Reviews with content warning for Violence - Four Dead Queens

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte

11 reviews

nvjtgll13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

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queer_bookwyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

4 ⭐ CW: Death, violence

Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte is a YA fantasy standalone and a murder mystery. I really enjoyed this one. It was nice to have an easy read after the last book I read. This was a nice blend of scifi and period fantasy.

We follow Keralie Corrington, a thief in Toria part of Quardara. Her job is to pickpocket valuable items for her boss Mackiel to auction off. Then one day he directs her to steal from an Eonian messenger in possession of memory chips. When the messenger comes to the auction house to retrieve what had been stolen, Keralie ingests the chips and sets off a chain of events that changes, not only her life, but changes all of Quardara. The four queens are dead.

We alternate between Keralie's pov and the povs of all the queens up to their deaths. Kera and the Eonian boy, Varin try to tell the palace about who might have done the murders. I really liked that Kera was a flawed character. She was allowed to be messy. I thought the world building was interesting. Quardara is split into four quadrants: Eonia, the land of stoics bent on technological advancement and abhor emotion; Archia, the fertile land that values simplicity and hard work; Toria, a land of trade and seafaring and values curiosity and knowledge; Ludia, the land of frivolity, pleasure, and art.

I love when a mystery can keep me guessing! I had no idea who was behind the murders until it was revealed, and the red herring had me. There was a little bit of romance between Kera and Varin, but it was very minor compared to the rest of the story. It also seemed to be a queer normative world, at least as far as same gender romance.

This was a fun read!

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sheyri's review

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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isacarvalho91's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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jaqylantern's review against another edition

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emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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tia_20's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

the way I audibly GASPED when Mackiel revealed that Keralie had done the Murders, I was not prepared

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drtx_bwt's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.75

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katherinek's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I was so pleasantly surprised by this! I loved the back and forth between characters and I only predicted one of the plot twists/reveals. It's the kind of book where every time you think you know what's going on it turns out to be completely wrong.

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nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There are a lot of things to like about Four Dead Queens. Unfortunately, there are also things to dislike and sadly, I’m here to tell you that the popular observations about this book are true, and it’s a huge detriment to its overall enjoyability. I don’t regret reading Four Dead Queens – it surprised me sometimes, disappointed me other times, but was an interesting adventure overall.

I’ll start with the biggest thing, the thing all the reviews are talking about. Four Dead Queens is lacking in execution. It’s all over the place with six different POVs, messy pacing, and too many things it’s trying to accomplish. Either side of the story would have been sufficient in itself. I get how there are so many different perspectives to any event, but the reader doesn’t need to know so many of them. It muddles the plot. The story is not quite about Keralie, not quite about the Keralie/Varin love story, not quite about a coup, and not quite about Queen Marguerite’s big secret. Scholte seems to have struggled for balance between all these things – while it’s important to have subplots, all of these things are given similar weights in the story and fade in and out in importance at different times. It makes the book feel like it has four halfhearted plots instead of one strong central plot and three interesting subplots. In that way, it was difficult to be attentive for the first three-quarters of the story. Nothing was really moving.

On the other hand, Scholte had some interesting world building in Four Dead Queens. The idea of the quadrants mixes fantasy with science fiction and plays with a few favorite tropes to build something different than a lot of fantasy books coming out right now. The world building is stronger in the beginning, when the queens are not dead (I’m sorry, it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the title) – as the story progresses, it fades to focus on a single quadrant with a few nods to another. As such, Four Dead Queens left a lot of areas unexplored. Given the already scattered nature of the book, I understand that choice, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I would have liked to see more.

Eonia, on the other hand, is a bit overall sketchy. There are a lot of ableist views in the quadrant, the most blatant one being assigned “death dates”. This is the quadrants way of preserving resources – they kill citizens when they reach an age where they become a “burden to society”. This includes older citizens, but also people with disabilities. I don’t think I need to explain why that is extremely problematic. The view is challenged within the book, but not removed. Adding to this, there is rhetoric around life being fuller without a disability. There arena’s to this throughout the book as a cure is sought, but it plays in heaviest at the end when one character assures another they are looking for a way to remove the disability. This creates an extremely problematic precedent that those with disabilities not only have less value, but are somehow less than whole and cannot be happy. This is very much untrue – there are many paths to a happy ending.

I will give Scholte some points for tricking me and not following the path I expected for the first two thirds of the book. I was dead certain that events were going to go a certain way and characters’ secrets would be revealed and I was completely wrong. I’m still (as always) unimpressed with the love story, but character progression took a different path and I can respect that twist.

The end of the book tied up very nicely with a ribbon. It rushed through events at a pace I would have appreciated earlier in the novel. The lack of questioning about certain outlandish comments and overly convenient events annoyed me as a reader, but for someone swept up in the story, I don’t think they would have thought twice about it. The ending was too clean and easy and folks are way too accepting of certain things and it didn’t play believably to me at all.

Ultimately, Four Dead Queens was an interesting read, but I don’t think I would have picked it up if it hadn’t come in a book box such a long time ago.

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t4vs's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I'm going to be honest: i was not having high hopes for this book. I underestimated it.

My gods, that was a good read. I only bought it because it was on sale, the title peaked my attention, the cover is pretty... Thought it was going to be just a "passing the time" read. I was wrong, because THIS IS GOOD.

It is a standalone fantasy book, wich i loved (i have too much series to finish righ now), with a murder-mystery type of story. Shut up and take my money.

Though i imagined some plot points the rest surprised me. Not a 5 star favorite but def a good book and a good recommendation for standalones, if you are into them.

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