Hello everyone!
It's back to the books (not the drawing board this time) and I was honestly surprised in the past week when I noticed a lot of youtube reviews popping up for the one I'm going to talk about today. It's one of those coincidences I suppose, given that I honestly hadn't thought much about it to begin with (the review I man) and obviously I seem to have missed some of the reviews in the first place when I was looking through the internet to see whether or not anyone had ever said anything about this particular book before. And how did I find it? Well, to be honest, I didn't; I had seen it in the bookstore, but after checking the back of it and reading the summary, I wasn't initially drawn to it. My mother, on the other hand, thought it might be one of those easy romance books she enjoys on her downtime, but hey presto, there's no romance in this book! So it ended up with me.
I'm talking about 'The Queen of the Tearling' by Erika Johansen, which is an interesting title all in itself without knowing the details, AND there is supposedly a movie production in the works, with Emma Watson already attached to it. Hmm, this certainly did call for a read and review!
Our story opens with Kelsea Raleigh, who is nineteen years old and the future Queen of Tearling, a land that I'm going to talk about a little bit later. First, Kelsea; she's been raised in the middle of nowhere forest by two caretakers, who taught her the theory of pretty much everything (but never let her meet any people or anything because she's hunted, if she's killed before she takes the throne, then there's not kingdom). When she reaches nineteen, the former Queen's guard comes to take her to the castle, a citadel so to speak, where she will take her rightful place as ruler of the kingdom. Kelsea faces a lot of problems already from her neighbours who are ruled by someone called simply the Red Queen, supposedly a powerful sorceress, ad Tearling pays tribute to her in human traffic (which, obviously, our newly-minted Queen puts an end to immediately). Unfortunately, a lot of the time is taken up with her internal monologues and more than a little bit of inconsistency (she keeps saying to herself that she's ugly - and she is depicted as a little overweight - but at the same time, she definitely thinks ugly people have no right to consider themselves beautiful if she doesn't think they are, which is hypocricy at it's finest, I believe), as well as TRAVELLING. I think they travel for 80 percent of this book.
Now, to Tearling: apparently, since this is happening in the future, our society sort of collapsed, something bad happened to it, we don't really know - but the survivors, under the lead of one named Tearling, board ships and set out to find a new world. Where this new world is on the map, I have no idea, and neither do the readers, but they do eventually reach a new continent - unfortunately, their 'White Ship', the one which had all the doctors and most of technology on board, sinks just off the coast (let's not talk about why they put everything on one ship in the first place, or named it the White Ship, which if I recall correctly, in sailor lore is the ship of death). This gives us a kind of unique perspective, because we're in the future, and there are books like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, and there's heroine, but there's absolutely no modern medicine and no cell phones either. So it's a weird kind of combination. My face when Kelsea started talking about Harry Potter? Priceless, I tell you.
Most of this book was world building, and that was okay, but the travelling bit got to me. As it was drawing to three quarters of the volume, I was beginning to think they'd never get to a point. And then the constant assassination attempts! We get it, Kelsea needs to die, but some might have been saved for subsequent books (there will be some others, I think). And the incompetence of the guards! They are running from pursuers for most of the book, but instead of being stealthy and quiet, they get drunk every night and sing bawdy songs. Really? Really?!
That aside, once Kelsea gets her queenly groove on, things start rolling, although I was also disappointed with the portrayal of the Red Queen, who is supposedly the big bad of the series. As far as I gathered from the number of times she was pictured, she's mostly lazy in her rooms or calling for slaves to have sex with. How dangerous is that?
There are some very noteworthy characters, like this mysterious Fetch, who seems to be able to get in anywhere and who crosses paths with Kelsea for a bit. She has a crush on him, but that's the only thing to be considered as 'love' in the book. Nothing is romantic here, it's all business. Also, we have no idea who the girl's father is, even though it's the million dollar question right about now. And there'll be an invasion from the Red Queen soon becazse of the treaty being abolished.
My absolute favourite character, however, has to be Mace, the commander of the Queen's guard. Because, seriously, the man has no respect for Kelsea, talks back like a sailor, gets his snarky on, and manages to fight his way through just about anything. Favourite line ever?
"Watch your language in front of the Queen," Mace growled, "Or I'll tie a big red bow around you and throw you out of the Keep right now. The Fetch can use your bones for silverware."
I think I rolled around laughing for a full five minutes after reading that.
One last thing to mention are two sapphire necklaces Kelsea wears, and appear to be the origin of some magical power, because she can make time stop (or move slower), make it rain, they give her courage, etc. And the Red Queen wants them, so they should be important.
All in all, it was a solid, if slow-moving book. I'm interested to read the second one of the series to see whether or not it picks up in speed, and potentially introduces some sort of love interest along the way, since I'm a firm believer that every good story has a sliver of love in it somewhere! That being said, I'm actually a fan of Kelsea in the sense that she's independent and doesn't apparently need a king by her side. More power to her!
Have you read the book? What did you think?
xx
*image not mine
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