The Crown’s Fate by Evelyn Skye
Published: May 16th 2017 by Balzer + Bray
Amazon: The Crown’s Fate (Crown’s Game, Band 2)
Russia is on the brink of great change. Pasha’s coronation approaches, and Vika is now the Imperial Enchanter, but the role she once coveted may be more difficult—and dangerous—than she ever expected.
Pasha is grappling with his own problems—his legitimacy is in doubt, the girl he loves loathes him, and he believes his best friend is dead. When a challenger to the throne emerges—and with the magic in Russia growing rapidly—Pasha must do whatever it takes to keep his position and protect his kingdom.
For Nikolai, the ending of the Crown’s Game stung deeply. Although he just managed to escape death, Nikolai remains alone, a shadow hidden in a not-quite-real world of his own creation. But when he’s given a second chance at life—tied to a dark price—Nikolai must decide just how far he’s willing to go to return to the world.
With revolution on the rise, dangerous new magic rearing up, and a tsardom up for the taking, Vika, Nikolai, and Pasha must fight—or face the destruction of not only their world but also themselves.
The Crown’s Game was a book that I highly anticipated reading, which left me underwhelmed – so I went into this one a little wary. I wasn’t sure how the author was going to answer so many question in just this last instalment (this is a duology). I ended up DNFing this book. I found this book even more underwhelming than the first and I was really having to force myself through it.
Whilst this book starts off at the end of the previous one, I feel like it is basically a repeat of book 1 – but on a slightly different level. It is less a game and more of an open warfare between Vika, Pasha and Nikolai. The book is basically Nikolai trying to get the better of Vika and Pasha, whilst Vika hits back and Pasha sort of stuck in the middle. I didn’t feel like there was a huge amount of character development from book 1 (except for Nikolai with what his mother was doing to him) and the characters remained relatively 2D. I didn’t feel a connection with characters to actually care what was going to happen to them throughout the story.
I also feel like I was being given more questions than answers. How was Nikolai in the form he was? How did Aizhana come back? How does the transference of energy work? Why can Galina do magic if there is only supposed to be two people in the entire of Russia who can do it? Why can only two people do magic? There are more, but I feel like all the questions I have would take over this post. I have spoken to a couple of people who read both books and they have had similar opinions in the sense that they have a lot of questions that have, and will remain, unanswered.
The plot didn’t really interest me that much – to the point where I was having to force myself to pick the story up. The style and the form that the plot took was very repetitive from book one, but on a bit of a bigger scale (I don’t want to say too much because of spoilers). I also decided to read the ending after DNFing to see how it would all wrap up and I found the ending to be a little weak. It would have been better had it gone down differently.
I honestly don’t understand either canon for this book. I don’t see a connection between Vika and Pasha or Vika and Nikolai. Jealousy was a huge motivator for what some of these characters did and I honestly didn’t understand why because I didn’t see a spark between any of the characters.
All in all, I was pretty disappointed by this duology. This series was highly anticipated series for me and I ended up not really enjoying either book as much as I thought I was going to! I gave this book 1/5 stars.
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