Asian American Literature Fans

By Stephen Hong Sohn

I was really excited by this title because I really enjoyed the first in Skye’s Crown Series. In Evelyn Skye’s, The Crown’s Fate (Balzer + Bray, 2017), our merry cast has reassembled to give Russian intrigue and statecraft another go. We’ll let B&N take it away from here: “Russia is on the brink of great change. Pasha’s coronation approaches, and Vika is now the Imperial Enchanter, but the role she once coveted may be more difficult—and dangerous—than she ever expected. Pasha is grappling with his own problems—his legitimacy is in doubt, the girl he loves loathes him, and he believes his best friend is dead. When a challenger to the throne emerges—and with the magic in Russia growing rapidly—Pasha must do whatever it takes to keep his position and protect his kingdom. For Nikolai, the ending of the Crown’s Game stung deeply. Although he just managed to escape death, Nikolai remains alone, a shadow hidden in a not-quite-real world of his own creation. But when he’s given a second chance at life—tied to a dark price—Nikolai must decide just how far he’s willing to go to return to the world. With revolution on the rise, dangerous new magic rearing up, and a tsardom up for the taking, Vika, Nikolai, and Pasha must fight—or face the destruction of not only their world but also themselves.”

There’s quite a bit that this description leaves out. First off, Nikolai is trapped in a shadow world at the beginning of the novel, precisely because of the events of the first book, The Crown’s Game. The “game” of that book pitted the two possible enchanters against each other; the loser would have to die. But, the loser didn’t die: the loser went to some shadow world in which Nikolai wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t alive either. The only way Nikolai could achieve any semblance of power in this shadow world was by siphoning off the energies of living beings. This method of energy transference, though, is a kind of dark magic, which he abhors. Nikolai’s mother is part of this shadow world and is able to use her influence to find ways to give Nikolai enough energy to move outside the shadow world and back into the physical world. Even once he is freed from that shadow plane, he still is not fully alive, and he must continually draw energy from living beings just to retain any materiality. The import of this dark energy is made evident because it slowly corrupts Nikolai’s intentions, twisting them to the point that he’s willing to do anything he can to take power away from Pasha, who was once his trusted surrogate brother.

One of the dangers that Skye toys with in this novel is to make Nikolai totally unlikable, while trying to push Vika toward Pasha as a kind of romance triangle. For me, this ploy wholly didn’t work. I had already bought in by the conclusion of the last novel that Nikolai and Vika were meant to be for each other, so I was rather impatiently waiting to see how Skye would intend to extend their separation. In this case, the triangle is, for the most part, unsuccessful precisely because Pasha is a rather boring romantic foil: he’s not very tsar-like nor does he have magical powers. Besides the fact that he has a beefcake bod from years of athletic and military training, there doesn’t seem to be much going for him. At the same time, once Nikolai turns full on evil, you start hating him, too, and this novel was one that I made me think: “Vika, you must run away from these two stupid men.” In any case, then, the tension that drives a narrative forward through the romantic triangle seemed lost on me. I almost thought that Pasha’s sister Yuliana was the most interesting option for Vika’s proper romantic foil, even though she, too, seemed perverted by her desire to rule over others.

The novel’s conclusion leaves an open-ended plot device concerning the rising level of magic that has caused old, mystical creatures to awaken, but I’m unsure as to whether or not this series is an actual trilogy or a planned duology. Recent listings do not show a third book, so I’m confused as to whether or not this installment is the end of the Crown series. Fortunately, fans of this series will be happy to note that Skye leaves most of the plot strands resolved. Unfortunately, if you were counting on the romance plot to be part of the high stakes tension in this particular work, you may be disappointed.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu