The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year-that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. The deliberate pacing at the outset serves to re-establish the labyrinthine web of characterization and plot, paying off in a tumultuous climax that piles one shocking twist upon another.Īchingly gorgeous and gruesomely fascinating.Ī Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart. With numerous alternating viewpoints, the exquisitely restrained prose limns a nuanced, subtly realized matriarchal society: all-white, normatively heterosexual (but with exceptions), in which even the most complex male characters function only in relationship to women.

Yet more excruciating is the curse upon their experience of love, whether with siblings, parents, or friends in romance, passion, even religious devotion-all relationships are twisted, broken, abandoned, and betrayed. Blake’s already pitch-black tale shades even darker, as the queens’ cruel contest piles up an escalating (and grisly) body count. Alliances shift as the various factions play Temple against Council, and potential suitors become both rivals and pawns-but not even the Goddess can prevent the queens from deciding to take their fates into their own hands.

Meanwhile, poisoner Katharine has returned from her rumored death with a vengeance…and a mission. With the rampage by Arsinoe’s bear, the naturalist candidate has demonstrated unexpected strength, and now elemental Mirabella is no longer treated as the foreordained victor. Three sisters intensify their deadly struggle for the crown in the second of a horror-tinged fantasy series.Īfter the spectacular catastrophe of the Quickening ( Three Dark Crowns, 2016), the balance of power among the queens has shifted.

One dark throne book