The Queen of The Tearling

I should have known better than to start a series that isn’t finished yet. Because, naturally, I loved this book. And, naturally, it’s only the first book of a planned trilogy. So who knows when I’ll get to finish it. (*sigh*)

Written by Erika Johansen, The Queen of the Tearling tells the story of 19 year old Kelsea who has lived her life in hiding as she is trained to be the new Queen. Her mother, the former queen, was beautiful, vain, and silly, and Kelsea’s guardians are adamant that Kelsea will be a completely different kind of ruler. Kelsea herself is actually quite plain (and not in the standard female protagonist way of “I’m tall and thin with striking features and there are 2 or more men desperately in love with me but I’m sooo ugly”). She’s a weird mixture of self conscious girl and selfless ruler and it makes her seem like a regular person. She’s always known that she would be queen but she’s lived a secluded life that’s made her a bit naive and fiercely idealistic (which causes trouble once she arrives at the capital).

The setting of this book is also a bit strange: we never got a cohesive explanation of the history but at some point in the past (in our future though), a group of people made a Crossing (to where or from where has not been satisfactorily answered yet) led by William Tear, a socialist that dreamed of creating a machine and technology free utopia. It failed and Queen of the Tearling takes place several centuries after the Crossing. So the world is a strange mixture of medieval like practices (horse riding, sword fighting, feudal society, etc.) and present day knowledge (genetics, mentions of Rowling and Tolkien, birth control, etc.).

Since this is the first book, there are a lot of unanswered questions and open plot lines when the book finishes, like who is Kelsea’s father, who is the mysterious Fetch, what is the story behind the villainous Red Queen, and where are these people?!? (I really hope the Crossing history gets explained in more detail.) But I still loved it. It is a slow moving book but I think (hope!) that the rest of the series will be just as good as this one.