The Queen of the Tearling

I liked this book so much more than I thought I would. I went in expecting a fairly standard young adult fantasy novel, with some magic and some romance and a girl who has to save the world. But this book definitely isn't young adult, and there's only the barest whiff of romance. Instead it's about a young woman inheriting a kingdom in distress. Her mother was a terrible ruler and her uncle was a worse regent. She grew up in isolation, preparing to take the throne but shielded from the worst mistakes of the generation before. And she quickly finds herself in over her head.

The story reminded me a lot of Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue. The people of the Tear have been living with atrocities. Many of them found themselves committing atrocities in an attempt to survive. Kelsea wants to put an end to all that, but it's not nearly as simple as she hopes it is. It ends up being a more mature take on the same themes in Bitterblue because the corruption in the government is both widespread and of varying strengths. It's not enough to defeat one evil person. The evil has to be rooted out from all over the place.

For all that it deals with some heavy tropes, it's an incredibly readable book. I wanted more from the moment I opened it, which is why I rushed out to buy the rest of the trilogy before I was even halfway through. I'm so excited for Kelsea and the Red Queen to meet and to find the answers to the various mysteries Johansen has peppered through this first novel.

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