This book is the first in The Queen of The Tearling trilogy. We meet Princess Kelsea Raleigh a girl raised in exile awaiting to take the throne of Tearling at the age of nineteen. Hidden away so she won’t be executed her two guardians teaches her about history and the practice of being queen, but there’s so much they won’t tell her about her mother (Queen Elyssa) and her kingdom.
Kelsea is very ordinary, plain even. She has not inherited her mothers beauty and she needs to lose weight, but she is smart and she loves to read.
“Her throne awaits.. If she can live long enough to take it.”
No one expected her to live to be nineteen, but she finds herself nineteen and leaving the only place she’s ever known going to a kingdom (her kingdom) where there are multiple forces working against her, stoping at nothing to try to avoid her coronation. Her uncle is one of them and The Red Queen of Mortmesne another. She sets out on her journey with the glowing Tearling sapphire around her neck and her one priority is to stay alive.
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I went into this with such high expectations and ended up being really disappointed. It had potential to be great but didn’t live up to it. The story was interesting, but I had trouble connecting with the character. The thing I had most problems with was the world build in this story. A post-apocalyptic world where our now present time is the past. They have plastic surgeons but not a printing-press?
We have this fantasy realm where Kelsea is reading Tolkien, Grimm and Rowling. That just feels wrong.
I read through a lot of the reviews on Goodreads and this is obviously a love it or hate it kind of book. I’m one of the few who falls in the middle here. I wasn’t bored, but I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I was hoping to.
I would say it ended up as a 2,5 stars for me. It just wasn’t for me, but I will probably read the next book in the trilogy as well to see if might change my mind somewhat.
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Christina de Vries 