From a major new voice in epic fantasy, Six Savage Thrones continues the Queens of Elben trilogy, a breathtaking epic fantasy of dragons, courtly intrigue, sapphic yearning, and the wives of Henry VIII defying their destiny.

DIVIDED HE WINS, UNITED HE FALLS.

The kingdom of Elben is in turmoil. One of its magical palaces lies in ruins at the bottom of the ocean and the king is on the hunt for the traitor Queen Seymour. He will not stop until he brings her to her knees.

No one would ever suspect Queen Howard of treachery or spy craft, but she is no longer content to be the king's songbird. She will see to Henry's downfall. But there is a new gentleman at court, one who seems to know more about her true motives than he should—is he friend or foe?

Queen Cleves has already survived a war. She knows what she must do to protect herself, but now she finds herself fighting a longing for another queen that is so fierce it might swallow her up.

Amidst the turmoil, King Henry's sister Cecilia vies for the power she has been denied. But the queens will soon learn they must work together to break the bonds that tie them to the king. For Henry is delving deeper into strange old magics, ones that could birth a monster.

My Review:

The first book in the Queens of Elben trilogy, Six Wild Crowns, portrayed an alternate-history fantasy version of England that was deeply invested in the history that we all think we know about the Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII, and his really messy romantic and dynastic obsessions. But this trilogy takes that old memory rhyme about the fates of his six wives, “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” and turns it into an entirely different saga of a king who is magically bound to have six wives AT THE SAME TIME to help him maintain the protective border around his island kingdom.

Naturally, all is not as it initially seems, or this story wouldn’t be half so fascinating. Which it absolutely is. (Of course it is, the original material has been captivating the minds of historians and historical fiction readers for literally centuries!)

By putting a fantasy twist on this well-known historical saga, rather than a retelling, the author is able to not just show these events from the many important and available female perspectives, but to recast the story as something truly magical and, fascinatingly, potentially change the ending. Something that retellings are often loath to do.

So, instead of Henry’s six wives – and various mistresses – overlapping but mostly existing sequentially, all six wives are alive and queenly at the same time. The minute they start working together in Six Wild Crowns, instead of against each other as they’re intended to by the men in power, the story was off and running.

But they slipped under the ‘radar’ in that first book because Henry and his male advisors all underestimated them. As men do. Once the queens’ plan was revealed, the powers-that-be, again, meaning men, targeted the queens and their allies individually and collectively.

This second book is what happens while they are all in the king’s crosshairs. They know they are targets. He knows they are plotting. The situation is going to get bloodier, and it does.

At the same time, more is revealed about the situation in Elben as a whole. The country is literally rotting from within. The gods are not happy with this situation – at all – but the patriarchy’s god, Cernunnos, is rapacious and determined to hold onto his power through Henry no matter who or what gets sacrificed in their collective rampage. The queens’ patron goddess, Medren, may have right on her side, but she is a nurturing goddess whose first recourse is not violence. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if she reaches that point in the third book. The cliche about “nature, red in tooth and claw”, exists for a reason and this story is likely to get there before it can end.

This reader, at least, certainly hopes so, because this second book concludes in a very dark place under very desperate circumstances. The queens may be in mourning and on the run, but the future is still in their hands. They just need to seize it before it’s too late.

Escape Rating B+: This is the middle book in a projected trilogy. And, like most middle books, the situations are always darkest just before they turn completely black. So this isn’t exactly the fun part of the story. The quintessential ‘middle book’ is Tolkien’s The Two Towers, which ended with Frodo carried off as a potentially dead captive in Mordor as Sam, now the ringbearer, follows mournfully behind. Middle books don’t get any darker than that, although this one comes close.

Which is where that B+ rating comes in. Because I adored the first book in THIS trilogy, Six Wild Crowns. I HAD to find out what happened next because THAT story ended when the queens had just ripped the bandage off all of the lies the population of Elben have been brainwashed with for centuries. But they’ve also revealed their queenly conspiracy to their kingly enemy, Henry VIII, and lost one of their number in the process.

This is the part of the story where the noose tightens around all their remaining necks, even as they do their damndest to maneuver said noose around Henry’s instead. But Henry possesses ALL the levers of power as well as the magic he’s stolen from them, and he knows how to use both to his advantage much better than they do their own combined powers.

Part of what makes this trilogy work, at least so far, is the way that it gets inside the heads of each of the queens. Not all at once, because that would probably be too much of a split focus, but one or two – or in this case three.

Six Wild Crowns was told from the alternating perspectives of Queen (Anne) Boleyn and Queen (Jane) Seymour. In that opening story, we watched Boleyn maneuver her way into Henry’s bed, discover the truth of his power and her own her part in how that power was used and how he used his queens up in the process, seduced or manipulated (or both) Seymour and eventually the other queens into her nascent conspiracy, and pay the ultimate price for it.

This time we have three perspectives, Queen (Anne of) Cleves, maintaining her own heart and her own council but in the conspiracy up to her neck, Queen (Katharine) Howard, the youngest and most seemingly twitter-pated queen, the one who no one, not even Henry, believes has enough intelligence to understand the stakes, and a new/old player on the board, Dowager Queen Cecilia of Capetia (France). Cecilia is Henry’s younger sister, and stands in for the real historical Mary Tudor – who wasn’t, at least as far as history records her – nearly so bloodthirsty. Or psychopathic.

The inclusion of Cecilia both rewrites the history of the Tudors as we know them and provides a perspective aligned with the powers-that-be that doesn’t underestimate the queens because she is one herself. But also gives the reader a new character through whom we can see just how far Henry has fallen from the heroic older brother that Cecilia once loved.

Underlying the bloody, fascinating drama of the Tudors is a fantasy about old gods being replaced by new beliefs AND about a rebellion to overthrow the entire heteropatriarchy to right the balance. Which means that the romances that occur in this saga, while they may be mostly tragic – at least so far – also take place across the spectrum of human sexuality. That love is all there is is all we know of love – even when their world is crashing down around them.

In conclusion, a few final thoughts. First, IMHO this isn’t technically a romantasy. At this point in the story I’m not sure ANY of the participants have even the hope of a happy ending. This isn’t a happy story but the real life version wasn’t either. But I do think it has some of the same feels, so if you like your romantasy on the tragic side, there’s plenty of that going on so far.

Second, because this is a middle book, the story neither begins nor ends here. Meaning that readers absolutely should not start here. And, frankly, I wouldn’t blame anyone who hasn’t already started the trilogy for waiting until the third book comes out. This one ends in a literal hell of a place. Which is right and fitting and feels like the way the story should be going at this point, but dammit I wish I knew when the conclusion was coming because I’m gasping to see how it all ends.

An end which, as I’m writing this review, is nowhere in sight. YET.