Cruel Crown (Red Queen, #.1-.2) by Victoria Aveyard

My rating: three stars

Genre: YA Fantasy

Edition: paperback

Goodreads Summary: Two women on either side of the Silver and Red divide tell the stories no one else knows. Discover the truth of Norta’s bloody past in these two revealing prequels to #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestseller RED QUEEN.

Queen Song: Queen Coriane, first wife of King Tiberias, keeps a secret diary—how else can she ensure that no one at the palace will use her thoughts against her? Coriane recounts her heady courtship with the crown prince, the birth of a new prince, Cal, and the potentially deadly challenges that lie ahead for her in royal life.

Steel Scars: Captain Farley was raised to be strong, but being tasked with planting the seeds of rebellion in Norta is a tougher job than expected. As she travels the land recruiting black market traders, smugglers, and extremists for her first attempt at an attack on the capital, she stumbles upon a connection that may prove to be the key to the entire operation—Mare Barrow.

Plus a Glass Sword sneak peek!

I have been loving the Red Queen series, and since I read King’s Cage, I decided to read this one next. I was most excited to read about Queen Coriane since what happened to her is a huge secret so far, though I do like Captain Farley so I was interested in her story as well.

Likes: I did like that the secret of Queen Coriane was finally talked about and looked at. I was so engrossed with this story, I honestly wish that it was a whole book. I loved the characters and the suspense. I also liked the second story about Captain Farley, though it did seem unnecessary. It was okay, but I didn’t feel like there was a point to it, or that there was a need for it.

Dislikes: Let me just say that I did not expect the Glass Sword sneak peek to be so long, it seemed like it was half the book! (I know it wasn’t, but I think it was an absurdly large part of it.) I don’t understand why there was such a huge chunk of Glass Sword in this book, I wish we had gotten another short story. This really upset me so much, because I feel like the other two short stories were so short that I could not enjoy them as much. I wish that they were longer and/or that there was a third short story instead of the Glass Sword preview. Also, the Captain Farley story just seemed to be put in there for content, which is annoying. Sure, I like her character. However, it just didn’t seem necessary. I would have much rather had the entire book about Queen Coriane instead of having a strange pointless story about Captain Farley and an extremely long preview to Glass Sword.

Overall, I did like the short stories. I thought they were fun and finally gave some answers to questions that I have been asking for the entire series so far. However, they seemed way too short and not flushed out at all, when they could have been longer and more complete if the Glass Sword sneak peek was not there! I took off two stars because there was the Glass Sword sneak peak that took up so much space that the other two short stories needed because they were lacking depth. The first short story was so good, which makes the other two seem so much worse. I just wish the whole story was about the Queen…