If there ever was a book series that I treat like a TV show, it’ll be American Royals. Seriously, when I read this, I pretend I’m in a new seasons of a weird Girlmore Girls fanfic sometimes, because that’s an easier way for me to explain the motivations of characters. For example, the twist this seasons is, Rory/Nina and Paris/Daphne are now friends and working together! How very Girlmore Girls season 3 (or something like that I don’t remember).
The A Plotline, Nina/Daphne, is basically, there’s a *new* mean girl in town, and she’s going to abuse her daddy’s money and influence to punish Nina and Daphne, and we spend the book watching them plot and become friends. Nina lost her financial aid, and Daphne’s dad is losing his title. Nina’s storyline makes no sense, because her mother works for the king and should’ve been able to fix it that way. Like, they live in one of the royal properties, they’re not nobodies. Daphne’s storyline is a lot better. Her character gets some depth by virtue of basically losing everything because of her parents. Honestly, her character has the best written parts, because especially the way her mother is written, you gain a lot of sympathy for her.
The B plotline, Beatrice’s (heh see what I did there) is better, but it’s kinda contrived. She’s struggling being a female ruler etc. with the backdrop of the League of Kings, some mishmash of the league of nations and the olympics (why do they only meet every 5 years). In a way, this provides the backdrop to introduce the rest of the world’s royals all at once, but in another, it leads to viewing the monarchs of this alt history world as, well, just kinda terrible leaders. Like, not in the sense that, our world has competent leaders, but in a world where a leader is for their lifespan, some of the leaders are basically walking Louise XVI, and there is no reason they should still be a monarchy. Her plotline basically has two plots. The Climate Bill and Louise. And the worst part? They basically use Louise as a way to shoehorn an overheard reveal that it was Connor Markham all along the B liked. We get this weird, 4 page introduction of a new plotline, and leads to a crash and a coma. First off, they don’t talk about the crash at all, which begs the question, how does the equivalent of the president’s car, get into an accident. I mean, The Beast is bulletproof and I think explosion proof. I was expecting some kind of “it was a terrorist group” reveal at *least*.
The C line, Sam’s, was really good. Self discovery etc. Not a lot to say about it, other than I thoroughly enjoyed that Sam wasn’t a part of the A plotline.
And finally, the alt history attempts that just failed.
1) It was either the Queen or King of Slovenia, but they get a mention. This is just lazy. This is taking a real country, and just pretending that it would exist exactly like it does today, but with a king. Like, Balkanization is a thing, Slovenia is one of the countries made after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The closest equivalent that Slovenia ever had to a monarchy would’ve been the kingdom of Yugoslavia, but you definitely wouldn’t have had a Yugoslavia split up into Slovenia.
2) At the league of kings they agree to recommit to disarmament. Like, ya’ll monarchs. Just do it.
3) Alexei talks about fighting pirates off of the Somali coast. Which means that in this world, the monarchs managed to *still* mess up and colonize Africa to such an extent that Somalia is still a failed state. This one annoyed me because, it’s such a hyper specific example from our world, that it just feels like someone ignored the butterfly effect or put no effort into thinking, hmmm where else could this happen. Maybe instead, raiders from the Antilles attacking ships trying to get to the panama canal?
Oh well. I’m still gonna watch er I mean read the next book. This was some fun popcorn reading anyways.