Staff Review: The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

I thoroughly enjoyed The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen. The story line is one of a young princess, Kelsea, who comes of age and then has to begin to rule her kingdom. The difficulty is that she has been in hiding since her infancy, and her dead mother left their kingdom weak and at the mercy of an evil “Red Queen.”

Kelsea must figure out how to gain the respect and loyalty of the people she rules over and face the Red Queen's anger when she decides to not honor the agreement made years earlier by her mother.

Besides the political challenges that Kelsea faces, there is also the challenge of realizing that she has some magic present in her life. She must figure out how to use this magic in positive ways without destroying herself or those around her.

Some of the story was a little awkward to follow, for example, the unexplained catastrophe that caused the previous world to end (comparable to present day Earth) leading the world in the book to be at a level similar to the Middle Ages and yet there are discussion of organ transplants and the development of drugs, such as heroin. Questions of what exactly happened are not answered and I just decided to “go with it.”

The characters are well developed and I was able to envision them all in my mind quite well. It was definitely a book that I rushed home to read each day!

~Jackie, Circulation