I find myself in a very strange position when it comes to The Bitter Crown, by Justin Lee Anderson. It’s the second book in the Eidyn series and I struggled heavily with book one: The Lost War (I highly recommend you read my review for context). I found that my difficulties with book one were greatly alleviated by one of the best twist endings in recent memory. While I struggled with the themes and prose of book one, gosh darn it, if it didn’t have some of the coolest reveals and ideas that I have read in a fantasy book in a long time. As such, I eventually decided that I liked the ending of book one enough to try the sequel. Having finished The Bitter Crown, I now feel like I can give a fair assessment of whether I recommend the series or not, and the answer is a lukewarm no.
Avoiding spoiling any of the plots in general, without the massive twists offered by book one I just didn’t find enough in book two to justify the time spent here. I have always been someone who struggles to get by on the plot of a book alone. There is rarely a plot so cool that I am enchanted solely by “things happening” without investment in the people and ideas driving the events. I thought Eidyn might be a rare exception to this, but The Bitter Crown felt like a lot of moving around and talking without major plot developments. This gave me too much time with the parts of the prose that I don’t think holds up and not enough time being dazzled by cool stuff.
I struggled with the dialogue across the board. The setting is steeped in rich fantasy lore, but everyone talks like a dramatic teen group chat in 2024. Part of this issue can be explained by the plot, but I simply could not keep my disbelief consistently suspended. Plus, none of the dialogue made any traction in endearing the characters to me and that was a place that desperately needed attention.
The characters were a mess, with several of them designed to be unlikable with too much success. The themes in The Bitter Crown revolve around this constant “both sides” idea where there are magic users and non-magic users locked in a societal conflict and the reader needs to pick a side. In order to make this choice interesting, information is very obviously hidden away so that Anderson can make one side seem right and then reveal a juicy morsel that causes the reader to reconsider. I think the hope was that we would flop back and forth with each new reveal in shocking twists and turns. Unfortunately, the two sides sorta boil down to: non-magic users want to genocide the mages out of fear, and the mages don’t want to die. This makes it increasingly hard to take the side of any non-mage and really made me dislike some characters that I think I was supposed to like (like the king and queen).
Ultimately, I do not think I am going to continue on with Eidyn. Anderson has some incredibly cool ideas contained in this story, but the minutia of how they are implemented is simply not working for me. Despite thinking the plot was very interesting I struggled to care about the cast and I found much of the dialogue grating. Still, I can very easily see this book being on a top list of 2024 for someone else.
Rating: The Bitter Crown – 5.0/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
I’m about an hour or two away from finishing the audio book and I’m with you on disliking the king and queen. I’m hoping that there’s a pay off for them. I’m waiting to finish this book to make a verdict but the queen by herself deserves a comeuppance. For all their talk about being wise and good monarchs, they’ve made terrible, obvious mistakes.