Traitors of the Black Crown - Review

I received a free copy of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

1.5 Stars, rounded down to 1. The 0.5 extra is because I actually managed to finish the damn thing.

Non-Spoiler Review Section

*slaps top of book* this bad boy can fit so many forgettable side characters in it.

I had to address something early for the meme but I have to be honest, that's not the worst part of the book. Actually it's hard to tell exactly what the worst part of the book is. Is it Raena's random and confusing sexism? Is it the insta-love arc? Is it that the main characters are personality-less voids? Maybe it's the painful misuse of the word fussock or the prevalent pro-coloniser themes in the second half of the book.

The 1-dimensionality of the primary antagonist doesn't help either. I'll dive into these and other components of the book and its questionable origins in the Spoiler Review section but for now let's just run through the general premise.

Raena Schinen is a nobleman's daughter whose entire house was killed when she was a kid, to protect her she was raised as a boy to be a knight by Duke Sylas. Avenna is a butcher's daughter turned duchess whose main character flaw is that she has no discernible character to find a flaw in. Zarana is a queen with poorly executed and exceptionally random dementia, and by exceptionally random I mean it seems to magically turn on and off when the plot requires it.

This book was marketed to me as gay medieval romance with and let me quote from the goodreads popular asked question:

Hi, I see Traitors of the Black Crown shelved as LGBT+, could someone tell me what specific rep it will have? Thanks for asking, Kate! There are three female main characters (with POVs). 1 is lesbian. 1 is bisexual. There are also prominent side characters who are LGBT, 1 is asexual. There is also a prominent character who is bisexual but it's not on-the-page. Finally, there is an on-the-page F/F romance.

Okay, I can see the lesbian and bisexual because they have a love story but WHERE ARE THE OTHER ONES? Oh are they "not on the page" well guess what if it's not on the page... it's not rep! It's the equivalent of JK Rowling trying to add in representation after the series is done except this author got a neat headstart.

You know what, if the romance was in any way compelling this book might have gotten 2 stars, but it isn't compelling. It's some kind of instalove that makes it look as if this was a much bigger book that had random parts cut out of it, I've read bad fanfiction that went into more detail about the emotions involved in romance and gave me more of a feel for the characters' personalities than this arc. Which makes this even funnier considering this book is meant to be Twelfth Night fanfiction.

As I've already mentioned the side characters are very forgettable and tend to blend together (with the exception of Sir Allyn, my personal favourite character). I can tell character deaths are meant to be meaningful but at the point they occur my eyes are glazed over because I'm tired and want the book to end.

Other than that, the only thing I can tell you is that there are terrible pacing issues. The author will skip forward 100 days in 3 pages and spend 2 chapters on something that's meant to be occur in about 20 minutes. It's all over the place and it's packed with bland and meaningless dialogue that all in all means I have more of a feel for the exact plant species of East Shore and the main exports of Hawk's Keep than the personalities of the actual characters.

There's also some weird sexist dialogue and vibes from characters we're meant to like, so that's not fun.

All in all, 1.5 stars. If you don't mind spoilers then keep reading it ought to be entertaining.

Cracks Knuckles

Let's get this started, my highlighter colour uses were:

Pink - Introduction of Side-Characters (needed to keep track)

Blue - Things the author thinks are zingers that just aren't

Yellow - Entire highlighter colour dedicated to the word "fussocks" even though it's only used 7 times

Orange - Things that put me in physical pain

Rather than by colour like in my ACOSF review, we're going to do this by specific points. Starting with Raena Being Sexist.

Raena is Not Like Other Girls, we find this out early on with this great quote:

Finn leaned closer, "Typical girls, right?" "Mm," Raena grunted through a sip of ale.

Then this gets reinforced by this quote which made me flip my shit and stalk off to watch Shadow and Bone cast interviews until my soul felt redeemed. When Sylas suggests that Raena could hide as a woman again Raena says:

"...When he comes back for me, he'll need a knight at his side. I can't resign to be something weak in order to survive."

