Tell me you've never read a book on European history without telling me you've never read a book about European history.

Bland, banal, repetitive, paper-thin characters without even the intrigue of engaging side characters or unique turns in the story, twists a mile away and one of the most eye-rolling, unimpressive final chapters I've read in a while, and it was supposed to be the shocking ending, but made everything worse for its inclusion.

Castles in their Bones has an interesting premise in an empress seeding her daughters as double-agents to foreign kingdoms to destroy their rules and reclaim the continent, but that's where the interesting parts to the story ends. The characters have paper-thin personalities and are fundamentally generic in every aspect of their characters, their actions and interactions, and how the story progresses. You've read iterations of each of their stories before and this one isn't a stand out by any measure, least of all that they're combined into one large book. The three sisters are bland, unimaginative, and are largely interchangeable, to the point where I had to read the chapter headers and their physical settings to tell them apart. Their most frequent thoughts are about how their mother trained them to do the task they are currently trying to achieve, and yet each of them instead falls in love with man or country and then we ride the carousel around again. Their husbands are equally poorly drafted, their enemies obvious a mile out, the troubles they have in their path similarly banal.

I have to assume that the author has done very little research or has little curiosity into how intrigue works in royal households and the realities and difficulties of running a kingdom, which is a terrible detriment because that's what we're here for? Yes there's leeway for the fictional and fantastical aspects of the story but then there's the reality of humanity placed in positions of power. It corrupts everyone in one way or another.

The princesses are there to be Trojan horses and take down the kingdoms from within, but they're much more interested in remembering how they were taught to do so without actually doing it. All of the courts are generic, by the way, even as they're supposed to be separate and unique with their own challenges to overcome. The author seems to have drawn broad strokes from the French (definitely), Italian and some amalgamation of English/Scottish courts in history but she just slapped some vague references into the story and expected it all to be gravy. Foreign princesses don't simply walk into a new court and suddenly have all the power to do anything they want, even if they pretend to be nice at first to get into good graces. That's not how courts work and that's not what we're here for either. Gossip is not all talk and court intrigues, which may I remind are vital to the furthering of the plot, are dangerous games these girls have supposedly spent 16 years mastering. We are here for dangerous games, instead we get a lovesick child masquerading as an adult who finds her idiot, sheltered, beautiful husband adorable once she prompts him to look into the kingdom's finances so he can stop killing children (Sophronia), An increasing drunkard unable to muster the willpower to get on with the plan (Beatriz) with a gay husband (shocking!) and a basic child who finds marrying a bastard acceptable (Daphne). It's fine if you want to pretend unconfirmed but acknowledged legitimacy is enough to carry a kingdom on but without some sort of acknowledged history of it, the death of a legitimate heir without succesors would generally make it much easier to induce a civil war without marrying your daughter to the illegitimate brother of the dead prince. Like...why would you acknowledge his legitimacy by marrying your legitimate princess daughter to him if you want to destroy them and pick up the pieces?

Also what's interesting to me is just how much handwaving is done around issues that would normally be enormous red flags and kingdom-enders themselves. The empress was originally a tailor's daughter who found a wizard (empryeas or something) and made a wish powerful enough to unseat a residing empress and take the reins of power for herself, then again to have three daughters with a barren emperor. Which...ok. Interesting. Also interesting how that's just accepted as a Thing That Happened and not something that would have every other kingdom trampling over themselves screaming about how an illegitimate mistress took over a kingdom so as Legitimate Kings they have a duty to bring back order to the land, or they had legitimate children intermarried through previous generations---there's a lot of opportunity here that the author just completely ignores so her characters can make generic, ostensibly heroic and heartfelt decsisions.

I also read that these kingdoms broke away from Bessemia fifty years ago. So...how do they have fully functioning monarchies and governments? It's not easy building a whole country?? Were they city-states that just operated underneath Bessemia?? Seems like an excuse for a plot to me.

The magic system is cute, entirely superfluous and basically used as a get-out-of-jail-free card to justify the entire set up of the plot and the girls' later attempts to circumvent it. It is an interesting idea, bluntly wielded and poorly thought through. If -everyone- could make a wish to become empress through a wizard everyone would.

Just. Mm. If the author had just read a book on any European history, this could have been much more interesting, but instead I was bored within twenty pages and frustrated within another thirty. Again and again and again these sisters think about how they were trained to destroy everything and again and again and again they do nothing with that training! And they say so themselves! Their momma literally brought them courtesans to train them in seduction and instead of them actually doing it, they just think about what the courtesans taught them to do. It's so frustrating to be TOLD the story and the characters, not SHOWN the story. The author very firmly places this book in the former category.

I think this book is a flop from premise to execution. I liked the idea of the story but none of the characters can hold it up. Not even the sister's mother herself, when we get to the end of the book and get the Big Reveal that everything happening was just as planned as she gloats to a new character we've never met. It's a big fat pass for me on this one. I know as a YA novel I shouldn't expect too much depth to books, but on the other hand, I'm not expecting a splash of water on hot concrete either. Just walk away from this one, guys, it won't deliver on its promises.