Thursday, April 4, 2019

Rant about the ending ... Four Dead Queens

Okay wait a second, have you read this book already? Awesome, because we are discussion all the spoilers. Haven’t read it yet? No, stop, don’t keep reading, you’ll spoil the whole ending. Just don’t do it friend. 
So as the book begins I’m totally #teammackiel (look, I even made a hashtag) because he is suave and charming and totally dangerous (I have a book boyfriend type okay). But, within the first few chapters Keralie is almost murdered by Mackiel and then is stuck with Captain Boring (I mean Varin … even his name is boring). 

Now I’m spending all the chapters looking for where Mackiel is coming back, because Varin is DULL. Then Keralie starts to fall for him and I’m thinking, I must be missing something, right? But I don’t think I am. Varin is sweet and sensitive, but his whole being is boring, he’s emotional stunted (literally) and so easily swayed to do whatever he is told to do. He is almost like a robot and how on earth is someone supposed to fall for a robot? I don’t know how Keralie did it, but I wasn’t going to fall for him too. 

But I really want to talk about the ending because I want to know what other people thought of how the last 20% or so went for people. Because as soon as the whole plan is revealed, I’m thinking okay, I know how I WANT the book to end. 

This is what I wanted: I wanted Keralie to be in on the whole thing, to have been an untrustworthy narrator who was actually murdering the queens and was going back to Mackiel and had to trick Varin into the whole thing because there was something only he could do. I wanted the story to end with some big reveal that the Queens were actual evil and planning to murder everyone and Keralie and Mackiel saved the day. 

What I got was a version of this, I mean, it got a little better, but it was still disappointing. Like, I invested all this time reading and THIS is the ending I got? I was CHEATED! 

So I like that there was a trick ending with Keralie being tricked into murdering the queens, that was good and although I was hoping some version of that would happen, I wasn’t really expecting it. 

Then I liked how Queen Marguerite was still alive. I didn’t see it coming and it wasn’t as big of a reveal as some other plot twists might have been, it was still good. 

The final ending, Varin’s cure being researched, Keralie being offered a job, her father getting his cure … it was all to neat of a package, all too clean. I hate it when the ending it tied up in a little bow (although, since Mackiel is only imprisoned I can dream that he escapes and goes on more adventures). 

But I want to know what you thought of the ending? Am I being too hard on it? Did you like it? What would have made it better for you? 

Now I need to go re-read Six of Crows as a palette cleanser and remind myself that no book is as good as that one, so I should stop trying with these kinds of stories. 

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