Two Twisted Crowns: A satisfying ending

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

2023’s Two Twisted Crowns completes Rachel Gillig’s romantasy duology, THE SHEPHERD KING. Along the way, lovers are parted, bonds are broken, justice is meted out and centuries-old secrets are revealed.

This review may contain spoilers for One Dark Window, the first book of the series.

At the end of the first book, Elspeth revealed that Nightmare, the magical entity she hosts, knew the location of the final Providence card, the Twin Alders. While Quercus Rowan, Blunder’s drunken, vicious king, distrusts Elspeth and plans to execute her, he wants the final card more, so Elspeth, Ravyn Yew and his sister Jespyr Yew set off into the mist-laden wood to retrieve it. The mist carries the infection of wild magic, but it’s not the scariest thing they will face on this quest.

Meanwhile, Elm Rowan, second son and “spare heir” to King Rowan, agrees to help Ione Hawthorne find the Maiden card that is affecting her. The Maiden cards bestow beauty, and Ione looks nearly ethereal, but she no longer has feelings. She wishes to have control over her own destiny and her own senses but her betrothed, the evil Prince Hauth, hid the Maiden card from her. As they secretly search, Ione and Elm grow closer. Hauth, who was physically attacked by Nightmare, lies close to death, but he’s not as close as everyone first thought, and Hauth has plans of his own.

Ione’s dilemma interested me in the first book. When we first met her, she was an open-hearted, joyful character. She is used as a pawn in a political maneuver by her father, but the change in her once she fell under the influence of the Maiden card was interesting. In this book, I was more interested in Ione and Elm than I really was in the quest for the lost card. Fortunately, the story splits about fifty-fifty between the quest and the conspiracies at the castle, and I was rewarded.

Like One Dark Window, I found some characters flat. Hauth is a suitable bully, aided by his wielding of the Scythe card, which lets him control anybody within the sound of his voice. He isn’t much more than a bully, though, although at times he is smarter than Elm. That might be because Elm is distracted by his thoughts of the bow of Ione’s mouth, the warmth of her skin, her hazel eyes, etc. King Rowan is a one-note drunken sot of a villain, who actually utters the words, “…with you in my clutches,” in the book. (And not ironically.) Ione and Elm themselves, however, are interesting, and so is Ravyn. To my surprise, Ravyn’s friend Petyr, a minor character, proved to be one of the most fun and lively characters in the book.

As with the first book, the descriptions are lovely, verging on poetic. The worldbuilding itself is minimalist throughout. The story concerns itself with the king and the court, and Blunder exists in the book only as a dangerous forest and a series of castles and estates. For this tale, that works well enough, since Gillig chose to put her imaginative energy into the magical system, but halfway through Two Twisted Crowns I did start wondering about farmers, bakers, armorers, weavers, etc. Do any exist? Apparently not.

The ending, or endings, worked well enough and were emotionally satisfying. One secret that is revealed will be obvious to some readers very early in the book, but that doesn’t really spoil the main story. This is romantasy, so I’m sure I’m not committing any spoilers when I say that all the right couples end up together, and probably happily ever after.