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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
Hmm...was I entertained? Yeah, enough to finish. Was I enchanted, delighted, at the edge of my seat? Nope. I will admit that I loved the world in The Hundredth Queen. Talk about armchair traveling to a fictional, Arabian Nights- inspired place. Beyond the lush palace and world that has been imagined, I didn't find much original about this book. Kali, our heroine, is very much a Bella Swan-esque character. (That is to say, no personality to speak of, and seems to consist entirely of traits like, "clumsy," "too skinny," and "bold." There was no sense of Kali as a person, really.
The romance with Deven was ho-hum and lacking tension, and the "mystery" behind Kali's past was easily guessable right from the beginning.
All this would have been okay-ish, except that it's been done, and done, and done, before. Too many times.
My biggest problem with The Hundredth Queen, though, wasn't the typical storyline or the one-dimensional characters. It was the weird tournament. Paragraph after paragraph is dedicated to explaining why Kali must defend her position as the rajah's hundredth queen, and there is a tournament to fight to the death...and yet, despite all these explanations, I still didn't really understand WHY. Also, after so much dedication to explaining the tournament, rules kept getting introduced and changed. It got to the point where it felt ridiculous.
There is an audience for this type of book, but it's not me.
The romance with Deven was ho-hum and lacking tension, and the "mystery" behind Kali's past was easily guessable right from the beginning.
All this would have been okay-ish, except that it's been done, and done, and done, before. Too many times.
My biggest problem with The Hundredth Queen, though, wasn't the typical storyline or the one-dimensional characters. It was the weird tournament. Paragraph after paragraph is dedicated to explaining why Kali must defend her position as the rajah's hundredth queen, and there is a tournament to fight to the death...and yet, despite all these explanations, I still didn't really understand WHY. Also, after so much dedication to explaining the tournament, rules kept getting introduced and changed. It got to the point where it felt ridiculous.
There is an audience for this type of book, but it's not me.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Great story!
Had a great plot, kept me on my toes, and was very descriptive! Can't wait to read the next one!
Had a great plot, kept me on my toes, and was very descriptive! Can't wait to read the next one!
Kalinda is an orphan, hoping to pass her trials and stay at the temple and train forever. Unfortunately in her world, benefactors of the temple can come select girls at any time to join their households as servants, as concubines, or as wives. Kalinda is sickly and repeatedly told she is ugly, so she figures her only chance at leaving the temple is as a servant. But when she is chosen to leave, it is as a wife to the rajah. His 100th wife. This is important because the 100th wife has religious significance and the cruel rajah plans to use his marriage to force the other wives and concubines to fight for his favor and win his approval. Such a fight is always to the death.
https://wordpress.com/post/speedyreadercom.wordpress.com/3051
https://wordpress.com/post/speedyreadercom.wordpress.com/3051
So, I have DNF'd early, and I probably shouldn't have started. I can tell everything about where this is going (or I just feel like I do). The mishmashing of other cultures is bothersome early on -- Sumerian gods, while everyone has Indian names and clothing, and the Rajah is named Tarek? What? -- and I can't even tell if this is supposed to be "our" Earth or just some fantasy India. When the MC gets checked over like cattle by the Rajah before being "claimed" I decided this was bit for me.
Enjoyed this for the world building. It was a fairly predictable story but did have a few side swipes going for it. Wish it had figured out a way to end the book without making it into a series. I would have been more pleased with a conclusion. The characters did not have a great arc to them of learning but I wasn't there for the characters and mostly there for the world.
the Arabian nights version of Throne of Glass/ Grave Mercy . I felt like I had already read this book the whole time I was reading it!
I had zero expectations for this book and yet I was still let down.
There’s instalove. The MC is bland as a cracker. There is no plot until the last 50 pages where she’s just kills everyone (even though she keeps saying how she wants peace). The plot twists weren’t even twisty and it was so obvious and cliche (although, lowkey incest from Tarek’s part, so that was fun). The MC has no agency whatsoever and just does what everyone tells her to do. Deven is also boring. Bunch of girl hate. 100+ women in the court and not one (1) is a lesbian. The only fun female characters were killed off.
Keeping it at two stars instead of one because the magic and world was okay and I guess? Original? But if I see one (1) other story like it I’m not going to feel guilty about bumping it down to one star.