Okay so putting aside the fact that the quote suggests performing traditional women's work is "weak" which is already ridiculous and stupid. The idea that you can't somehow practice the skills of a knight while in hiding as a handmaid or cook is, and excuse my language here, fucking stupid.

Oddly enough this at a point appears extended to other characters? At one point Bell, the daughter of Sylas, makes a disdainful comment about her handmaids gossiping about Raena's Knightsona, Rowan (has this author ever been in a room with other women? Asking this as a genuine question). Then throughout the book you get the feeling that female characters are only allowed to be interesting if they're somehow Not Like Other Girls. Like Queen Zarana is manipulative and strong and forceful, then Raena's a knight and not some silly handmaid!

As for other instances, I didn't feel like crawling through the middle of the book to highlight them up so instead we're going to cover Sir Allyn, then the Sir Allyn vs Raena scene from near the end of the book.

Sir Allyn was one of the numerous random side characters, and also one of the 3 wall-jumpers from the start of the book. He's from a noble house called Lox which made me call him Salmon Boi in my head for most of his appearances. Basically he's a knight who is as sick of Raena and Aven as I was by the end of the book. He has such quotes as:

Raena scoffed. "That's Sir Allyn. Pay him no mind, he's read too many books to have any wits about him." "I've enough wits to save your life," Allyn retorted, "you sorry ass."

"Don't strain your wound, idiot," Allyn warned. "I didn't spend all that time cleaning it and staring at your naked ass to have you stubbornly rip it open trying to impress the girls."

Please note Raena makes a dick joke immediately after this. It's not funny by any means, like most of the jokes in this book so I'm not going to subject any of you to that. Then Bell says some prissy thing about not finding it appropriate and then Allyn and Raena laugh and are like "We are beastly men, I am so sorry."

So that might put in perspective how absolutely bloody confusing it is that Raena gets so angry at Allyn when he makes a bad sex joke when Bell complains about her horse being uncomfortable. Allyn literally has the same reaction as I did, let's have a look:

"Shut it, Allyn," Raena snapped, "that's a lady and a duchess. So watch your tone." Allyn scoffed, "Come on, don't act like you're the sudden prude of the hour."

Please note, tying back into Raena's weird Women Must Be Protected/Not Like Other Girls complex, that Raena speaks before Bell responds even though Bell was literally about to speak. I don't want to quote the entire scene because I'm lazy and I'll run out of wordcount but basically Allyn says he's put up with a lot of Raena's shit, then Barton (my only highlighter note asks "Who the hell is Barton") tries to intervene to stop the oncoming fight, then Bell tries, then Allyn's still seething so he baits Raena out. Raena than says something about being "crass and out of line" and tells him to apologise to Bell and Aven for insulting them. Then Allyn delivers this, which made me back up Allyn as clearly in the right here:

"Should I?" Allyn asked belligerently. "Then will you apologize for taking night's watch just so the two of you can plow? If that's even what that's called-"

And he's cut off by Raena yeeting off her horse to attack him. This scene might have had an impact on me beyond "Pop off Allyn!" and "Finally some interesting content." if Raena and Aven had personalities. This scene details my thoughts on this entire book, I am Allyn, Allyn is without a doubt the most relatable character in this damn thing. This entire scene just felt like a setup to try and give Raena a Cool Badass moment, but it's just boring and annoying that all the female characters either come in the flavours of Snooty Bitch, No Personality, or Raena.

The only thing in kindle about an actual character is about Allyn, it's a highlighted piece of text of Allyn saying goodnight and "I'll be asleep with my dear friend Finn if any of you need me." with the note I wish this book was a gay love story about Allyn and Finn becoming kingsguard.

So make of that what you will. And given I just said the alternate name for Twelfth Night, time to address the author's section which says that this started as a retelling of Twelfth Night where Olivia and Viola "stayed in-love". Which is amazing to me considering Viola spent all the scenes in the play when Olivia was hitting on her trying desperately trying to get away from Olivia while also trying to get some kind of message to give to Orlando when she got back to him.

I'm not sure this author is literate, it would explain a lot of the problems with this book.

Also Duchess Avenna is disrespectful to the memory of Olivia, who is an excellent character with a strong personality, you know, just like Aven isn't.

