Review: The Queen of the Tearling

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've now read four of the most popular fantasy books from the past several years, all of which were recommended to me by several websites and friends, and every single one followed the same plot: seemingly ordinary/awkward/plain person is suddenly a king/queen/powerful magic user who has to go to court, which is bad/stuffy/pretentious/ostentatious, make the people like them for their practical and just policies despite being awkward/ordinary, and also save the kingdom from a powerful (usually magical) force, most likely using their level-headedness that comes from them being so plain and ordinary (as opposed to the vain and airheaded people of the court). And in the end they always succeed. This book doesn't deviate from that pattern for even a moment, which was clear from the beginning and almost made me put it down. Eventually, I did get caught up in the rhythm of the story and enjoyed the wish-fulfillment aspects of it, but it was never more than a surface-level enjoyment.

Part of the reason it took me so long to enjoy it even a little bit was how COMPLETELY STUPID the characters are, for reasons I can only imagine are that the author thought it was cool. Kelsea is kidnapped by a bunch of roving bandits in the opening act of the story, and after about ten minutes of conversation decides these bandits are actually Pure of Heart, she's safe enough with them to get drunk despite never having been drunk before, and ALSO it's a good idea to tell them her whole life story. These actions are portrayed as totally normal and in fact the result of Kelsea's apt judgment of character, but come off to me as incredibly dumb - giving total strangers WHO HAVE KIDNAPPED YOU AND TOLD YOU THEY MIGHT KILL YOU your entire backstory, including what kind of fighting you're bad at and the political knowledge you have/don't have, is a terrible horrible no good very bad idea. So is letting the leader of said bandits take your magical necklace that identifies you as heir to the throne without even a protest, especially if it's because you think he's hot and he probably won't give it back to you anyway. (Her enunciation of her Noble Political Goals in this part was also supposed to come across as inspiring but a bit naive, and instead came off as trite and cheesy, especially when the bandits reacted as if she were some sort of deep, noble person in response.) Later in the story, Kelsea decides to ride off into danger with her Queen's Guard to save a bunch of people, and no one says like, "hey, you should stay here but we will send all of our best men" like they should have. Also, they tell her she has to cut her hair to hide the fact that she's a woman? And no one questions why that would matter since they're immediately going to reveal themselves to the bad guys anyway? And the only impact on the story that the haircut has is that her crush doesn't find her hot anymore? So, yeah: the juxtaposition of the completely ridiculous and flat-out stupid actions of so many of the characters (ESPECIALLY Kelsea) with how Wise and Noble and Intelligent they are supposed to be irked me, a lot.

One of the things I *thought* would be awesome about this story is that it's technically set in the real world - the settlers of the Tear and the neighboring countries left America and Europe either in the real-world present or the real-world future, but left behind all of their technology. I had assumed that that would provide a rich backdrop of culture with cool remnants of technologies and subtle political/cultural influences, but instead it's an excuse to not create any sort of original or consistent world - Catholicism exists in basically the form it does now, modern medicine doesn't exist except where it does, and there is no further influence of advanced technology on anything, as far as we are told. Except with respect to books, where the author gets the chance to name-drop her favorite authors over and over and over again and everyone who is good loves books and people who don't love books are bad, and the main public policy decision that Kelsea makes is essentially "let's make more books because books are good." Obviously, it's not something I disagree with, but it's an incredibly impractical and selfish policy that is presented as, again a Noble Goal because Kelsea is Wise and Deep.

I can't even address the ridiculous crush Kelsea instantly develops on the old man who kidnaps her. I wrote better stuff in middle school, and I was an even worse writer then than I am now.

Overall, the characters are one-dimensional, the plot is predictable, the world fails to deliver on any promise it has, and there is absolutely no nuance to any aspect of this book: good is Good, evil is Evil, and Kelsea is the most Good of them all despite her Plain and Ordinary appearance. Still, it was kind of fun once I forced myself to stop thinking "this action/reaction/cultural aspect/political relationship is not something that would ever actually happen in response to these conditions or this situation" all the time. I might read the next one because there's a small chance that neat world-building premise might pay off, and if it's done right it would be cool. But I can't believe how much hype this book got for how mediocre it is.

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