Four Dead Queens

Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte is set to debut in February 26, 2019. Miraculously, we both managed to snag an ARC of it at BookCon 2018, even though we almost died trying to get it. Thankfully, the book was really good and made it worth the near death experience.

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Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:

A divided nation. Four Queens. A ruthless pickpocket. A noble messenger. And the murders that unite them.

Get in quick, get out quicker.

These are the words Keralie Corrington lives by as the preeminent dipper in the Concord, the central area uniting the four quadrants of Quadara. She steals under the guidance of her mentor Mackiel, who runs a black market selling their bounty to buyers desperate for what they can’t get in their own quarter. For in the nation of Quadara, each quarter is strictly divided from the other. Four queens rule together, one from each region:

Toria: the intellectual quarter that values education and ambition
Ludia: the pleasure quarter that values celebration, passion, and entertainment
Archia: the agricultural quarter that values simplicity and nature
Eonia: the futurist quarter that values technology, stoicism and harmonious community

When Keralie intercepts a comm disk coming from the House of Concord, what seems like a standard job goes horribly wrong. Upon watching the comm disks, Keralie sees all four queens murdered in four brutal ways. Hoping that discovering the intended recipient will reveal the culprit – information that is bound to be valuable bartering material with the palace – Keralie teams up with Varin Bollt, the Eonist messenger she stole from, to complete Varin’s original job and see where it takes them.

OKAY! This book was so good. We both adored this story and every twist and turn that threw us against the wall, even if it almost killed us. (This book did not want us to live!) One of our favorite things about this book was the realm that Keralie lives in. A nation divided into four distinct and different sectors is not only cool, but sounds exciting enough that we want to live there! We love the idea that each kingdom has it’s own specific job to do and they never overlap, which would honestly make anyone’s life easier if they knew that they could do this one thing and that’s it. Every sector has a purpose and a job, and that made it much easier to distinguish the personalities of the different characters, based on where they live.

Another thing we loved about this book are the characters because each has a distinct personality and voice throughout the novel and it was not only refreshing, but intriguing. We were left wondering what is happening and wanting to sneak back inside their head to find out more. The more we heard from each character, the more committed we were to each character, their story, and their wants/needs. It was so hard to leave the world because we simply wanted to live there and hang out with some of the characters. Maybe talk a little. Make some new friends. These characters were so realistic and fleshed out, it was hard to not become attached to them.

We also loved the detailed descriptions of Keralie’s surroundings and events going on. Astrid does not leave you confused and wondering what is going on in a scene- at least not in the details. This murder mystery sprinkles just enough clues for you to think you know what’s going on, but do you?

The only thing we had an issue with was one character specifically. This character, whom shall remain anonymous, seemed a bit flat. The flatness comes not from their backstory, which is full and colorful, but their actions and speech. While this character has motivations to be evil, they still come across as two dimensional in all of their decisions and speech. Which is completely unfortunate, because they could be a rounded, exciting, and manipulative character (our favorite!) that brings another level to this already fast paced murder mystery. Now this issue hopefully was fleshed out through edits, so we are interested to see what happens in the final copy, but that was one of the issues we noticed in the ARC.

Overall, we absolutely loved this book! It is an amazing debut novel and we are so thankful we were able to receive an advanced copy from BookCon to review. We can’t wait until February for the final draft! Which brings our rating to stars!