I'll cover the pro-coloniser themes now rather than later, in case I reach the word count. Near the start of the book, just after Raena gets to East Shore or is it East Twin? I can't remember. Basically Raena and Aven are having a little talk together and they get onto the topic of Boens, which we find out later are weird viking creatures that come across as wendigos that pop up from under the earth in terms of description? Boens used to live in the area of East Shore and other places around there before they were pushed out by the Calamytans, which is the common race basically.

Raena says that she was taught they were awful savages who sacrificed babies. Then Aven comes back with "Isn't that the story we tell about our enemies once we've defeated them?", and talks about the Boens having no weapons to fight back and trying to save their children and that they were simple folks (which honestly just gave me Blazing Saddles flashbacks).

Then most of the last part of the book is literally the Boens invading and being weird cave-dwelling savages that are covered in mud and indiscriminately murder people, kill and eat horses, burn farms, and seem to really want to just kill as many Calamytans as possible and that's just some weird themes. Why would you introduce the Boens to us with that mini-monologue from Aven, then give us this as the Boens.

Is it the strange Not Like Other Girls sexism that means the closest thing Avenna has to a character is compassionate (we quite literally just get informed this by almost every character) blurring the actual truth? Or is it just an out-of-place statement that makes the themes confusing and icky.

Finally, I'm going to go over Raena and Aven's love story. Basically somehow in one chapter it's like a switch flips and Raena and Aven suddenly like each other, then a few chapters later they make out, then it goes like that for a bit until the Boens invade, and then Raena goes and finds Aven and they talk about making out and that's... it. Not compelling, not interesting, I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for this.

The author randomly puts lines in that she thinks sound funny, it's mostly dick jokes that are so bland that they rival Aven's personality. The ones that aren't dick jokes are just cringey "Hello, Sir Rowan, or should I call you Sir Wall-Jumper?". I stopped highlighting them after a while because I just got tired.

So that's the book. A bad and bland love story, confusing themes, a horrible misuse of Shakespeare, random confusing sexism that appears to be an extension of some kind of inadequacy complex from the actual author, pro-colonist themes immediately following anti-colonist dialogue, annoying and tiring scenes, and side characters that you'll forget the name of by the time that they're meant to have an impact. Twelfth Night is my favourite play of all time and this feels like someone spat on it and set it on fire in front of me.

Did I mention that the only reason this book passes the Bechdel test is that the main love story is between women and that there's I think one solo conversation between Zarana and Raena. That's it.

I have enough word count, so I'm going to tell you all the thing that made me almost tear my hair out surrounding the word fussock. Fussock means either one of two things according to Miriam-Webster:

Definition of fussock. Dialectal, England. 1: Donkey 2: A Pudgy or Stupid Person

So the first time that this word is used, it's used by Finn the Wall-Jumping Knight who disappeared for most of the book along with Allyn to go do their thing. He says this to Raena:

"...I know this is terribly hard for you, being in the capital, so close to that fussock queen and her damn son."

Excuse me but Queen Zarana ordered the death of Raena's entire noble household. Fussock is what you call the annoying dude who vomited on your carpet, not the person that killed your best friend's parents. If you do read this book I beg you to replace every instance of the word "fussock" with the word "donkey" or "pudgy stupid person" and see if it seems to read properly in context.

Two out of the seven times this word is used, the word is appropriate. Otherwise we have a tearful greeting involving Finn calling Raena a fussock , the occasion I just mentioned with Queen Zarana, Raena calling Prince Zander (who's meant to be the primary antagonist but he seems like someone tried for Mr Teatime and missed) a fussock for laying falsely accusing Sylas, Raena's father figure, of a crime which would lead to Sylas' execution, Allyn calling Raena a fussock mid-fight which is followed up by Raena calling him an "incestual bastard" which had me squinting at the page trying to figure out what the hell I'd missed, and then some knight called Jonn who's meant to be important for some reason calling the old dead king Lyam a fussock in the context of the old king literally trying to yeet his and the queen's child out a fucking tower window.

Hope you enjoyed this review. I certainly enjoyed writing it more than reading this book.