Four Dead Queens

by Astrid Scholte

Four dead queens. Three days to catch a killer. Two forbidden romances.
One shocking twist you won’t see coming.

Seventeen-year-old Keralie Corrington may seem harmless, but she’s, in fact, one of Quadara’s most skilled thieves and a liar. Varin, on the other hand, is an honest, upstanding citizen of Quadara’s most enlightened region, Eonia. He runs afoul of Keralie when she steals a package from him, putting his life in danger. When Varin attempts to retrieve the package, he and Keralie both find themselves entangled in a conspiracy that leaves all four of Quadara’s queens dead.

With no other choices and on the run from Keralie’s former employer, the two decide to join forces, endeavoring to discover who has killed the queens and save their own lives in the process. When their reluctant partnership blooms into a tenuous romance, they must overcome their own dark secrets in hopes of a future together that seemed impossible just days before. But first they have to stay alive and untangle the secrets behind the nation’s four dead queens.

An enthralling fast-paced mystery where competing agendas collide with deadly consequences, Four Dead Queens heralds the arrival of an exciting new YA talent.

• ISBN10: 0525513922
• ISBN13: 9780525513926
• Publish Date: 26 February 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: G.P.Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers'
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525513926

Reviews

[Berls]

Another DNF this summer... However I'm giving it 2 stars because I think if I felt like pushing through that's what I'd give it. I'm just not motivated... There's too many characters and stories going on at once. I think this could have easily been 2 strong books if they were separate. One book for the queens and one book for Keralie. I think both sides would have been stronger with that room to grow AND it wouldn't be as much WORK to read.

[Stephanie]

This review was originally posted on Once Upon a Chapter



I read Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte because I thought it sounded like a really good read. It was picked for the July 2020 young adult read for COYER book club.

I struggled way more with this book than I had anticipated. I think part of the issue was the start and stop pacing. There would be a huge rush of events and then big dry spells. I can handle big world building but it seemed like there was 25% plot and the other 75% is spent on every character being fully developed. While I appreciated the ending, it really just took too much effort to get there.

Honestly the characters were great. Again this goes back to pacing. There are quite a few characters. I can distinctly remember eight characters. That doesn't sound like a lot but Four Dead Queens is only 413 pages. I would guess that a quarter of that is spent on the entire back story for the eight characters. The main character, Keralie, was not easy to connect with. I didn't really care for her.

Between a slow moving plot and too many characters Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte dragged for me. A strong ending wasn't enough to save it.

[pagingserenity]

My full review can be found on Paging Serenity.

Not going to lie, right after I finished reading this, I wanted to give it somewhere between 3.5 - 4 stars. But the more I thought about it and after sleeping on it, I had to drop the rating.

Don't get me wrong, Four Dead Queens is an intriguing fantasy murder mystery set in a complex, well-built world. But it’s ambitions lead to oversimplification of important issues and a disappointing and rushed ending.

[adarkershadeofrosie]

In a palace ruled by four queens (one for each quadrant of the kingdom), an assassin is taking out the queens one by one. Veiled in mystery and intrigue, this story of multiple POVs follows each queen leading up to her death, while also divulging the secrets each of them kept, and also follows our unsavory anti-heroine, Keralie.

The chapters of Keralie that ran parallel to that of the murdered queens were quite boring to me. Keralie was a problematic character all around for me, as she was a petty, childish thing. And when she teams up with Varin, who is her “love interest”, the interactions just made me visibly wince. It felt forced and there was no chemistry, so double whammy for me.

The queen’s chapters, however, were way more interesting because each queen kept the façade that they’re all doing what must be done to keep the kingdom, and the way they rule it, in order – yet each queen holds a massive secret that goes against everything it means to be queen in Quadara. READ MORE!

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[alisoninbookland]

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-Murder mysteries are always a fascinating read to me. I loved the added blend of fantasy/sci-fi elements to the story.
-Give me more stories like this!
-The characters were a bit lackluster. Keralie had an interesting story but I never felt really connected to her.
-The story jumps around through multiple perspectives.
-I think I mostly liked that.
-I did enjoy that we were there for the murders.
-Romance was kind of blah.
-Court politics! I love court politics.
-Add in the fact that there are four different courts and things start to get really interesting.
-I need more information about the different lands.
-Great twists and turns.
-I thought I knew where the story was going but even I was surprised.

Great standalone. The fascinating story beats out the blah characters.

[Beth C.]

Four queens, each ruling a different quadrant of the land. Four queens that must follow Queenly Rules with regards to their lives, their loves, and their quadrants. Four queens that...are dead. And Keralie becomes tangled up in the murders after stealing a package for her boss.

I enjoyed this book, and I confess that the twist I expected was NOT the twist I got. There are actually a couple of twists within the story - one that I didn't expect, and one that I sort of thought *might* be coming? But I won't say much else, because I don't do spoilers ;)

Keralie as a character was a tough like for me. Or maybe it wasn't really her, but it did annoy me how much dwelling she did on her father. It was an integral part of the story, but it almost felt overdone? Again, no spoilers, so I won't go too much into detail. I will say that I enjoyed the latter half of the book much better than I did the first half.

The queens don't spend a significant portion of the book as real, live characters, but I honestly felt that their characterization was very well done - maybe *because* they had so little time?

I did enjoy the story, though mostly the second half. The first half didn't quite draw me in as much as it might have, but it kept me reading out of curiosity. So, job accomplished overall. I think most people will like this, and I look forward to reading more titles by this author. For a debut, it's getting a ton of buzz, so I'm going to guess we'll be hearing more from her!

