The Scarecrow Queen is the third and final book in The Sin Eater’s Daughter trilogy. The first book followed Twylla- the sin eater’s daughter of the title – while the second book follows Errin, the sister of one of the characters in the first book. This book has points of view from both characters to help finish the story.
“I thought we’d be like an avenging army in a story. I imagined people rallying to our cry, and that the fact we were on the side of good would assure our victory.”
The second book set up the return of the sleeping prince – a prince who is now awake and wants to take his throne back leading to war and both Twylla and Errin have important parts to play in stopping the sleeping prince. The best parts of the book are the parts that focus on belief and how belief works – Twylla, who in the first book believed she had the ability to kill people with a single touch (now knowing that’s not true) uses people’s belief of her as someone sent from the gods to become a leader of a rebellion movement against the prince.
We also learn more about why exactly the world in the books has sin eating, why Twylla must be the next sin eater and how even this ritual has a human beginning with the belief of gods coming much later and being added to the already existing tradition.
“Scarecrow queen. Nothing but a dupe, alone in a field, hoping to keep the crows at bay.”
Even though the series is mainly focussed on Twylla, I would have liked to see more of Errin’s point of view as she only gets a couple of chapters in the middle of the book from her point of view. After having a whole book focussing on her it seems as a if a lot more of her life during the third book could be explored.
“Death always seemed so easy, I would read stories full of brave warriors and assassins and how they would deliver speedy deaths, and then walk away. They’d go to the taverns and drink with their friends, or go home to their lovers. They never said anything about how they felt afterwards.”
The whole trilogy of books focuses on belief, how beliefs come about, how they change, how people stop believing in things and what happens if something that everyone has dismissed as a fairytale turns out to have more than a few elements of truth. That being said the book also contains alchemy which is shown as a science, albeit a science that only certain people can learn, and for all the talk of how stories differ from the truth of things, the main thought I took away from the books was – just because something’s not a story doesn’t mean it’s not magic.
ChristyESWriter 