Held deep in a mountain refuge, Sylvia has been captured by the Urabi, who believe she can return their homeland to its former power. But after years of denying her legacy and a forbidden alliance with Jasad’s greatest enemy, Sylvia must win the group’s trust while struggling to keep control of both her magic and her mind.
In the rival kingdom, Arin is caught between his father’s desire to put down the brewing rebellion and the sacred edicts he’s sworn to uphold. Arin must find Sylvia before his father’s army, but his search will call into question the very core of Arin’s beliefs about his family and the destruction of Jasad.
War is inevitable and Sylvia cannot abandon her people again. The Urabi plan to raise the Jasadi fortress, and it will either kill Sylvia or destroy the humanity she’s fought so hard to protect. For the first time in her life Sylvia doesn’t just want to survive. She wants to win.
The fugitive queen is ready to come home.
Thank you to every single person who pushed me to finally finish this duology because what an ending! Hashem really kicked up the pace in The Jasad Crown, allowing us to follow some new characters, as well as the ones we knew and loved, and created an absolutely brutal story steeped in trauma and blood I couldn’t look away from.
I think one of my favourite changes from the last book was giving us the pov’s of Sefa and Marek, two characters I loved from The Jasad Heir. We still get plenty of time with Sylvia and Arin, and their character arcs are obviously the most important to the story and the ones we spend the most time with, but the addition of these two POV’s allowed Hashem to really develop her world. Giving us insight into other Kingdoms, their politics, leaders, and it also meant that when a certain scene happened towards the end it hit that much harder.
Sylvia’s arc through this story is one of bloodshed, trauma and sacrifice. She’s still the recalcitrant, punch first ask questions later women from the first book, but now she is someone willing to accept her lineage, accept her fate. She is the Jasad Heir, and the power running through her veins is the one thing that can save her people, give them safety, and although she fights against the Urabi at almost every turn, she slowly comes to realise that she might not have as much of a choice in the matter as she thought. Arin is caught between what to do when he captures Sylvia, because he will find her. Will he kill her or kiss her, will his love for the Jasad Heir, the very person he has been created to destroy, outweigh his training. Hashem did a fantastic job of allowing him to slowly come away from what he was taught, the way in which his father has reigned as supreme, we already see inklings of this in the first book, so it doesn’t seem jarring when he makes his decision. Rather it seems the only obvious choice to try and save as many people as possible.
Hashem created an intricate world, one with shades of grey running through almost every kingdom and person. Through Arin and Sylvia’s investigation into what truly happened at the blood summit we learn that, though the Jasadi’s weren’t the beacon of light and love Sylvia remembered from her childhood, they weren’t the only ones committing atrocities. The hypocrisy of the other kingdoms, blaming Jasad for all the bad in the world, all the while they were benefitting off the Kingdoms wrongs and had themselves done it for centuries until they lost their magic. But it’s not just the history of Jasad and the other kingdoms that they uncover, it’s the history of themselves. How Arin came to have his magic bleeding ability, and how Sylvia can carry as much power as she does. Both were gut punches, not the only ones, but some of the biggest, and Hashem blends them into the story so deliberately it’s hard to say how you didn’t guess them earlier.
There’s a big theme of self-sacrifice running through this book. Though I wouldn’t say any of our characters are particularly good, I would say that plenty have the ability for it, and we really see that come to life in this book. At times I did wish they wouldn’t be quite as willing to throw themselves into the path of danger, but we know these characters inside and out, the good and the bad, and the decisions they made felt incredibly true to that. I think the part that broke me the most was Sylvia’s relationship with the Urabi, a people so desperate to bring Jasad back that they would risk her life, all the while keeping her in the dark about their true plans. It’s another look at the shades of grey that people carry within them, how they looked to her for power, as a symbol, one they would be willing to sacrifice if it meant the safety of her people, and seeing Sylvia realise that, revolt against it initially, and then slowly come to realise it might be the only way was heartbreaking, but showed how much she had grown through the series.
The romance… oh boy. Sylvia getting Arin on his knees, the most dangerous man in the Kingdom at her knees! I mentioned how Hashem allowed Arin the internal battle between his love for Sylvia and what he has been raised to do, and it was fairly obvious from the first time they meet again which was going to win out. But how can a romance bloom between two people whose touch alone could kill each other. Safe to say it was full of longing glances, of gloved touches and heated moments and I lived for every single second. But as with the first book, Hashem doesn’t show only one form of love. We follow Sefa and Marek, two people who quite literally followed Sylvia to their doom in the first book and try so hard to get back to her and each other through the book. Arin and his guards, yes you could call it loyalty, but some of their actions transcend that and become something akin to brotherly love. It’s almost a bizarre found family, a hidden queen, two convicts on the run, the most dangerous man in the kingdoms and his guards, but it really works and ensures the true impact of certain scenes.
Safe to say I loved this one. I did feel like the pacing slipped a few times, but I was so invested in the story I almost didn’t care. Hashem has cemented herself as an author I will absolutely be keeping my eye on, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.