There’s instalove. The MC is bland as a cracker. There is no plot until the last 50 pages where she’s just kills everyone (even though she keeps saying how she wants peace). The plot twists weren’t even twisty and it was so obvious and cliche (although, lowkey incest from Tarek’s part, so that was fun). The MC has no agency whatsoever and just does what everyone tells her to do. Deven is also boring. Bunch of girl hate. 100+ women in the court and not one (1) is a lesbian. The only fun female characters were killed off.
Keeping it at two stars instead of one because the magic and world was okay and I guess? Original? But if I see one (1) other story like it I’m not going to feel guilty about bumping it down to one star.
This feels like every fantasy book I have read. Mostly because the world is unclear, the rules for why they are killing each other and the women simply take it are incredibly stupid. Why would women want to go through that kind of rite.
However, rank tournaments was only revived rather recently in the book. But the only thing that made so little sense to me was, why the hell didn’t they do anything about it. The women would not just accept it without some great thinking on Tarek’s part. It was just accepted. Are the women here really that stupid and shallow?
Well, they all are. I couldn’t believe how stupid they were. In fact, if you were to compare them to the typical ideal of a woman. They all are willing to fight other women to the death just for the sake of marrying a single man, who can also in time do the exact same thing. Is anything really that stupid as to accept this when it was only recently revived. I would say, Rajah Tarek needed to be a tyrant, and well, he most definitely doesn’t feel as one. And well, I mean in that world is the only kind of woman apart from our dear main character either naive, shallow. Jaya doesn’t really have any personality.
Although I know that they tend to be raised to obey and follow. But really, why doesn’t anyone sees the stupidity of it and is pointless to comtinye.
There are way better ways to do so than fight through rank tournaments, and killing is allowed to be done, and yet not one single wife realised the stupidity of this entire tournament. Not even our dear protagonist. Anyone with a functioning brain can reduce that. Way to go to let the women appear even more shallow.
And from that all, Kalinda is a special snowflake. She is plain, yet she ends up being picked and called beautiful by many. She has some special abilities, but I don’t bother to find out because really, with all those problems above, I didn’t even see the possibility of me continuing. Most of the characters there lacked common sense to see that it is wrong, when sisterhood is practiced by them, yet there is so much of hostility among the wives. Which only worsens once the rank tournaments.
Well, with all that you don’t really need me to answer whether I want to recommend this book.
However, rank tournaments was only revived rather recently in the book. But the only thing that made so little sense to me was, why the hell didn’t they do anything about it. The women would not just accept it without some great thinking on Tarek’s part. It was just accepted. Are the women here really that stupid and shallow?
Well, they all are. I couldn’t believe how stupid they were. In fact, if you were to compare them to the typical ideal of a woman. They all are willing to fight other women to the death just for the sake of marrying a single man, who can also in time do the exact same thing. Is anything really that stupid as to accept this when it was only recently revived. I would say, Rajah Tarek needed to be a tyrant, and well, he most definitely doesn’t feel as one. And well, I mean in that world is the only kind of woman apart from our dear main character either naive, shallow. Jaya doesn’t really have any personality.
Although I know that they tend to be raised to obey and follow. But really, why doesn’t anyone sees the stupidity of it and is pointless to comtinye.
There are way better ways to do so than fight through rank tournaments, and killing is allowed to be done, and yet not one single wife realised the stupidity of this entire tournament. Not even our dear protagonist. Anyone with a functioning brain can reduce that. Way to go to let the women appear even more shallow.
And from that all, Kalinda is a special snowflake. She is plain, yet she ends up being picked and called beautiful by many. She has some special abilities, but I don’t bother to find out because really, with all those problems above, I didn’t even see the possibility of me continuing. Most of the characters there lacked common sense to see that it is wrong, when sisterhood is practiced by them, yet there is so much of hostility among the wives. Which only worsens once the rank tournaments.
Well, with all that you don’t really need me to answer whether I want to recommend this book.
What a roller-coaster of a book for me!
I picked this book up because I'd seen another reviewer that I follow, give it a 1-star rating and I thought to myself, "I've never read a 1-starred book before (intentionally), I wonder what was so terrible about it" and decided to give it a shot.
