Castles in Their Bones
Three sisters must seize power in a court rife with intrigue and betrayal after their father's death. Each faces enemies on all sides as they learn to wield influence and survival. Their bonds will be tested as they reshape a kingdom built on secrets.
Everything You Need to Know About Castles in Their Bones
Empress Margaraux of Bessemia has three daughters and one plan. Sophronia, Daphne and Beatriz are triplets, raised from birth to be married into three different kingdoms and to bring those kingdoms down from the inside so their mother can take the continent. At sixteen they are sent out. Sophronia goes to Temarin, Daphne to Friv, Beatriz to Cellaria, where magic is heresy and being caught with it means execution. The book rotates between the three of them as each works out that her assignment is more complicated than the briefing suggested, and that the husbands and courts she was told to destroy are full of actual people. Sebastian is more interested in how three girls raised as instruments start thinking for themselves than in the court intrigue itself.
Margaraux is a superb villain, a mother whose love is entirely conditional and who never has to raise her voice. The three sisters read as distinct people rather than three flavors of the same protagonist, and Sebastian is willing to let their plans fail. The last fifty pages are the reason people finish this and immediately buy the next one.
Parental emotional abuse and manipulation, on-page death of a major character, execution, war, poisoning, teenage characters married off against their will, grief.
Sophronia dies. She is executed in Temarin after choosing to protect the people she was sent to ruin, and it happens near the end with no reprieve and no trick. Her death is the cliffhanger, and the sequel opens with Daphne and Beatriz living in the aftermath. Beatriz ends the book in serious danger in Cellaria over her magic, Daphne's position in Friv is compromised, and their mother's plan is still broadly on track. That is the point.
For readers who want royalty and court manipulation across three points of view, with a genuinely monstrous parent at the center. Comp it to The Cruel Prince for the scheming, though this is less romantic and more political. YA, low spice. Skip it if rotating three narrators annoys you, or if you need the first book of a trilogy to resolve anything.
Book one of a trilogy, followed by Stardust in Their Veins and Poison in Their Hearts. It ends on a severe cliffhanger and does not stand alone.
Reader Reviews
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!