Review: Cruel Crown by Victoria Aveyard

Red Queen #0.1 - #0.2

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publication Date: January 5th, 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

Source: Purchase

Pages: 208

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Summary (from Goodreads):

Two women on either side of the Silver-Red divide tell the stories no one else knows.

Discover the truth of Norta's bloody past in these two revealing prequels to #1 New York Times bestseller Red Queen.

Also includes an exclusive excerpt of the hotly anticipated second book in the Red Queen series! Glass Sword transports readers to the world of Silver tyranny, a Red dawn rising, and one girl's resolve to break down the system that will hold her back no longer.

Queen Song
Queen Coriane, first wife of King Tiberias, keeps a secret diary—how else can she ensure that no one at the palace will use her thoughts against her? Coriane recounts her heady courtship with the crown prince, the birth of a new prince, Cal, and the potentially deadly challenges that lay ahead for her in royal life.

Steel Scars
Diana Farley was raised to be strong, but being tasked with planting the seeds of rebellion in Norta is a tougher job than expected. As she travels the land recruiting black market traders, smugglers, and extremists for her first attempt at an attack on the capital, she stumbles upon a connection that may prove to be the key to the entire operation—Mare Barrow.

Queen Song

Out of the two novellas in this book, Queen Song was definitely my favorite. I really enjoyed Coriane's backstory.

Coriane is from House Jacos, which basically seems to be the laughing stock of the high houses. They're not well off and no one seems to take them seriously. When her uncle falls ill and dies, her father becomes the main guy (hehe I don't remember what the word was) of House Jacos and Coriane and her family are moved to court.

After fleeing from a dinner where a whisper was invading her mind, Coriane runs into Prince Tibe in the garden. That is how their courtship starts. 

I loved reading about how Coriane and the Prince fall in love. It was really interesting to get into her mind. To see her spiral from the sweet girl who just wants to tinker around with mechanical things to the paranoid sounding Queen with relentless nightmares. 

I would have been really interested in having a deeper look into Coriane's past rather than Farley's because I found Coriane to be a lot more interesting.

Steel Scars

I feel like Steel Scars had the potential to be a really interesting, action packed story. But it kinda failed to be either of those things. Captain Farley is given her first mission without supervision. I'm not entirely sure what that mission was after reading it. I think that she is a bit off task during a lot of this story, disobeying orders.

Seeing as she is on a mission and they have to run away from a group of Silvers at one point and several members of the group wind up dead, you would think that there would be some action going on in this story. But it somehow manages to focus more on the less exciting things and skim over things that I feel would be more exciting to read about.

I felt like we should have seen more about her meeting with Mare rather than just her thinking about it afterward. But it was interesting to see her meeting Mare's brother! He was probably the best part of this story.

Overall, I really don't think that this story adds to the overall Red Queen experience. Despite being with Farley on her mission, you're still pretty in the dark about everything. Queen Song was a much more interesting read. Getting to learn more about Cal's mother before her death was definitely a worthwhile read! I would have loved to know more about her!

Have you read these novellas? What did you think of them?