Review: The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

invasion of the tearling by erika johansenFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, paperback, audiobook
Genre: fantasy, science fiction
Series: The Queen of the Tearling, #2
Length: 528 pages
Publisher: Harper
Date Released: June 9, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

With each passing day, Kelsea Glynn is growing into her new responsibilities as Queen of the Tearling. By stopping the shipments of slaves to the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne, she crossed the Red Queen, a brutal ruler whose power derives from dark magic, who is sending her fearsome army into the Tearling to take what is hers. And nothing can stop the invasion.

But as the Mort army draws ever closer, Kelsea develops a mysterious connection to a time before the Crossing, and she finds herself relying on a strange and possibly dangerous ally: a woman named Lily, fighting for her life in a world where being female can feel like a crime. The fate of the Tearling —and that of Kelsea’s own soul—may rest with Lily and her story, but Kelsea may not have enough time to find out.

My Review:

queen of the tearling by erika johansenI absolutely adored the first book in this series, The Queen of the Tearling (enthusiastically reviewed here) and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this second book, The Invasion of the Tearling.

I did enjoy The Invasion of the Tearling, it made a long plane flight go much, much faster. At the same time, it isn’t quite the book that Queen was.

The problem is that the author has committed trilogy. While this is a huge story and probably needs three fat books to wrap up all of its loose ends, Invasion definitely had the feel of a middle book. And the thing about middle-book syndrome is that nothing comes to a conclusion and that things tend to look darkest just before they turn completely black.

Invasion ended on a down-note, at least for this reader. Not that I felt let down in any way, but that Kelsea’s situation looks pretty bleak at the end of this installment. It’s the equivalent of the end of Tolkien’s The Two Towers, where Sam has just watched Frodo being carried away by the orcs, and Sam fears that he is going to have to carry on, with the Ring, alone.

But Kelsea isn’t trying to take the One Ring to Mount Doom. Instead Kelsea is trying to save her kingdom, the Tearling, from an invasion by the evil Red Queen of Mortmesne. (Mortmesne literally means “Dead Hand”, so the Red Queen is pretty much the evil queen of evil.)

After the events in Queen of the Tearling, Kelsea is now Queen (well duh) and the Mortmesne army is on its way to punish her for cutting off the slave-tithe. The Red Queen needs to punish the Tearling, and hard, because Kelsea’s defiance, as well as the loss of the slaves themselves, has created a lot of unrest in Mortmesne. Kelsea is the first person to show that the Red Queen is vulnerable, and she needs to be put down with extreme prejudice.

So Kelsea is trying to figure out what her power is and what she can do while preparing for a very imminent invasion by a force that outnumbers her own and is much better equipped. It’s a losing battle, and all Kelsea can buy is time, unless she finds some magic to defeat the immortal queen.

A demonic sorcerer from the past is playing both Queens against each other, in the hopes that one of them will succumb to his magic or his seduction and free him.

But the past is what becomes important in this story. Not just the past of the sorcerer Row Finn, but also the past of the Red Queen. And especially the past of the Tearling and how it came to be.

That past is embodied in the story of Lily Mayhew and William Tear, and takes place in a future not very distant from our own, on this Earth and in these United States. It is a chilling story that Kelsea experiences through Lily’s eyes in a series of fugue states. Neither the reader nor Kelsea are certain whether what she sees is the truth, and what bearing that experience might have on Kelsea’s present.

The stories weave together in a way that finally provides insights into just how the Tearling came to be. Lily’s story gives Kelsea strength, although not nearly enough information. At the conclusion of The Invasion of the Tearling, we are left on the edge of our seats, desperate to discover what will happen next.

Because Kelsea is on her way to Mortmesne, and if it isn’t Mordor, she can certainly see it from there.

Escape Rating A-: I loved The Invasion of the Tearling, but not quite as much as The Queen of the Tearling. Some of that feeling is the sense of being left in suspended animation – I need to know what happens next quite badly.

Kelsea is a heroine with a metric butt-load of flaws. Her on-the-job-training is grim, bleak and very, very rushed. On the one hand, she could have left the slave-tithe in place for one more year, until she had a chance to get her feet under her. But, and it’s a very big but, how could anyone sit there and watch as 3,000 citizens get carted away to slavery and not DO SOMETHING?

So Kelsea spends the book beset on all sides. She is only 19, but she has to grow up fast to face an enemy who is not merely more experienced, but seemingly immortal. The Red Queen has lived several times Kelsea’s lifetime, and has decades of experience, possibly all of it evil, to draw from.

The Mortmesne as a country has spent those years conquering its neighbors and beating down resistance on all sides. It is a country rich with plunder, and its army is both experienced and well equipped.

The slave-tithe, Mortmesne oversight and its own inept nobility have kept the Tearling unprepared and poorly equipped. The contest is unequal from the beginning, and the only thing the Tearling has going for it is guile. Admittedly, they have plenty of that, but they are fighting a delaying action. Everyone expects Kelsea to save them with some spectacular magic, not reckoning the cost of that magic to Kelsea.

