The Queen's Rising (Queen's Rising, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

With a lovely cover and a promise of royalty rising to power, The Queen's Rising seemed to have a lot of offer. The world-building failed to impress and the characters were as flat as a deck of cards. It seemed like Rebecca Ross wanted to do a lot of different things here, and failed to follow through on any of them. She had a boarding school experience in the beginning, but she rushed right through it. The battles were scattered with awkward flow, the flashbacks seemed too convenient and largely frivolous. There were no real twists. The romance was awkward to the max.

I just really couldn't get into this one. There was nothing in the characters to inspire me to push through the messy plot, and the writing itself was flat. At best, reading this book was like trying to look through a fogged up mirror at a beautiful landscape. The potential was there, but there was so much rushing about and trying to create a hero out of a two-dimensional character.

I think that the big thing that ruined it for me was the lack of fantasy world-building. There were the ghostly edges of some aspects of the kingdom - the war in the past, the various houses in the neighboring kingdom, the conversation about the matriarchy... but that's the extent of it. Magic is mentioned but never seen. The politics of the world are hearsay, and a lot of the proper nouns were taken from English (the big event happens on a Thursday - totally ruins the illusion for me).

It may not sounds like it, but I really kept trying to find some aspect of this book that I liked, that I thought was well done... and I was just utterly unimpressed. I am sure there are a lot of people out there who will enjoy it, but there was nothing I could take away from The Queen's Rising except for disappointment and wasted potential.