The Impostor Queen appealed to me because it reminded me of the really awesome books The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson, and The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen. Both of which I really loved. I mean princess/queen having to step up? Things not going as planned? The main characters having to prove themselves and gain confidence? I love these kinds of plots.
The Story
Kupari is a city that is protected by their Valtia, the queen that is the only one that can hold the magic of both fire and ice. Once a Valtia dies from the strain of the magic (Which is always the case, the magic is too strong to be contained forever), the magic is passed on to the Saadella, the Valtia in training, and she will now become 'Valtia' herself and continue to protect Kupari from the dangers of the lands.
The introduction starts off with the Valtia dying, as she dies she has a vision and sees the child that will be the new Saadella to succeed the Saadella that will now become the Valtia. All Valtias have the same traits; head of copper hair, icy blue eyes and a mark of a flame on her skin that only reveals itself when the Valtia passes on. And so the hunt for the new Saadella starts, they must find the new Saadella so they can start training her for the day she will become the Valtia. This particular child will be prophesied to be the strongest Valtia Kupari has ever seen when it is her turn to reign.
Elli grows up to be an inquisitive Saadela, which seems to annoy the Elders who are educating and training her. She is constantly asking questions and wants to know why, she wants to know the full picture so she can understand each circumstance. At the beginning Elli seems quite annoying, she is constantly asking questions and never seems satisfied with the answer she gets. As I read on though I realised it was because the Elders simply refused to answer the questions in-depth, it was clear they did not want her to have the power of knowledge.
Elli loves her Valtia, she savours the moments she gets with her Valtia and dreams of the days she will get to speak with her. When her Valtia dies, Elli demands to see her so she can say goodbye, this results in Elli seeing her Valtia being ripped apart by the magic. As the magic is meant to enter Elli, she is plagued with doubt and mourning over losing her Valtia. When she wakes up, it appears she is having trouble using the magic within her and no one knows why. They put Elli through rigorous testing which Elli begs for, she does not want to humiliate herself and she wants to protect her people, but the magic is no where to be found.
The Twist
This story took a turn that I wasn't expecting, the whole time I was reading it I wasn't entirely sure where it was going or what was going to happen. Then the twist was revealed and it was weird and different and interesting. It wasn't a complete surprise, it did make sense, but it was something that was different.
Things I liked
I really enjoyed reading this story, it was very entertaining and I couldn't put it down. It had similar traits to The Girl of Fire and Thorns and The Queen of the Tearling, but it was also pretty different. The world was different, there was no monarchy but instead each new Queen or Valtia was chosen by the magic. The enemy threat was introduced but it wasn't a huge part of this story which leads me to be excited to see how it is dealt with in the next books. The magic side of things was different, I really loved the concept of fire and ice and magic wielders having both elements to balance it out - however the portions of fire and ice magic in their blood was always different in each magic wielder.
The One Thing that Annoyed Me
While I did really enjoy this book, one thing that really irked me was that the character relationships were lacking. I knew I was supposed to care about other characters besides Elli, but the book hardly spent any time on building their relationships. Maarika, Oskar's mother, was meant to come across as a mother to Elli, but they hardly spent any time together in the book. There wasn't a moment in the book where we got to see Elli and Maarika really bond and get along. To be honest, Maarika sounded more like Elli's age to me than she sounded like a mother, I wasn't really impressed.
I felt like this with most of the character relationships. Mim was meant to be Elli's first love, but we never learnt anything about her. We saw her and we saw how Elli felt but I found myself just not caring. Even Oskars; Oskar spends most of his time not really giving Elli a second glance but then when he finds out that Raimo lied to him about Elli hating magic wielders so he would stay away from her, he starts to warm up to her. However, I feel like he warms up to her way too quickly, and once again I felt like there wasn't enough interaction between them for me to really believe the way they felt.
Sig was another character that I wanted to have more substance. He seemed to only be there for the purpose of needing to be this certain character (People who've read this will know what I mean). I felt like hardly any time was spent in bothering to have more of a story with him, I wanted to see more of his humanity, and see relationships with his friends to show he had people that were genuinely loyal to him. We saw people looked up to him and followed him, but we didn't get to see their relationship with Sig.
Then there's Raimo. We meet him once in the book and then he disappears for reasons that no one can really explain to Elli, but by the end of the book he swoops in and Elli's going on about how much she needs him. It was confusing for the reader in my opinion.
Basically I just wanted more development in the character relationships. I wanted to see a connection forged with each person because it just wasn't there, I didn't believe Elli had a reason to care so deeply about anyone.
Excited to Continue
I really enjoyed reading The Impostor Queen, I couldn't put the book down and even found myself reading it in my lunch break at work. The whole story was fun to read and even though there were things that annoyed me, I'm still very, very excited to read the next book!
I definitely recommend this book to anyone that enjoys books about fantasy, coming to terms with who you are, and magic.
Always,
Jordon
This review was originally posted on Simply Adrift