Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race

Book Review

Melody Bowles

Six Wild Crowns transposes infamous Tudor king Henry VIII and his six wives into a fantasy world filled with dragons, crones, lost magic and a deposed goddess. I am not very familiar with this part of history, though I of course know the phrase “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”. I assume only the names and some minor background details have been taken from the real life figures.

Three of the six wives are called Catherine, which gets confusing quickly. To get around this, the author calls them by their last names. The in-world reasoning is that eldest daughters don’t get their own given names and are known only by their father’s last names. Somehow, the author has managed to create a world even more patriarchal than the real one. Kudos.

The book opens with Boleyn’s wedding ceremony. She is thrilled to be chosen as King Henry’s wife. Upon marrying, she will gain a palace and gift Henry its magic to uphold the bordweal, a magical barrier protecting the island of Elben from invasion by outside forces. Henry may be powerful, but legend dictates he needs six queens (all “honest, loyal and true”) to help him uphold the barrier.

Boleyn is determined to hold her own as the newest queen in Elben. Her stubborn nature and political prowess attracts Seymour, a maid gifted to Boleyn as a wedding present. She’s supposed to be an assassin, but is soon too overcome with admiration for Boleyn to act on it. Then she catches the eye of Henry, who is quick to “romance” an inwardly unwilling Seymour and make her yet another queen. If Seymour pushes back against the king, she and her family are as good as dead. 

Much is made of the queens being kept apart as frosty rivals for the king’s attentions. Boleyn and Seymour’s romance changes this and together they discover the truth behind Henry’s machinations. The pacing falls off a little in the middle as Boleyn bothers priests about secret books and Seymour wrestles with her loyalties. In the last third, things pick up as the queens realise the truth behind Henry’s magic powers and hurtle towards their dramatic, treasonous conclusion. The book is first in a series, so the ending leaves plenty of threads hanging for the next instalment.

Read Six Wild Crowns if you’d like a feminist epic fantasy about women banding together to fight the patriarchy and reclaim their own power.