My mood’s dictating my reading now and while I didn’t plan on reading For the Throne this month, here I am finished, absolutely in love with the story, and ready to share with you all my thoughts. Thanks to Orbit Books for the gifted copy.
Here’s more about For the Throne
Red and the Wolf have finally contained the threat of the Old Kings but at a steep cost. Red’s beloved sister Neve, the First Daughter is lost in the Shadowlands, an inverted kingdom where the vicious gods of legend have been trapped for centuries and the Old Kings have slowly been gaining control. But Neve has an ally–though it’s one she’d rather never have to speak to again–the rogue king Solmir.
Solmir wants to bring an end to the Shadowlands and he believes helping Neve may be the key to its destruction. But to do that, they will both have to journey across a dangerous landscape in order to find a mysterious Heart Tree, and finally to claim the gods’ dark, twisted powers for themselves.
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My thoughts
This book was quite different than the story you start off with in For the Wolf. In many ways, I’m happy about that. For the Wolf was dark, brooding, sexy, and filled with blood. For the Throne is more of a fantasy adventure with a very specific plot and finding out more as it unravels is probably the biggest treat of all. I will start off by saying that this review will have spoilers from the first book because it’s a true sequel and picks up where the last book leaves off. Fair warning!
The story focuses more on Neve than on Red and the first chapter pulls you straight into the world that you’ve only read about in For the Wolf. The Shadowlands are this creepy, colorless world where demons roam, gods are king, and the borders are crumbling. You’re immediately met with Solmir, who kisses Neve to wake her from her glass coffin (hellooooo Snow White). But after that, it’s a journey to fight the Kings who have been slowly feeding on the gods of old in order to destroy the Shadowlands and return to the real world. Solmir is on a mission to make sure that doesn’t happen. Neve is about to join in that same mission.
This is what I really loved about this book. For the Wolf felt like it was missing a central plot to move the story forward. You were on this ride wondering where this was all going, but this one was a much clearer objective; kill the Kings, get back to the real world without them. I found myself wanting to read more of Neve’s story than Red’s, but I think both of their stories combined eventually made for an intriguing subplot.
Without giving too much away, Neve and Red are having similar dreams about trees and keys which feel like the magic of the world trying to explain how they can finally find each other. One of the key themes of this book was love; sisterly love, romantic love, and platonic love. These examples of love really drove the characters, made them who they are or changed them in significant ways. I love how it played such a massive role in the story especially for Neve and Red.
The other big theme I absolutely loved in this book is the good vs. evil idea. Good people who think they’re doing good are actually evil and evil people who don’t think their good are actually good. I love that play on those worlds because good and evil are never black and white and that gray in between plays a huge role here.
However, this book isn’t completely perfect. There were points throughout the story where logic didn’t lead well and I was confused by how certain characters came to their conclusions. While I think there were parts that needed work, I overlooked them in the end.
Overall, it’s masterfully crafted, beautifully written, and wraps up all the loose ends of the story. I really loved falling deep into this fairy tale rabbit hole and felt all the emotions by the end.
Simone and Her Books 