Kelsea finds herself tottering on the edge of becoming just as evil as the Red Queen. The road to hell is paved with not just good intentions, but telling yourself that the end justifies the means. In order to save her people, Kelsea feels forced to use some highly questionable means.

And then there’s Lily Mayhew’s story, which is equally as grim as Kelsea’s, but in a different way. At first, we’re not sure whether it is real or whether Kelsea is just falling apart. Lily’s tale is chilling, all the more so because her dystopia is one that we can see from our own present. And it would make a good sci-fi dystopian suspense story in its own right.

But I’m still not certain what Lily’s story has to do with Kelsea’s predicament. It was fascinating but it also kept breaking into Kelsea’s story in a way that I found a bit jarring. And while it is intended to show how the Tearling came to be, the actual moment involved a bit of handwavium that left me puzzled.

However, the story of the Tearling as a whole is an awesome piece of science fiction/fantasy storytelling. I can’t wait to discover how it all turns out.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

queen of the tearling by erika johansenFormat read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genre: fantasy, dystopian
Series: Queen of the Tearling #1
Length: 448 pages
Publisher: Harper
Date Released: July 8, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.

Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.

But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend…if she can survive.

My Review:

I don’t often carry books with me when I go out to dinner, but this is one I just couldn’t put down, all 450 pages worth. It also helped that I just saw The Hunger Games movie, so I got where the references were coming from, even though I only saw a teensy bit of resemblance.

The Queen of the Tearling is in the absolutely classic fantasy mold of young person discovers/inherits their throne and powers, and then must figure out a way to be a good ruler with not much training and nearly every hand against them.

It’s a damn good formula when it works, and in The Queen of the Tearling, it definitely worked.

Kelsea Raleigh has been raised in obscurity, not to say anonymity, out in the woods. She wasn’t quite raised by wolves, but rather by an ex-guard and a teacher. Although they’ve prepared her as well as they could, they were forbidden from teaching Kelsea anything about recent history, such as the reign of her late mother Queen Elyssa, and anything that has happened under her uncle’s regency while she was in hiding.

Carlin and Barty hid one hell of a lot of crap. Kelsea’s kingdom, the Tear, exists under the yoke of the Red Queen of Mortmesne, the country next door. And there are lots of people in the nobility who want things to stay just the way they are, because they make money and/or get privilege from the current nasty state of affairs.

Kelsea’s uncle the regent is one of those people. He wants Kelsea dead before she reaches her throne.

How bad are things? The late and not terribly lamented signed a treaty with Mortmesne granting them a title of 3000 slaves every year. There is a lot of money in that slave trade on both sides of the border.

Kelsea, after a life-threatening heart-pounding journey from her cottage to the capitol to take up her throne, disbands the slave-tithe immediately upon arrival and in a flourish of fire. From that moment on, anyone who had any involvement is out to kill her, and the Red Queen mobilizes her army.

Kelsea, mobilizes her people’s hearts and minds, an infinitely stronger force.

Escape Rating A+: The description doesn’t do this one justice. It is simply awesome, and sticks with you long after you’re done.

Kelsea is a fish-out-of-water type of heroine. It’s not that she hasn’t been educated, because she certainly has, but her knowledge is book learning rather than experience, and it can be hard to translate one to another, especially if you’re only 19 and have been isolated all of your life.

The Tear Kingdom is an absolute mess. It seems like all the officials are corrupt, and the people have given up hope of things ever getting better. There’s a saying that “the fish rots from the head down” and in Tear, the Regent couldn’t be any rottener. Elyssa was just weak and stupid, but the Regent is weak, venal, stupid and bought and paid for by the Red Queen.

The contrast between the extreme poverty of the population, and the bizarre excesses of the nobility is one of the places where the descriptions of the Hunger Games universe apply. (Of course, this could also be said for pre-revolutionary France, including the extreme hairstyles).

The tribute of slaves is also a similar point, but it is different in Queen of the Tearling. Not just because thousands of slaves are taken as war repayments, but because the slave tribute is designed to take from every age group, including children and babies. Also because the fate of the slaves is completely shrouded.

Kelsea is the point of view character, and the one that the reader needs to sympathize with if they’re going to enjoy the story. This is Kelsea’s journey from obscurity to living in a fishbowl, from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to knowledge. She makes mistakes along the way, but her heart is always in the right place. She wants to do the right thing, and not just in a fairy tale way. She knows that some things are just too far to be allowed, but that there can be mercy.

She’s conflicted because she recognizes that the right thing can have dire consequences, and still must be done anyway. She’s learning.

The book ends on an upnote, but one that clearly marks the beginning of the conflict between Kelsea and the Red Queen. I want the next book. I want to see how the war goes, with all the starting handicaps faced by the Tearling.

I also want to see more about how this world came about. It is definitely a future version of our world, but it is on Earth. It’s a new continent that rose up out of the sea. But how and when, and why did everyone leave Old America and Old Europe?

Last, there is an enigma character. At first the Fetch seems like a version of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and living as an exile until the True Monarch arises. But from hints at the end, he is something far older, and possibly not completely human.

This story must continue!

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.