The Crown's Game (Review)

Title: The Crown's Game

Author: Evelyn Skye

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Rating: 4*

The Crown's Game is not one to lose...

... Especially when it comes to the two enchanters that equally have their role in shaping the Game, refacing cities and islands and bakeries. Set in an alternate Imperial Russia, Evelyn Skye's debut novel is a fantastic take on magic and power that sees two enchanters battle each other for the title of Imperial Enchanter to the tsar.

Vika Andreyeva is a girl who uses her magic to conjure things throughout the book; from islands to magical rivers, to storms, to destruction, she fights for her chance to get what she wants.  Nikolai Karimov's magic is more of an alteration to existing things. He can take a miniature bench, enlarge it, and turn it into a thing to lie on and dream of other cities outside of Saint Petersburg, where the main story is set.

Raised on an island by Sergei, Vika has no knowledge that there may be another enchanter to fight and only plans on taking her oath to the tsar when she turns eighteen. At the beginning of the book, she's sixteen, and both her and Sergei believe she has two more years to control and hone her magic. When they receive the invitation to go to Bolshebonie Duplo--Enchanted Hollow--Vika finally meets her match. He's a shadow boy at first, casting his own shield over himself to disguise his appearance to make it harder for Vika to directly target him.

Nikolai was raised in an entirely different life by Galina, Sergei's sister. Despite her rescuing him as an orphan, she very much leaves him to his own devices with his power, dropping the occasional, spontaneously-timed test. The first time Nikolai uses his magic in the book is when he is taken to the public library and has to reorder five misplaced books out of thousands of volumes, only seeing through the wall.

Immediately, Nikolai's magic impressed me. Compared with Vika's when the time came for them to battle each other, I did have my doubts that his magic could match hers. It turns out that Nikolai's tailoring could create an army of stone birds, targeted to attack his only opponent and he could alter a small dock into a larger port to attach to the island Vika conjures.

In the Crown's Game, each player gets five moves, each one more impressive than the rest to win the favour of the tsar, who they'd serve. Honestly, I was rooting for some sort of magical split so both Vika and Nikolai could have the thing they wanted, the title they'd worked and exhausted themselves for. But it doesn't work like that: the point of the game is for one winner because they'd need to inhabit all of the magic supplied. Eventually, the loss of magic or a lack of a move (indicated by a burn-mark of crossed wands) will burn the player to death. Either way, there is only one winner either by defeat of the other or not taking their turn.

Over time, both Nikolai and Vika make and develop their ties with a loveable crown prince, Pasha.  Nikolai already had himself a firm Best Friend position with the unwilling prince but kept his abilities from Pasha, which I found both understandable and unfair, considering all they share, and therefore, his involvement in the game is concealed from the prince for most of the story. Vika meets Pasha when she initially meets Nikolai but doesn't realise who either of them are. Yet Pasha remembers Vika, with her fire-red hair, run-through with a black stripe. He falls in love with her almost immediately, travelling to seek her out, only to find she's moved to Saint Petersburg for the game. Only Pasha finds out that Vika is a player in the game by his own curiosity and research. He becomes obsessed, almost, with the Crown's Game and it's methods and ways, constantly asking his friend Nikolai to help him out. But when Nikolai disappears from Pasha's company to either sleep off the drain from using his magic or to take his turn in secret, Pasha begins to worry and piece things together.

There is mention of how the crown prince--the tsarevich--uses disguises to escape the confines of the palace frequently, or to find out information to help his politically-minded sister. Disguises become Pasha's trait. So when he hold a masquerade ball and parades as Dmitri the angel, able to dance with anyone without being fussed over, he sees it as the perfect place to meet Vika properly. The masquerade was one of my favourite scenes due to the intensity of the magic that builds around Nikolai and Vika when they dance, except it makes the major alteration in the story that gives both enchanters the realisation that they don't want to hurt the other but still want to win. Their attachment to each other turns into something like anger at the other due to the torn feelings.

The Crown's Game bears an emotional and heart-wrenching ending when Pasha's parents are killed by the true, vengeful mother of one of the enchanters and he must take over ruling the Game, when the game ends in a terrific cliff-hanger. My feelings for Pasha only increased through the new hardship of ruling he suffers and I sympathised with him, for the hard decisions he had to make, to know whether the boy who was his best friend or the girl he felt immensely for had won.

The ending left me with a burning need to read The Crown's Fate, which I'd already preordered before even opening the first page of The Crown's Game, and I'll be looking forward to diving into this month!