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A review by nico1000
How to Catch a Queen by Alyssa Cole
2.0
The Good:
The audiobook narrator does a very lively, very spirited, maximum effort performance with the audiobook. It's eleven hours long, but she made it go quickly with all the voices and accent changes. I would not have finished this if I'd had to read it with my eyes.
The Bad:
In a nutshell, remember Margaery and Tommen?
HTCAQ is probably a good story if you don't go in expecting romance. With the level of worldbuilding, sketchy backstories, mysteriously vanished queens, power-hungry viziers, gods, goddesses, and prophecied rulers involved, the story would fit much better in the epic fantasy genre. The only thing missing is a dragon and a magic system.
As a romance though, it's terrible. I don't want to say terrible, but yeah. The characters don't fit together organically, they just live in the same place (in separate wings). There's no chemistry between them. No love. Barely any conversations, really. Even the lust component seems perfunctory and tacked on.
Shanti is a career queen. She doesn't care who she has to marry, she just wants to be queen. That's her only goal in life. She's going to be kind to her subjects, empower women, and be the kind, strong female ruler the people always needed. She's a self-declared heroine who's going to fix the kingdom because that's her raison d'être.
Sanyu on the other hand is so child-coded, at a certain point it became uncomfortable to read about him. The country is deeply misogynistic and the black patriarchy vibe is strong, and he's this gullible, anxious child who's grown up in that toxic milieu and supposedly doesn't know better... Never mind that he's thirty-two and has access to the internet and should know that misogyny is bad.
He's a YA hero stuck in a coming of age story and for the largest part, he's a weak, deeply unlikeable, manchild who still hasn't been weaned off the teat of his avuncular "evil advisor." Think Tommen and Cersei. Or Scar and Simba.
And okay, sure, most modern-day royalty romances are about the queen using her feminine wiles to effect change in the kingdom... but the toxic masculinity in this story was so heavy and suppressive, it overwhelmed any kind of statement it could have made about female empowerment. Witnessing Shanti's desperation to be accepted by her manchild husband before her trial expired, (yes, she was on a four-month trial, you know, like the sign-up offer on the Tidal app), it was just too much for me. In some parts, it reminded me of that horrible "Bark Like A Dog" scene in Coming to America...
I mean, take this scene where she apologizes to him for working with some small scale activists who want to bring the country into the 21st century:
Her father calls her "Little Rat" as a nickname and it's supposed to be endearing, but it was just so cringe for me, watching this supposedly strong woman repeatedly call herself a rat. I don't mind the animal nicknames of endearment, I really don't. But make it cute. That's my only thing. Dove, kitten, Bunny Babe, Foxy, Baby Bear... Rat?
Rat???
I just don't need that in a romance novel with a black woman. I don't care if she's referring to some cute African version of the rodent. I do not want it.
All in all, it just didn't work for me. Shanti is in a chick lit story about landing her dream job in a super-toxic, almost radioactive, male-dominated workplace, and Sanyu is in a Disney fable about being yourself and how it's okay to stand up to your family because their love is unconditional... And those two stories just don't combine into anything even remotely resembling a romance.
I was supposed to be hoping that charisma-less King Sanyu enjoyed his trial wife enough to buy the license? I mean, really? This is Shanti, the supposed heroine three chapters from the end, begging her husband to click "buy" on her before his trial expires:
Deserving of what???
Something went wrong with the pace and the construction... It's like ordering chocolate cake and receiving a fig and carrot pie with Hershey's Kisses studded into the crust. Like, the ingredients are there and it's all completely edible, but why?
The audiobook narrator does a very lively, very spirited, maximum effort performance with the audiobook. It's eleven hours long, but she made it go quickly with all the voices and accent changes. I would not have finished this if I'd had to read it with my eyes.
The Bad:
In a nutshell, remember Margaery and Tommen?
HTCAQ is probably a good story if you don't go in expecting romance. With the level of worldbuilding, sketchy backstories, mysteriously vanished queens, power-hungry viziers, gods, goddesses, and prophecied rulers involved, the story would fit much better in the epic fantasy genre. The only thing missing is a dragon and a magic system.
As a romance though, it's terrible. I don't want to say terrible, but yeah. The characters don't fit together organically, they just live in the same place (in separate wings). There's no chemistry between them. No love. Barely any conversations, really. Even the lust component seems perfunctory and tacked on.
Shanti is a career queen. She doesn't care who she has to marry, she just wants to be queen. That's her only goal in life. She's going to be kind to her subjects, empower women, and be the kind, strong female ruler the people always needed. She's a self-declared heroine who's going to fix the kingdom because that's her raison d'être.
Sanyu on the other hand is so child-coded, at a certain point it became uncomfortable to read about him. The country is deeply misogynistic and the black patriarchy vibe is strong, and he's this gullible, anxious child who's grown up in that toxic milieu and supposedly doesn't know better... Never mind that he's thirty-two and has access to the internet and should know that misogyny is bad.
He's a YA hero stuck in a coming of age story and for the largest part, he's a weak, deeply unlikeable, manchild who still hasn't been weaned off the teat of his avuncular "evil advisor." Think Tommen and Cersei. Or Scar and Simba.
And okay, sure, most modern-day royalty romances are about the queen using her feminine wiles to effect change in the kingdom... but the toxic masculinity in this story was so heavy and suppressive, it overwhelmed any kind of statement it could have made about female empowerment. Witnessing Shanti's desperation to be accepted by her manchild husband before her trial expired, (yes, she was on a four-month trial, you know, like the sign-up offer on the Tidal app), it was just too much for me. In some parts, it reminded me of that horrible "Bark Like A Dog" scene in Coming to America...
I mean, take this scene where she apologizes to him for working with some small scale activists who want to bring the country into the 21st century:
“I—I was wrong,” Shanti said, her voice shaky. “I thought I was thinking outside the box, working with what I had, because I’m a rat.”
Sanyu raised a brow.
“That’s my nickname. If I see something I want, I go after it relentlessly. I’ll find my way through the most difficult maze. I’ll chew through concrete. I’ll find a tunnel out of the palace and people who I think need my help, without realizing how that might make you feel. Relentless Rat.”
Her father calls her "Little Rat" as a nickname and it's supposed to be endearing, but it was just so cringe for me, watching this supposedly strong woman repeatedly call herself a rat. I don't mind the animal nicknames of endearment, I really don't. But make it cute. That's my only thing. Dove, kitten, Bunny Babe, Foxy, Baby Bear... Rat?
Rat???
I just don't need that in a romance novel with a black woman. I don't care if she's referring to some cute African version of the rodent. I do not want it.
All in all, it just didn't work for me. Shanti is in a chick lit story about landing her dream job in a super-toxic, almost radioactive, male-dominated workplace, and Sanyu is in a Disney fable about being yourself and how it's okay to stand up to your family because their love is unconditional... And those two stories just don't combine into anything even remotely resembling a romance.
I was supposed to be hoping that charisma-less King Sanyu enjoyed his trial wife enough to buy the license? I mean, really? This is Shanti, the supposed heroine three chapters from the end, begging her husband to click "buy" on her before his trial expires:
And how was I supposed to ask you when you haven’t even told me if you want me here next weekend or after? The trial ends in a week and you’re just leaving that carrot dangling in front of me. Until when? What do I have to do to be deserving of it?
Deserving of what???
Something went wrong with the pace and the construction... It's like ordering chocolate cake and receiving a fig and carrot pie with Hershey's Kisses studded into the crust. Like, the ingredients are there and it's all completely edible, but why?