Six Wild Crowns (Queens of Elben, #1) by Holly Race Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, historical fantasy, romantasy
Series: Queens of Elben #1
Pages: 416
Published by Orbit on June 10, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
The king has been appointed by god to marry six queens. Those six queens are all that stand between the kingdom of Elben and ruin. Or so we have been told.
Each queen vies for attention. Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be Henry's favourite. And if she must incite a war to win Henry over? So be it.
Seymour acts as spy and assassin in a court teeming with dragons, backstabbing courtiers and strange magic. But when she and Boleyn become the unlikeliest of things - allies - the balance of power begins to shift. Together they will discover an ancient, rotting magic at Elben's heart. A magic that their king will do anything to protect.
A captivating epic fantasy filled with dragons, court politics and sapphic yearning, perfect for fans of The Priory of the Orange Tree and House of the Dragon.
My Review:
I got hooked on all things Tudor when I was 12 years old and saw the movie Anne of the Thousand Days sprawled across the wide screen of a local movie theater. The opening scene of the movie, at least the way I remember it, was the scene of Henry chasing Anne on horseback as she gleefully gallops ahead of him.
I saw that scene again in my mind’s eye at the opening of Six Wild Crowns, because Boleyn herself is thinking of her first meeting with the King, and how that meeting led her to her wedding to that very same man as this historical fantasy revision of the story begins.
From there, the story is off to the races, but to a race that is able to take just the kind of fantastic twists and turns that fantasy allows while still being grounded, steeped, and perfumed by the historical facts, lies and manipulations that were part of the history that has been recorded – by Henry and his court, because they were the victors in the history that we were all taught.
Which is where the path between real history and fantasy history both meet and diverge. They meet in the sense that the history of fantasy England, Elben in this tour-de-force of epic historical fantasy and romantasy, is the story of what has been taught to the people of Elben. What they, from the lowest commoner to the six queens of the realm, has been taught to believe about the blessings their god, Cernunnos, has granted to their land, their king, and their people.
That Elben is protected by a magical boundary, that that boundary is embodied in the strength of the king, and that the king’s protection and his burden are supported by his six queens in their six castles at the borders of their land. And that their god, Cernunnos, created it all to protect the land where he is worshipped.
This “origin story”, believed by all, puts a fantasy spin on the reign of Henry VIII, his obsessive pursuit of a male heir, and especially his marital excesses and executions. To protect Elben, the king is required to have six wives at all times to occupy those six castles that protect his realm.
Of course, those queens are expected to be each other’s quiet, polite, civilized enemies. Because that’s what their world believes of women. Because that’s the way the court expresses its preferences. And, as it turns out, because that’s what’s necessary to keep the queens from banding together and learning the truth about the real source of the blessing of Elben, the reason why it’s fading, and the best way to resolve what’s needed to bring it back to full power and protection.
And it’s Boleyn’s rebellion that sets the whole treasonous plot in motion. A rebellion that began, as all the most interesting rebellions do, with a secret, a lie, and a romance for the ages. Just not the one that our history, or theirs, would ever have led us to expect.
Escape Rating A++: As you might guess from the rating, I’m here to SQUEE. My fascination with the Tudors started early and extends to the present day, so I was all in on the concept the minute I saw the blurb for this book. But I’ll confess that I was deeply afraid that the actual story would be like the bear dancing, you’re not surprised it’s done well, you’re astonished that it’s done at all. In other words, I loved the concept but couldn’t figure out if or how it would actually work.
I was blown away by just how very well it works – and how very firmly it stands on all three of its ‘legs’. That the fantasy worldbuilding is deep and well-executed, that the romances are all romantic, often tragic, and very much not the same as each other, and the way that the known and popularized history holds the whole thing up, brings a lot of bright and sparkling – and dark and gloomy – aspects to the court and to these well-known characters and makes them feel REAL because in their heart of hearts – and ours – they are.
They just get to shine and especially to change some of their fates and the fate of their world because this is fantasy and not historical fiction after all – and it’s all the better a story for it.
What makes the story work is the way that the author has used what we already know about the characters to move the story into the realms of what might have been, and that includes not just the royals but also the advisors, councilors and hangers on. It’s not just that Aragon and Boleyn and Seymour are plotting against each other – because they were – but also that More and Wolsey and Cromwell are plotting against each other, against the queens, and plotting with the queens against each other, because they were, too.
(And if you like that part of the story, take a look at the King’s Fool mysteries (starting with Courting Dragons) by Jeri Westerson. Because that intimate view of the court, its machinations, and Henry’s inadequacies and insecurities, is a similar view to the one in THIS story.)
Told from the perspective of Seymour and Boleyn, the way that their relationship is allowed to happen, and the way it morphs because their relationship with Henry happen at the same time, gives a whole new spin on events as they occur – especially as we get a LOT of Seymour’s point of view and it’s even more fascinating because history records so little of her and this story has so much and it feels like it fits perfectly. It also means that we’re not surprised that part of the spin is the realization that all the queens have been fed a load of codswallop to keep them complacent in their subservient roles – and that this is not the way things were meant to be.
And that the patriarchy is doing its damndest to keep them from discovering a truth that will set them free if they can manage to wrest control. OTOH it’s a lot like the feminist interpretations/retellings of stories like Madeline Miller’s Circe and Ava Reid’s Lady Macbeth, BUT, and this is a huge but that makes things so much better, those stories were told as historical myths, so the male-dominant endings couldn’t be changed. Six Wild Crowns is straight-up fantasy, so there’s definitely a possibility that the patriarchy could get at least a bit of its comeuppance. Which we won’t know for a while because this is a projected trilogy and we’re only in book 1 so far.
I know I’m all over the map on this thing, because I loved it really, really hard and I kind of want to tell you everything so you’ll love it too while at the same time I don’t want to spoil it for you because I want you to read it.
If you’ve been dying to see Six, if you adore the deeply researched historical fiction of Alison Weir, if you fell for the Tudors in any of the many, many movie and TV versions, if you’re looking for something that combines the best of romantasy with the corrupt political machinations of contemporary epic fantasy, Six Wild Crowns will be your jam every bit as much as it is mine. I’m already on those proverbial tenterhooks waiting for book 2 in the trilogy, and wondering which queens will be at the forefront of upsetting Henry’s applecart even further as the story continues.
