"The Queen of the Tearling" by Erika Johansen

Hello everyone,

it's been quite a while - 10 days to be exact! Initially I planned to take a week long break from blogging simply because I had an important exam to prepare, among other things, and I thought it'd be better if I just focused on that for a few days. However, my computer has been a bit of a douchebag for the past few days and I could not access my blog (does that ever happen to you? I was worried I'd lost it!), but thankfully it's all good now. Wehey!

I'm here today with a book review. I know they don't seem to be the most popular posts among my readers, but this is a book that I need to share with the world. It took me about a month to read it, which is a long time for me, but I want to say beforehand that it did not have anything to do with the novel itself, but rather with me being a lazy reader towards the end of the summer. It is the first book of a trilogy that claims to be the "female version of Game of Thrones" but since I don't watch the show or have read the books, I can't really tell you if that's accurate. What I can tell you, though, is that it is brilliant. 

In a nutshell

The Queen of the Tearling tells the story of Kelsea Glynn, who, on her nineteenth birthday, is forced to face her destiny and head back to her place of birth to inherit a wrecked and corrupt kingdom. Everyone expects her to be like her mother: vain, careless and definitely not a fighter, but Kelsea could not be any further from that. She is an unruly teenager who is ready to get her kingdom back to its feet. The question is, will she be able to or will she die before she even gets to put a crown on her head?

Thoughts

I genuinely loved it. The storyline is really smart and well-thought and it made me incredibly happy to see how the author made Kelsea deal with the most serious issues of her kingdom, such as gender based violence, rape and so on, in such a graceful manner. I really liked Kelsea as a queen, mainly because she was very clear ideas of what she doesn't want her reign to be like (nothing like her mother's, that's for sure) and she actually does something about it, which I think is admirable given the situation. However, she also frustrated me so much sometimes - what's with that obsession with the Fetch?! It's definitely not one of the most relevant things about the book, but the way she handles her feelings towards him, if you can even call them feelings, just upsets me. As for the rest of the characters, I liked some of them so much that I just wish I could read about them every single day of my life (hello Mace, hello Pen).

I was so ready to give the book 5 stars on Goodreads (yes, despite Kelsea's love choices, because that does not change the way I feel about the novel itself), but then I read the ending. I don't want to give too much away in case any of you want to give it a go, but I was so ready for something that didn't happen. I desperately wanted a final conflict, a scene where Kelsea finally confronted her enemy/enemies. Sadly, that didn't really happen, which was a bit disappointing. Anyway, I loved the book as a whole and I'm now looking forward to the next one. Hurry up, Erika Johansen!

Have you read The Queen of the Tearling?

What did you think?

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