Review Detail

All good things must come to an end. And, overall, The Crimson Crown was a satisfying conclusion to a wonderful series. Well. The last 300 pages were excellent. I literally had to force myself to read the first 300 (more on that later). Overall, I find that the Seven Realms series is the best YA fantasy series I’ve read—of course, I can’t think of too many other high fantasy series I’ve read, so there is that. In any case, this book was very good, and I’m pleased with how things turned out.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t a big fan of the first half of The Crimson Crown. It had nothing to do with the quality of the story or bad writing or poor characterization. It was just, after nearly 2000 pages where the characters did nothing but talk about doing stuff and plan action that never happened…well, I started to find it tedious. Novels about political intrigue are my favorite, but it seemed that Chima’s characters were all talk and no action. It seems like Raisa and Han were going to talk their problems away, which would be redundant and unrealistic. Thankfully, things started happening in the last 300 pages, and except for the chapter were a minor villain gave a stupid villain monologue, I really enjoyed watching the varying plot threads come together.

Well. There’s not much I can say in this review, I don’t feel like. If you’ve read the previous books, I don’t want to spoil things. If you haven’t read the previous books, I still don’t want to spoil things. Basically, the big plot for this book hinges on the fact that there are a lot of characters telling other characters conflicting stories. So signals get crossed, and then when war finally happens, they have to get their act together and work as a team. And, basically, that’s what happens.

In The Crimson Crown, characters acted consistently with who they were before. If you liked Han and Raisa and Company in The Demon King, that’s who you’ll be getting here. I still found their personalities, while very well-rounded and engaging, to rely heavily on common tropes, and my big problem is still Raisa. Beautiful young queen, loved and adored, kickass fighter, skilled tactician, unparalleled diplomat, has several love interests, etc. Not really the kind of character I usually spring for, even though I liked Raisa a lot.

So, yeah. I liked The Crimson Crown. It’s probably the best out of the whole series, since stuff actually happened toward the end. I was happy with the way everything turned out in the end, momentary cheesiness aside. I’m glad I read the Seven Realms series, and I’d be willing to read more of Cinda Williams Chima’s novels in the future.