Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte

ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

“Be patient, child. Be calm. Be selfless. Wait for the right moment. Wait for your time. Rule with a steady hand. A steady heart.”

Four Dead Queens is a a fantastic fantasy debut. This is a standalone where there are four quadrants and a queen rules each quadrant .This book is set up like a murder mystery— there are so many fantastic twists. I am absolutely blown away by this book. I devoured this book in a few days as I just couldn’t put it down.

Four Dead Queens main focus is on the character Keralie, she is a thief who works for her childhood best friend, Mackiel. He then sells the items she acquires. Her story begins when she is assigned to steal a comm disk from a messenger. Her mission goes all wrong,to save herself she ingest the comm,where she then gets images of the four queens being murdered. Keralie teams up with Varin, the messenger, to discover what has happened to the queens. In there quest for information they start to unravel the truth and find themselves in the middle of a larger conspiracy.

“Loving someone means risking your heart being broken. Corra said. But those moments you are together triumphs over any darkness” 

The protagonist  Keralie is such a  resourceful, clever, and brave character who finds herself once broken free from Mickiel. Through her journey to discover what happened to the Queen she learns to forgive herself from her past mistakes and also tries to redeem some of them.

I really loved the Queens and how they each had there own secrets,even from each other. The way they rule the kingdom is written in such a unique way,that I’ve never read before.  Each quadrant is its own world with its own set of standards and different cultures. Each Queen is given a voice, as we follow there stories we learn what secrets might have played into there assassination.

The only thing I really struggled with in Four Dead Queens was the romance. I don’t necessarily believe it was needed. I found Varin to be extremely likable and swoonworthy, but this whole story was so fast paced that the romance didn’t fully have time to develop. While I believe the characters could develop an attraction to one another in that time frame but not necessarily strong feelings as they did.

“Sometimes failure is the beginning of success” 

Overall I really love Four Dead Queens and I am sad that it is a standalone. I would love to see more of Quadra. The story  had such a unique and interesting premise with lots of plot twist and interesting characters. I’m really looking forward to Astrid’s second book, I believe she will write something just as excellent as this debut. I would really recommend this book.

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