Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte read like a TV soap in a bad way. Lots of telling the reader what something is but no description. Dead characters suddenly being alive. Plot points coming out of nowhere. Solutions that make no sense. Settings that are confusing (one land seems to be located in the 18th century while another seems to be in the 22nd). And the way the murderer commits the murders, and is later revealed, was something out of a bad crime novel. It literally felt like the author was throwing random things out just to see what stuck.
Kera talks about loving Mackiel so much, it’s annoying and glaringly clear that a love triangle is going to form. Her pickpocketing skills are famed to the point of admiration but author does a lot of telling us but we never really get to see any great skill. The back stories are cookie cutter and predictable at best. Kera is a bad girl who’s really good at heart but can’t go home due to her father being harmed in incident she’s deemed her fault. Mackiel’s story is similarly simple. His father was lost to a disease that, low and behold, was curable by recieving a treatment so rare, it is only given away once a year to one person. Of course his father wasn’t the one who got it, wouldn’t be tragic if he did. The romance between Varin and Kera comes on too quickly and makes little sense. And why is the book named Four Dead Queens, when only 3 are dead? I should have listen to another reviewer and skipped this book.