[bookishzelda]

I've been in a reading slump lately and I've been having a hard time finding books that can suck me in the first 60 pages. Four Dead Queens definitely did the job. Now I can't wait to read the whole thing. I'm almost kicking myself for reading the sample because I can't wait!!!

I love the world building in the story already. I found the fact that the kingdom is divided into four, each quandrant ruled by a Queen of that country. The politics are not overwhelming but intriguing.

I already love the mystery/thriller aspect of the plot. It gives me the proper suspense I need to want to keep reading! I also really like how it manages to attach you to a character enough already to care if they live or die. I would normally feel that way so early on in the story.

I can't wait to see where the story goes.

[Kelly]

I really liked Keralie's character, I could have read an entire book of her stealing quite frankly but saddened that queer characters are still being killed to further the narratives in young adult. It was entertaining but felt as though there were too many concepts thrown into the one book and given it's a standalone, there wasn't any room for further development of characters or storyline unfortunately.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Some spoilers. Do not read if you do not want to know things like the set-up of the government in the novel, the weaknesses of some of the quadrants, or how easy I thought the mystery was to solve.

I love a good high fantasy book, and Four Dead Queens was one of my most highly anticipated books of 2019.  Everything from the summary (a fantasy murder mystery) to the cover (a pile of cards discarded like trash) is engaging and evocative.  So I am immensely disappointed to report  that this book was extremely underdeveloped and incohesive.  I initially wanted to give it three stars but settled on two when I realized there are four main components of the book--a fantasy, a dystopian, a romance, and a mystery--and none of them really work.

The fantasy aspect might be the strongest--if you can overlook the completely absurd form of government (and apparently can, as has been demonstrated by very popular books like Three Dark Crowns.)  I, however, cannot get over the fact there is a country with four queens who each rule a different quadrant, who claim to be acting "together" for the good of Quadara while actually deciding that nearly all the benefits of their quadrant must remain in that quadrant.  (For example, only one quadrant can produce food. For some reason, they just give it away to the other three and accept the fact they're not "allowed" to have things like electricity from the technology quadrant to make farming easier.  Why are they not rioting?  Why are they not trying to withhold food to get what they want from the other quadrants?  What army is enforcing all this?)  Other inane rules include not allowing the queens to ever set food in their quadrant once they ascend the throne (not knowing anything about your quadrant helps you rule better, apparently), and all the queens must live in the same palace for their safety (because we all know the safest thing to do is to put all the most important people in the same place that can be taken out by a single major attack).  The set-up of this country is, frankly, ludicrous, and I couldn't help thinking they basically deserved to have their queens murdered or couped or something so someone could set up a more stable government. Really the most shocking thing is that no one tried to murder all the queens before.

However, the book is not all high fantasy and court politics.  Interestingly, there's a small dystopian angle when the protagonist discovers the seemingly utopian technology sector is actually a nightmare place that encourages conformity and tells people what jobs they "must" take to best use their skills in society.  This, frankly, could have been an entire book on its own, and there is so much untapped potential here.  I can envision this  novel having gone in a Divergent direction where the characters learned that keeping the quadrants so separate was stupid and that they needed the good parts of the other quadrants to help keep them all in balance, but the author never really dealt with the obvious, deep-rooted problems of the country she created.  She mentions this quadrant is actually a terrible place to live and then...kind of just moves one.

But is the romance good, you ask?  No.  No, it's not.  The characters know each other literally for about three days.  There is no time for them to convincingly develop feelings for each other, particularly when they are thrown together initially for work purposes and later because they want to help their country.  They're basically two colleagues working towards the same goal, and there is no real chemistry between them at all.

So...the mystery.  Also underwhelming.  I suppose you can say there is a mystery in the sense that there is a murderer and that the characters and the reader do not know who it is, but this isn't exactly an Agatha Christie novel.  There aren't really clues that lead the reader to help figure out who the criminal is.  If you want to be super involved with this and try to figure out what's going on, you are going to be disappointed because a lot of the information you need is withheld (and also kind of...weird or incohesive with the rest of the story).

I so wanted to like this, and there was a ton of potential if Scholte had recognized some of the problems of the worldbuilding for Quadara and actually talked about them.  If the lesson had been that everyone realized the government system was ridiculous or unstable, I think something could have been redeemed here.  Instead, the book tried to do at least four different things and didn't do any of them well. and I am sadly completely unable to recommend this book.

[Quirky Cat]

I received a copy of Four Dead Queens through BookishFirst in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Four Dead Queens is Astrid Scholte’s debut novel; though she’s not new to the world of writing. Before she decided to dive headfirst into books (which I can already tell you was a brilliant decision) she was a writer for film and television.
What first caught my attention to Four Dead Queens had to be the cover. I love the bright turquoise over the dark background, with the silver font. Having all the crowns be in different styles was a nice touch as well. Though I’ll confess that for the briefest moment I thought this was another book by Kendra Blake thanks to all of the crowns on the cover. That misunderstanding didn’t last long though, I can promise you that.
The novel is based on a nation divided into four. Thus the need for four queens. Each queen rules her district, and there’s very little crossing that happens between each one. The districts are; Toria (the intellectual quarter), Ludia (the emotional quarter), Archia (the agricultural quarter), and finally Eonia (the futurist quarter – not to be mistaken for Toria). Naturally the nation is named Quadara – nothing else really would have made sense, now would it? The queens all rule from the same throne rule, also split into four, but they don’t make joint decisions. At least not about the individual districts.


I'll post the rest of my review closer to the release date!