Book Title: The Queens of Innis Lear
Author: Tessa Gratton
Date Started: May 18th 2018
Date Completed: June 25th 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars
Final Rating: Four stars
Review:
◆ Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVoyager for this ebook for review ◆
So, this took me more than a month to read. And while I loved it, even with long book that's kind of ridiculous for me. To give it credit, I usually put a book to the side or give up if it takes me more than a few weeks, but I wanted to keep reading this. It's got so many strengths, but I can't write this review without stating that one weakness.
To start with, it didn't bother me at all how long it was (I've read plenty of 600 page books or longer), and I was so in love with it. The writing is so vivid, the story is magical; it gave me a pure fantasy and politics kick. But it didn't need to be as long as it was. And there's a part of me that's glad it was so long because the detail, the worldbuilding, the character development was so wonderful. You know when you finish a book and sit there wishing it was twice as long because you just want more? Well, Gratton gives you that much more. But there was a point where it stopped adding to the story and started being indulgent, and in the long run I think it suffered. At the end, there was so much build up that it couldn't quite reach the heights it had set up for itself. Anything was going to feel a least a little anticlimactic.
Something I really love is how much all the characters change, and not necessarily in a good way for them. I think this book will get compared to Game of Thrones somewhere along the way because it has that kind of high level politics and the characters to match. There are some people at the start that seem like trouble but redeem themselves, and there are some that you're rooting for who completely crush your expectations for them into the mud. And weirdly enough, I really like that. It did mean that by the end I didn't really think anyone deserved to be on the throne and I wasn't particularly remorseful for the losers, but it made the journey very interesting along the way.
I can't explain how happy I am that we're starting to see female characters like these. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm finally looking at women in fiction and going 'yeah, this is a whole person'. In The Queens of Innis Lear we have a huge variety of women, of different ethnicities, different personalities, different motivations. They draw strength from the other women around them, and they work in tandem with the men (if the men are clever enough to let them). A great deal of them aren't even likeable, and I'm happy that we're giving time to women that are complex enough to be dislikable and developed. It's not trying to be feminist for the sake of being feminist, it becomes such because it follows developed characters and they happen to be women.
I loved The Queens of Innnis Lear, I really did. There's so much magic and gold bursting from the seams of this book, despite its shortcomings. Not for people who like quick reads, but if you want to sink into a high fantasy world with mighty women and their realistic adventures, then get to this as soon as possible.
