Author: Evelyn Skye

Series: Crown’s Game

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Pages: 416

Vika can summon lightening, rain, wind, snow, and ice. She can change and turn these elements in to whatever she needs them to be at the time. Nikolai can conjure clothing out of bunches of material, see through walls, and build bridges out of raw materials. They are enchanters, and each of them have been trained since they were very young to be the imperial enchanter to the tsar. There is only one problem, there can only be one. There was only ever supposed to be one. It has only happened a handful of times in Russian history, that there have been two. With uprisings happening across the country, and wars being threatened, the tsar needs his enchanter, so he does what he has to do in order to get it: He begins the Crown’s Game. The Game pits the enchanters against one another in a competition where only one will come out alive. One will either kill the other to win, or the game will kill the loser. Can either one of them really kill the other, though?

I waited a while to read this one, and I really wish that I hadn’t. I will admit that I have never really been a huge fan of any type of historical novel, but this one grabbed me from the beginning, and sucked me right in to the Game! I never would have believed that this was Skye’s debut novel, had I not been told. It certainly did not feel like one. The characters were all very well rounded, and fleshed out. The world building was phenomenal. I could see the enchantments as they were being performed and/or described. The romance was there, but it was not the only/primary focus of the novel. The only good thing about my waiting so long to read it is that I didn’t have to wait very long to get the sequel in to my hot little hands!