The Crown’s Game

Title : The Crown’s Game

Series: The Crown’s Game (Duology)

Author: Evelyn Skye

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Historical Fiction

Published: May 17, 2016

Followed by: The Crown’s Fate

My Rating: 2.5/5

So here is the deal, this book has it all: Instant love, magic, a LOVE TRIANGLE!!! Yet somehow I found it completely uneventful and boring. I never thought I could dislike a book that contains all of my bookish pet peeves.

The premise is very interesting: the only two enchanters in Imperial Russia, Vika and Nikolai, must battle to the death to become the Imperial enchanter. But it seems both enchanters forgot the death part because there is ZERO fighting. I never once felt like either one of them was in danger as they both held back the entire time, and why? Because instant love! Usually it’s supposed to be more like an instant crush and then have the love develop intensley and fast, but these two laid eyes on each other once and then immediately decided they couldn’t kill each other, which I guess is fine, but they should’ve at least battled a tiny bit if not to kill the other one then at least to save their own lives. I also would’ve liked it for there to be some rules or limits to either the magic or the Crown Game… In this battle everything was valid yet the magic was not impressive.

Then there is the love triangle. Nikolai and the prince, Pasha, are best friends. Nikolai and Vika are in love but Pasha (who also only saw Vika once) becomes obsessed with her. The love triangle seems to appear out of thin air and when pasha isn’t obsessing about Vika he is throwing himself pity parties because Nikolai is good at everything and he isn’t.

Finally, the world building…The story is set in Imperial Russia but I feel like the author picked a couple Russian historic elements that are common knowledge and left it at that. Other than introducing a couple food descriptions nothing really feels Russian. This was a bit disappointing because I was really hoping the story would introduce some Russian folk tales at least.

The story has a lot of potential and I really wanted to like it. I don’t think I will read the second book.