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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Seventh Queen is the second book in the Warrior Queen duology by Greta Kelly. Here we follow what happens to Askia–a warrior, witch, queen, and empress–as she confronts the man/monster who stole her throne and holds her prisoner in order to steal her magic. She only has thirty days to figure out how to save herself from the fate of Emperor Radovan’s previous wives.
I absolutely inhaled the first book in the series, The Frozen Crown, this past May. Though I called some of the twists in the first book, it also zagged a few times when I expected it to zig. Thanks to an amazing cliffhanger, I was very excited to be able to get my hands on an advanced copy of the conclusion from NetGalley. To be honest, I basically stalked the NetGalley site until this book was listed to be requested! Some folks have listed this as YA on Goodreads, but this feels more like Adult Fantasy to me. I could see the series being a good jump from YA for young adult readers.
This is a really strong freshman outing for Greta Kelly. I think she sticks the landing. This book really picks up at about the 60% mark. Kelly does a great job at ratcheting up the tension and just keeping it there for a while, making me nervous for my favs.
I’ve seen some other reviews that complained that this book was mostly about our queen Askia as a prisoner.t I really appreciated the way this book shows how tactically skilled Askia is on the micro scale, versus how the first book showed her leadership on a macro scale as she travels all around the world.
I greatly enjoyed the growth of Askia’s relationship with the ghosts of the previous six queens, and with other people in Radovan’s court.
We get a point of view chapter from Ilya in this book! I literally pumped my fist in the air, I was so hype about that. We also got some deep Ilya lore that I appreciated.
Just like the first book, I called some of the twists but there were still quite a few times where the book really zagged when I expected it to zig. I was happily surprised by a few things in the final 10% of the book. I highly recommend this duology for fans of fantasy.
Also like the first book, there’s some slight romance and one particularly steamy scene that is fairly short. This duology still feels very adult fantasy and not YA, but I’d still recommend it as a good jump from YA for young adult readers.
The conclusion is fairly open-ended and I really hope the author will write more in this series. Perhaps further interconnected duologies, or maybe start up a trilogy for the next part of the story of the world. Or maybe just novelas. Please, Greta Kelly, I need to know what happens to my favs.
I received an advanced ebook copy of this book for review via NetGalley, but all opinions contained herein are my own.
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