Crown of Three Book Review

In this coming of age tale, we see Tarlan, Elodie, and Algulphus more often referred to as Gulph fulfill a prophecy. After being whisked into safety they all have their own harrowing tales of survival. One's a prisoner in plain sight, another is a glorified gypsy (traveling minstrel), and another grows up in the frozen wastes of a long forgotten realm. The story quickly moves along and we are thrown into each characters POV and where they are in the world.

As Tarlan, Elodie and Gulph follow their destiny, each has their world turned upside down. Relax, I won't put in any spoilers. Let's just say the rug gets pulled out from each of them and their eyes are open to the world and they are faced to make big decisions that will impact the future of Toronia.

Overall, I thought Crown of Three was a good book. It was refreshing to see a thirteen year old actually act as the gullible thirteen year old that they are. It was even better to see that they weren't awesome at everything just because they are fulfilling a prophecy. Too often in children's fantasy novels, the main characters are experts with the sword, the bow, leading people, they rarely make mistakes and leave the battlefield unscathed. So it was nice to see characters struggle, it seemed realistic and it kept me reading.

I was hoping to use this book as a read aloud for my 4th grade students in school at the beginning of the year. Reading the jacket the book seemed like a great way to get the students excited about reading books. After reading the book from cover to cover, book but I don't think this would be the best choice. Although the book has challenging vocabulary for a 4th grader I thought the fact a couple of characters get decapitated, main characters meet their doom as if George R. R. Martin was the author, some students may find the story a little too intense. This would be a better read aloud when we study fantasy later in the school year and the students have grown up a little more.

Questions I was left with after reading:

-What are the three realms? Are they Isur (the city of Idilliam is located within the realm, also the location of castle Tor which the country Toronia gets its name from), Ritherlee, and Yalasti or Icy Wastes (maybe this is a barrier keeping people from the mountains called Yalasti)? Safe to say I was a little confused.

-Was the purpose of some characters to set the stage for upcoming books? For example, Palenie and her explanation of her village, Stown and all of his cronies.

-How do people know about legends (magicians) and mythical beasts (tigrons and thorrods)? Should the reader know about these things too? I felt like I was missing out on something.


Pros
- world building
- good pace
- 13 year olds act like 13 year olds
- incredible cover art

Cons
- background knowledge for the reader
- chapter titles needed character names to show POV we'd be reading from
- no map, it would have been a great help for 9-13 year olds to have something to refer back to since three characters are off in the different and often confusing realms of Toronia.