes far beyond this review, but I am frustrated that this novel contributed to this problem. Also, one of the quadrants portrayed in the novel has a society that is based on eugenics; I’m not sure I need to go into a ton of detail as to how harmful this is, but I am shocked to have seen this gone to print with this included. Perhaps because that quadrant isn’t the main setting in the novel? Either way it’s abhorrent.
Lastly, due to the alternating timelines the main antagonist of the novel is not introduced until almost the end. In some ways this is exciting, because the mystery of who is killing the Queens and why remains a mystery until the very end. However, I felt really confused about the antagonist’s motivations and felt she was an underdeveloped character. It was hard to discern exactly why she acted the way that she did…and in an effort to avoid spoilers, it’s difficult to understand why her mother acted the way she did as well.
Ultimately, Four Dead Queens had a ton of potential but didn’t succeed in its execution. From my understanding this is a standalone novel, but if for some reason the author decides to write more I’m not sure where she would go with these characters. Her elaborate world has a ton of potential, so I could see a future companion novel in the works.
other opinions
The Nerdy Book Fairy | Utopia State of Mind | Pages Unbound |
Yeah…. I really did not like this book, after being so excited to read it, but I’ve felt largely alone in my opinion that it’s just not very good! I’m not sure it’s quite the thing to say I’m glad someone agrees with me (that seems mean to the author!), but it is good to feel as if I’m not the only person who thinks the book doesn’t really work!
The eugenics thing is definitely odd. I do give the author credit for the fact that the protagonist recognizes it’s bad and directly states, more than once, that’s it bad; I’ve seen other reviewers suggest it isn’t “called out” when, technically, it is. But I have no idea what it’s doing in the book when it could be an entire book by itself. There’s a whole dystopian quadrant, and as readers we just get to look at it and say “that’s terrible” and…move on! So bizarre. The book would have been better without it because all I can guess is that it’s supposed to provide some sort of backstory for the one character. And that’s a pretty ridiculous reason to have an entire dystopian society in one of the quadrants!