Within the first chapter: I was in love! Ther was something about the author's voice or writing that just made this world dazzle with vibrancy in my mind's eye. It was unique to the usual books I read in that the MC is a highly religious person of color where fighting, for women, is actually something that's encouraged and sought-out. Emily King wrote about Kalinda in a respectful way that I felt like honored her cultural and religious beliefs rather than exoticized or fantasized them. I loved the relationship between Kalinda and her best friend and even wondered, excitedly, early on if this MC was also LGBTQ (sadly, she was not). For all these reasons, I was willing to turn a blind eye to a plot based on a tradition that considered women property to be "claimed" against their will. For me, it was all part of a bigger statement of culture.
But within a few chapters, my love for this book quickly dwindled. When Kalinda I grimaced a little. I found it unbelievable since, up until this point, Kalinda had been portrayed as an inexperienced fighter who was extremely unattractive. Still, I managed to have hope, and found solace knowing that the author just needed to move the plot along somehow.
But it got worse... I found myself wondering if Emily King thought this was a reasonable excuse for every plot twist and development.
It seemed to be the only reasonable reason that
And don't even get me started about
Lastly, the ending I also found somewhat lackluster. I can admit, I loved the big reveal at the end and honestly didn't see it coming that, but aside from that, everything was really boring and, again, felt soooo forced.
The only redeeming quality for this book was the descriptions and how Emily King brought her world to life. I felt like I was there, but sadly, I was bored out of my mind by everything else.
I picked this book up because I'd seen another reviewer that I follow, give it a 1-star rating and I thought to myself, "I've never read a 1-starred book before (intentionally), I wonder what was so terrible about it" and decided to give it a shot.
Within the first chapter: I was in love! Ther was something about the author's voice or writing that just made this world dazzle with vibrancy in my mind's eye. It was unique to the usual books I read in that the MC is a highly religious person of color where fighting, for women, is actually something that's encouraged and sought-out. Emily King wrote about Kalinda in a respectful way that I felt like honored her cultural and religious beliefs rather than exoticized or fantasized them. I loved the relationship between Kalinda and her best friend and even wondered, excitedly, early on if this MC was also LGBTQ (sadly, she was not). For all these reasons, I was willing to turn a blind eye to a plot based on a tradition that considered women property to be "claimed" against their will. For me, it was all part of a bigger statement of culture.
But within a few chapters, my love for this book quickly dwindled. When Kalinda
Spoiler
stumbles through the trials and finds herself suddenly, surprisingly, the claimed virajee (sorry, I don't know how to spell that word since I listened to this book on audio) of the rajahBut it got worse... I found myself wondering if Emily King thought this was a reasonable excuse for every plot twist and development.
It seemed to be the only reasonable reason that
Spoiler
Deven found himself falling for Kalinda. I mean, maybe I missed it, but I felt absolutely no chemistry between the two of them. All we get one night is that Deven drunkenly calls her beautiful and he says he's had his eyes on her since the night he found her snooping around in the palace (or wherever they were). It was all very contrived and, even after I agreed with myself to simply believe they were in love, I didn't feel it. Honestly, I felt more chemistry between Kalinda and Deven's brother (the burner).And don't even get me started about
Spoiler
Kalinda uncovering her burner powers. What I liked: that her fevers wound up being a sign that she had magic and this tied her with the rebel forces who wanted to take down the rajah. What I didn't like: 1.) that no one seemed to know that fevers were a symptom of being a burner (even the rajah who'd been hunting them down for years); 2.) that Kalinda, once he was bled and her burner powers were ascended (again, I'm forgetting what it was called), she is somehow intuitively aware of how to use and control them... all she gets is a quick 5-minute session with another burner and viola! She's a pro.Lastly, the ending I also found somewhat lackluster. I can admit, I loved the big reveal at the end and honestly didn't see it coming that
Spoiler
Kalinda was the daughter of the rajah's original wife--but thankfully not the rajah's daughterSpoiler
Kalinda manages to kill the Kindred, the most powerful of all the rajah's wives. Kalinda also manages to convince Natesha to forfeit their fight, with barely more than a "please forfeit, I promise things will be better for you". In the end, we also find out Deven isn't actually dead, that they'd faked his death because they believed it would make Kalinda perform better in the trials (which sounds absolutely backwards to me). Finally, at the very end, when you think all is said and done and that the power will finally be in the right hands and humanity in this kingdom will be restored, Kalinda has an epiphany that the people she'd been helping are bad and so she flees...The only redeeming quality for this book was the descriptions and how Emily King brought her world to life. I felt like I was there, but sadly, I was bored out of my mind by everything else.