Mini Review: The Queen of the Tearling - Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #1)

Summary: Kelsea Glynn is the sole heir to the throne of Tearling but has been raised in secret by foster parents after her mother – Queen Elyssa, as vain as she was stupid – was murdered for ruining her kingdom. For 18 years, the Tearling has been ruled by Kelsea’s uncle in the role of Regent however he is but the debauched puppet of the Red Queen, the sorceress-tyrant of neighbouring realm of Mortmesme. On Kelsea’s 19th birthday, the tattered remnants of her mother’s guard - each pledged to defend the queen to the death - arrive to bring this most un-regal young woman out of hiding...

And so begins her journey back to her kingdom’s heart, to claim the throne, earn the loyalty of her people, overturn her mother’s legacy and redeem the Tearling from the forces of corruption and dark magic that are threatening to destroy it. But Kelsea's story is not just about her learning the true nature of her inheritance - it's about a heroine who must learn to acknowledge and live with the realities of coming of age in all its insecurities and attractions, alongside the ethical dilemmas of ruling justly and fairly while simply trying to stay alive...

Pages: 512

Goodreads Rating: 4.01/ 5 stars

Genre: Fantasy, Adult Lit, YA, dystopian

Series: The Queen of the Tearling #1

DNF.

It takes me about 60 pages or so to figure out if a book is interesting or worthwhile. This book only took reading the first 20 pages for me to realize that I was bored out of mind, I was disgusted with the poor self-imagery that the author had equipped the protagonist with and the endless judgement that our narrator continuously doled out, and did I mention that I was bored out of my mind?

The plot was going nowhere, that I wanted to be, fast. I felt zero sympathy for our protagonist losing all that she had known and being forced into the frightening reality of being royalty in a time of endless assassinations and uprisings. Quite frankly I didn't give a damn to read one more word. A pathetic protagonist/ body shaming female lead is the quickest way to end up on my book shit list.




The dialogue was choppy and unemotional, at best. About ninety percent of the descriptions and observations are irrelevant and make it even more challenging to muster up some interest for a book that is both uninteresting and listless when it comes to sticking with one train of thought. The flow of the writing is just about nonexistent. There's nothing more frustrating than attempting to read a book with zero flow or rhythm. The list of inconsistencies is ongoing. On one page our future queen is despairing over the fact that she has never come into contact with or known anyone aside from her two guardians, but on another page she has somehow come into possession of an all encompassing intellect and speaks as though from experience, even though she has literally spent all nineteen years of life in a small cottage. Mind blown.

Plain. Boring. Miserably ignorant in regards to self-image. Shelved as both YA and Adult. No real originality or groundbreaking concepts. Woe was me, Mary Sue complex. Placed in a post-apocalyptic world 300 years after the end of this world, but the real kicker is that after the apocalypse we somehow managed to revert to a Medieval society with modern day science. I think that this book is a bad case of attempting to tackle too much in one series. No, fantasy isn't meant to be realistic, but at the same time it has to be realistic enough in some form for the reader to be able to believe it and insert themselves into the world building.


My Goodreads Rating: 1/ 5 stars.


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