A review by sarahsbooklife
Crowned A Traitor by Kate Callaghan

adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

2.5

 

This book I thought was fine and it was fun to read. However, it wasn’t amazing.


One thing that I want to point out is that the blurb made this story sound different to what it actually was. I was expecting an epic fantasy and what I got was a decent one at best. Sure, Klara doesn’t want to rule and the Queens want her head but not for the reason the blurb makes out. I expected a gang of misfits working together to try to help Klara either run or take her birthright from the Queens and instead… well, that didn’t really happen.


The plot did feel original, I’ll give it that, but I did feel like I was promised a different book than what I actually read. Which I think is probably why I gave this 2.5 stars. It sounds like it should be an epic, sweeping fantasy and it doesn’t really deliver on that.


I felt that the characterization was limited. I felt that the characters weren’t fleshed out enough. I didn’t care for many of the characters and the ones that you were meant to care about I didn’t because I didn’t really know them. Klara I felt was sometimes not that interesting. She was the daughter of Lucifer, she didn’t want the Throne, so she ran away. She’s tough, brutally honest, had a tough upbringing, she can fight, but she cares about everyone and everything. Klara was a bit clique.


The only characters that I liked were Lilith and Lucifer, even though they don’t appear that much, but they felt very distinct compared to many of the other characters. A lot of the characters felt very bland and a bit two dimensional. And some seemed to have no reason to be there other than to help Klara. Yeah, I definitely would’ve liked more fleshed out characters in this book.


There was a little bit of romance but I felt that it was poor. I honestly felt like the romance in this book was completely unnecessary. I didn’t get the sense of any romantic feelings or tension between Klara and her love interests. Yep, there’s two. I just didn’t care for it and I think this book could have easily gone without it.


Whilst reading it felt like it jumped around sometimes. There were some scenes and conversations that didn’t make much sense, almost as if a chunk of text was missing that connected it. Thankfully this didn’t happen that often, I think it might have just been something that was missed during editing.


There were some plot points that were brought up, that I thought were really interesting, that were never brought up again. And if they were it was very vaguely. As this is the first book in a series then it’s possible that some of these things could be brought up in more detail in the future. But it did feel like a missed opportunity to make this book more complex and more entertaining and more engaging.


Now I don’t want to be completely negative so here are parts that I did like:

  1. The description of the world. Every place that Klara goes I could picture vividly in my mind. Especially the Beanstalk at the start of the book, the mushroom den and the giants’ land. I felt like that was something that was really strong and helped me to visualise the world really well.
  2. Klara’s unique power. It was unique to her and could only be used through touch. I liked that it was kind of limited but also that Klara wasn’t able to use it all the time either. Even when it would have been easier to use it but would have put herself and others in danger.
  3. I liked that Klara didn’t want to rule Hell or Malum, even though her dad wanted her to. That was the whole reason he created her. I mean it’s kind of a stereotype, the heir to the throne doesn’t want to rule, but it was fun. It’s a trope that I quite enjoy reading. Especially when a new twist is put on it.
  4. Some different and creative magical elements.
    1. Such as a spider that can suture a wound. I thought that this was really interesting and not something that I’ve seen in a fantasy before.
    2. Mushroom dens, they way that this place was described made me think of opium dens.
    3. The hierarchy of the different demons and creatures in Malum. I liked that there were a lot of creatures and they all had different places in this world, and they were introduced and explained alongside the characters that were introduced. In some fantasy books there can be a bit of an info dump when it comes to the creatures or the hierarchy, which I felt didn’t happen here.
    4. All the different rulers in this world had different powers, there’s five different rulers in this story; Lucifer the King of Hell, the Three Queens of Malum; Abadon, Eve, and Lilith, and the Fae Queen (I can’t remember if her name was ever mentioned).

I enjoyed this book, it was fun and very easy to read. It didn’t have a very complicated plot so I was able to easily read it during breaks at work and I could easily pick up where the book had left off. It wasn’t one that I was dying to find out what would happen next. I would say that this book is good to read if you want something easy and not too complicated.


Once I got past the first few chapters I did want to know where this story would end up. I did think that this book worked well as a first novel in a series. But I don’t know where this will go as a series. I don’t think I’ll carry on reading this series even though I liked this story it wasn’t one that I think will stay with me or I’ll want to continue reading.