Spoiler Alert.
It’s no secret that good plot twists can make a dull book good and a good book even better. Take City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and The Blacksmith Queen by G.A. Aiken Both have plot twists, but both handle them in different ways. Please note, whatever my own feelings on these books, they are still good books. I just feel that one has a better plot twist than the other.
In City of Bones, we follow Clary Fray, a normal teenager who discovers that she is descended from demon slayers, known as Shadowhunters. During the story, we meet a boy named Jace and Clary gets a crush on him. At the end, it is revealed that Clary and Jace are not only brother and sister, but their dad is the villain, Valentine. Now, this is a good twist. It plays with our emotions, since we want to see Clary and Jace together, but we also don’t want to see it at the same time. It’s a conflict for the reader.
At the time of writing this, I’ve only read about two-thirds of The Blacksmith Queen, but I’ve already gotten past the major twist, so I think it’s fine. The story as I’ve read is that a king has died and his brutal sons are fighting each other for the throne. A blacksmith named Keeley doesn’t see this as a bad thing, since it means more business for her, until a prophecy names her younger sister Beatrix as the new queen. Now the sons are after Keeley’s entire family. Keeley is a talkative character who is friendly with all the good guys, but starts smashing people with her oversized hammer during battle. Beatrix is a quiet bookworm, who is already aloof and very queen-like. Also accompanying them is the middle sister Gemma, who is a warrior. Gemma and Beatrix hate each other. The three of them, along with a couple of other friends, have made it to the Witches, a group of women who mostly focus on math and logic, but they have a seer in their midst. The seer names both Keeley and Beatrix as queens. This should be the twist, right? Well, not quite. Keeley and Beatrix are talking quietly, when Beatrix suddenly pulls out a knife and stabs her sister, almost killing her.
Here’s the problem: is it unexpected? Yes. Is it good for the story? I’ll leave that up to debate. As for me, no. I don’t think it’s good for the story. Throughout the entire first part, everyone we meet has said that Beatrix is plain-looking and that she wastes her time reading. As an author and a reader, I find this rather insulting that reading is seen as “a waste of time.” I wanted to see Beatrix succeed, to prove everyone wrong. She was the underdog hero. I was annoyed when Keeley was named a queen too. It seemed to take away from Beatrix’s victory. Now, it turns out that Beatrix was the bad guy all along. I haven’t been too eager to finish the book, since my favorite character up to this point is suddenly trying to kill her own family. It feels like a twist for twist’s sake to me. Beatrix didn’t have enough of a personality to make her a hero, so let’s just make her a villain instead. And her motivation is that she doesn’t want to considered plain. Great? I don’t know. Maybe the rest of the book picks up, but at the moment, it feels more like a chore to read after this “twist.”
In my opinion, the best twist is the one set up from the beginning. Clary and Jace meet in the first couple of chapters, so they have plenty of time to develop crushes on each other, before it’s all ripped away. In The Blacksmith Queen, it just seems to come out of nowhere. If this is the type of twist you like, I think you will really enjoy this book. As for me, though, I think it’s time for me to move on and read another book.