2nd book in the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series
In the second instalment of Juno Dawson’s irresistible fantasy trilogy (Lana Harper), a group of childhood friends and witches must choose between what is right and what is easy if they have any hope of keeping their coven–and their world–from tearing apart forever.
Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty’s Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess.
Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can’t remember what she’s done–but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh’s adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet–a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.
On the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can’t figure out Hale’s machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger–along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.
CW: Death, misogyny, sexism, ableism, violence, war, confinement, domestic abuse, emotional abuse
Rating
Review
I don’t really know what to think about it as I liked it and feel that it’s important to have all the events to understand the last book. However, I find it less endearing and sometimes too lengthy.
The multiple povs that I liked in the first book were here a little too much. You follow many more characters, which makes me sometimes lose my mind. First, I didn’t connect to the “main” viewpoint, Ciara. She rocks, let’s tell the truth, and she has a story, but something that I can’t pinpoint makes it hard to figure her out completely. Second, I was questioning if some of the povs were necessary and if we could have understood their purpose if they were done differently.
There is one thing that makes me underwhelmed: the bad guy. I didn’t like him, but I was questioning his abilities to think and do something. The meeting was a chore to read for that, and the quick fate of this guy disappointed me.
Now let’s talk about the subject reached by this book. I was mad for a good part of the book; I think people in the café were shocked by my reactions to this book. But yeah, reading this book was infuriating as you have misogynistic and sexist behaviours which make me internally scream. The problem is that some people have those kinds of thoughts, and even if you know this book is fiction, you know there is a part of the truth, which is scary.
Can we talk about the cliffhanger that the author can do? I wasn’t okay with this initially, and it’s the same in this one. Even if I wanted to know the ending, I feared it as I knew there would be a cliffhanger, and I didn’t know what it would be.
Now I can’t wait for the last book and see how everything unravels, but like always, I need to wait. Sigh…
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