alixcallender 's review for:

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
3.75
adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
For me, this book ticked all the fantasy boxes that I need to enjoy it. I didn’t find the story slow the way some others seem to, and all the mysterious backstory intrigue has worked on me as intended. I want to know more! However, I do take issue with a few things:

There’s a petty disdain for beauty (particularly feminine beauty) that is hard to ignore. It seems NOT to be an important fixture of the actual story, but rather a personal hangup for the author. Beautiful women are either Very Evil (Red Queen) or Very Stupid (Elyssa) or Very Sad (Andalie and Marguerite). The only beautiful women who are “good” and earn any respect from Kelsea have been horribly punished by the world because of their beauty (either as beaten wives or beaten sex slaves). It’s an old fashioned, deeply flawed take on feminism that current thinking has outgrown, and having it at the forefront of this book leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s demonstrated in Kelsea’s disgust for fluffy throw pillows and gold vanity mirrors - “girlie things??? Not for me, I’m nOt LiKe tHe oThEr GiRLs.” And I don’t even know HOW to address the problematic way Kelsea treats that *old and ugly* noblewoman who dares to think of herself as beautiful. 

For someone who was isolated for literally her entire life, Kelsea is surprisingly well adjusted and ready to just, like, take charge of a whole ass country. And as for the country, I certainly hope this whole Crossing thing is cleared up in the next two books, because currently there are some major holes. Where is this magically unoccupied landmass that modern America and England can run to and colonize? Was it a space voyage? Why are there only TWO doctors in the whole country?? They really couldn’t have figured any of that out in all those centuries? The gunpowder “went bad”(????) and they couldn’t figure out how to make more?

None of these things offend me enough to put me off the series entirely, of course. What I’m hoping is that a complicated groundwork has been laid, that will be expertly resolved within the next two books. Do I expect that? Well, not really. But I’ll happily give it a shot.
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