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sueodd 's review for:
The Queen of the Tearling
by Erika Johansen
Surprised that I liked this one so much. There are so many flaws that normally drive me nuts, but I was able to overlook most of them.
I was a little confused about the world - it's on some new continent on Earth but there's really no good explanation about what happened to our existing civilizations. At first I thought maybe they had traveled through space to get to this world, but the book references a ship with all of the scientists that sank in a storm, and the survivors were in the ocean. Why were all of the critical scientists on one ship? Why did they lose the printing press technology but an adjacent kingdom has the ability to analyse genetics? The bits and pieces of our modern technology that survived just seem so random.
So the world building bugged me. Just like with Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire series - we are in some future version of Earth with plenty of references to our history (like Christianity, famous books and philosophers, and so on). I'm wondering if this is just a lazy way to create a setting for a novel. It works better in Mark Lawrence's books, because those are set on an existing continent after some unexplained apocalypse.
And then there are her Queen's Guard, who know they are being hunted by elite assassins, yet they fail to set a watch when they make camp. Instead, they get stupidly drunk. And, when they realize the assassins are closing in, they split up individually to throw the assassins off their track. Because leaving your Queen basically alone and unguarded is way smarter than keeping her protected.
Those elite assassins? Turns out, not so much. One of her guards takes out 4 of them. Later, two join her enemy and appear to be nearly incompetent. Did I mention that these assassins wear red cloaks, because they are so fearsome and deadly there is no need to hide their identity.
Anyway, that aside, it was a decent read. I really liked the fact that the Queen in this story is not remotely attractive. She's smart. She's resourceful. But she's a little overweight and "plain". It disappoints her, but just makes her more interesting as a character. However, she does moon over the handsome thief who she meets once, after he kidnaps her and tells her she is too plain for his taste. But hey, he decided not to kill her. That seems to be a legitimate reason to fall in love, according to modern fantasy (ahem, Twilight).
Another gripe is that we get POVs from her enemies, and they are very one dimensional. The mark of good writer is understanding that most people who are evil actually think that they are doing good. The most interesting character is the gate guard who lost his wife to the slave lottery.
I was a little confused about the world - it's on some new continent on Earth but there's really no good explanation about what happened to our existing civilizations. At first I thought maybe they had traveled through space to get to this world, but the book references a ship with all of the scientists that sank in a storm, and the survivors were in the ocean. Why were all of the critical scientists on one ship? Why did they lose the printing press technology but an adjacent kingdom has the ability to analyse genetics? The bits and pieces of our modern technology that survived just seem so random.
So the world building bugged me. Just like with Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire series - we are in some future version of Earth with plenty of references to our history (like Christianity, famous books and philosophers, and so on). I'm wondering if this is just a lazy way to create a setting for a novel. It works better in Mark Lawrence's books, because those are set on an existing continent after some unexplained apocalypse.
And then there are her Queen's Guard, who know they are being hunted by elite assassins, yet they fail to set a watch when they make camp. Instead, they get stupidly drunk. And, when they realize the assassins are closing in, they split up individually to throw the assassins off their track. Because leaving your Queen basically alone and unguarded is way smarter than keeping her protected.
Those elite assassins? Turns out, not so much. One of her guards takes out 4 of them. Later, two join her enemy and appear to be nearly incompetent. Did I mention that these assassins wear red cloaks, because they are so fearsome and deadly there is no need to hide their identity.
Anyway, that aside, it was a decent read. I really liked the fact that the Queen in this story is not remotely attractive. She's smart. She's resourceful. But she's a little overweight and "plain". It disappoints her, but just makes her more interesting as a character. However, she does moon over the handsome thief who she meets once, after he kidnaps her and tells her she is too plain for his taste. But hey, he decided not to kill her. That seems to be a legitimate reason to fall in love, according to modern fantasy (ahem, Twilight).
Another gripe is that we get POVs from her enemies, and they are very one dimensional. The mark of good writer is understanding that most people who are evil actually think that they are doing good. The most interesting character is the gate guard who lost his wife to the slave lottery.