Tuesday, May 10, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Twin Crowns by Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber

 



 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 17, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Twin Crowns is a young adult fantasy novel promoted as a "high stakes fantasy rom-com" by its publisher, which naturally intrigued my interest given my interests in both fantasy and romances.  That said, the description doesn't really work - this is in no way a rom-com even if it has romantic subplots for each of its two leads.   Instead the story centered around the classic twin switch, with one twin raised as a princess and the other raised to try and get revenge on the man who raised her sister and who murdered their parents due to their magic.  And so you have one girl trying to pretend to be the other to achieve her revenge, while the other is kidnapped and discovers the truth behind the lies she was brought up believing, with each girl getting a love interest along the way to make things more complicated.  

It's a pretty standard setup, and it's done fine, but well the book never really grabbed at me, with so much of the character dynamics and setup feeling more like it's something that has to happen by the conventions of the genre more than things that actually might interestingly happen.  It's very easily readable, and I finished it in two days without difficulty, but at the same time, I also never really felt that eager to finish it.  There's nothing wrong with this, and if you're looking for YA fantasy works you could certainly do a lot worse, but I was hoping for a bit more in the romance and character department than we really got here.  

Note: This is some kind of series - I'm guessing a duology - although it ends on a reasonable note for stopping here - with some serious cliffhangery subplots but also a major resolution of the big plots of this book.  But if you're looking for a book that's entirely stand alone - and it's not clear from the marketing that this isn't - this isn't it.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Years ago, The Country of Eana was rocked by a horror - the King and Queen were found murdered, with their sole daughter Rose saved by the Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne.  The murders were blamed on the Witches who have always haunted the country of Eana, and Rathborne has waged a war on them since to kill them all in vengeance and for the security of the country.  

Wren has been raised to know that story was a lie: that the King and Queen were killed by the Kingsbreath himself out of the hatred of witches instilled in him by generations of men....witches like the Queen herself.  For she is the second daughter of the King and Queen, the twin to Rose, who was saved by her nursemaid and brought to her grandmother's witch community, who taught her how to use her enchanting magic and trained her for one mission: to take Rose's place, to assassinate the Kingsbreath, and to return Eana to being a land safe for witches like herself and her people, who have always wanted just to live in the country. 

And so she and her friend Shen kidnap Rose and have Wren take her place, just so Wren can be crowned in Rose's place and achieve it all....except Wren has no idea of how palace politics works, and the political schemes of The Kingsbreath may be more than she bargained for.  

Meanwhile Rose has grown up believing she would be Queen, and knowing how to be Royal, despite the Kingsbreath controlling her every action - something she believes will soon be over when she is crowned and married to a neighboring prince.  But after she's kidnapped, she soon discovers there is more to the world than the palace, and that the lies she grew up believing were just that....and something she has to do something about....especially as there's no way Wren can pull things off without Rose's knowledge of politics and Queendom.  

The two sisters, Rose and Wren, will be forced to each make choices to try to better Eana....choices that may be impossible due to the sinister plots of others to ensure witches like them never have power again.....
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Twin Crowns alternates each chapter between Rose and Wren's perspectives as it attempts to tell a pretty classic genre story - on one hand, you have the girl who grew up rich and privileged under a lie, who has yearned for adventure but always been too controlled to take it....who gets that adventure but also a new understanding of the basis of her life such that she will then act to change it; on the other, you have the twin who grew up knowing the truth but in poverty, who attempts to take over the position of royalty to make things better, only to find herself out of her depth.  Usually this twin switch is voluntary, but that's not the case here - Wren orchestrates Rose's kidnapping under the plan of her grandmother - and the result is that the story plays out a bit differently for better or worse.  

For example, while Wren is a bit out of her depth in playing Princess - something that was apparently never thought about at all by the planners of the plot for some reason? - she never actually has to rule or do anything other than date - as The Kingsbreath is so controlling as to prevent Rose from having any particular power, something that Rose oddly never really recognizes until she comes back.  Similarly, while Rose does have kind of an adventure getting to the rest of the Witches, that urge for adventure is never really entertained by the book, with the book instead focusing upon educating Rose on her background as a Witch, how the Witch community is really full of just other people, and Rose struggling to reconcile the two worlds she knows.  

This works well in some places and not so well in others.  Rose's treatment by the Witch community is for example a standout, with Rose not being unanimously welcomed and having to deal with some Witches who just want her dead or harmed for her privileged upbringing and for playing a role in the persecution of their people.  This feels very real, and Rose's reactions to it, the reactions to her grandma's handling of the community and her, and more, make pretty good sense.  So Rose's turn of mind is very believable and understandable, and very easy to appreciate.  Wren's outrage is similarly well done at all the control that the Kingsbreath has, and her desperation to find some way to subvert it, and him.  Both protagonists have solid, if not super remarkable, voices, which make them enjoyable leads.  

The problem is that so much of the rest of the plot just feels perfunctory.  Rose falls in love with the Witch who kidnaps her (Wren's friend) just seemingly because, and while there are moments there, none of them feel like anything special or unique or different.  Similarly, Wren falls in love with the evil neighboring country's prince's bodyguard, and it just feels like "of course she'd be mutually attracted to this character, why else would he be there", with that character then taking actions with hard choices that well....just seem to be what the plot dictates; it never actually feels real, when that character should be having major conflicts over it all (and then in the final act, he makes a choice that seems completely out of line).  Moreover, the antagonists are just laughingly evil, from the Kingsbreath to the evil neighboring country, so they don't really have any depth to them.  

The result is a book that is never bad, but is one that is also never really standing out in any way for how it changes up the formula its clearly invoking - especially without the romantic subplots really working too well.  There's a secret myth that is invoked a few times before being revealed at the end to set up part of the cliffhanger, with the other half involving that neighboring country, so I guess things will be resolved there, but I'm not likely to check them out.  And well there's enough of an ending here that I can be satisfied finishing here, for what that's worth.  This is solidish YA, but there's just not much more here and so much better out there.  
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