SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

SF/F Review: The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton https://t.co/0kgU3F0LoI Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) April 17, 2018

Short Review (cont): A fantasy adaptation of King Lear, The Queens of Innis Lear is a long book that greatly expands the depth of each of the characters to form an often very different & an often very similar story, but still very much a tragedy. A Strong but rough book (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) April 17, 2018

The Queens of Innis Lear is a fantasy take (and a more feminist take) on Shakepeare's classic tragedy, King Lear (if you couldn't guess from the title).  The book is still a tragedy, but, in addition to adding major fantasy elements (magic is extremely important), the story adds a lot more depth to the story and characters from the original play.  The book takes a play with many completely unsympathetic characters - some of whom are paper thin - and makes nearly everyone three dimensional and believable - even the ones who don't get much page time.  This is a really well written book.

Did I like this book? That's a tougher question to answer - and I probably lean towards no.  The book is probably a bit too long (near 600 pages, and it feels it) and, as befits a tragedy, is not a happy one - but a lot of that sadness comes from some characters making really stupid decisions.  But it's certainly a very interesting book overall, and I'm not sorry for reading it.  If you like Shakespeare adaptations or are interested in a very well written character-driven tragedy, The Queens of Innis Lear is worth your time.

Note: I hadn't read King Lear prior to reading The Queens of Innis Lear, and that wasn't a problem in any way (I read the wikipedia summary).  Having skimmed through the original text since reading this adaptation, I would say it's not really necessary to be familiar with the story before reading this book.  Also, for this reason, I'm not going to be going too in depth in the specific changes made to the original story in this review.  

More after the Jump:

--------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
The Island of Innis Lear is a magical land, whose people used to follow two magical disciplines: readings of the stars, used to make prophecies, and the powers of the roots of the land.  But after the death of his wife seemingly in accordance with a star prophecy, the King of the Island, known as is tradition simply as "Lear," forbid the use/worship of the magic of the land in favor of absolute obedience to his readings of the stars.

Years later, King Lear's three daughters have all grown up in very different ways:

The eldest, Gaela Lear, has grown up believing in the power of martial strength and detests any concept of magic.  She has married one of the great lords of Lear, Astore, but seeks only to use him to legitimize her eventual rule.

The middle daughter, Regan Lear, has grown up believing in the power of the roots.  She is strong with the magic and speech of the trees, and is desperate to conceive a child to be her heir, but has only given birth to miscarriages.  Whereas Gaela hates her husband and seeks only to use him, Regan loves her husband, the lord Connley, whose house is a traditional rival of Lear's.

The two eldest daughters are alike in one way however - they love each other truly and wish to rule the Island together, Gaela as King and Regan as Queen (with Regan's children as heirs).  The two hate their father, the King, who they believe murdered their mother so as to ensure a Star Prophecy that announced her death would come true.

And then there's the youngest daughter, Elia, seemingly her father's favorite, and the only daughter to truly believe in her father.  As a child, Elia loved Lord Errigal's bastard son, Ban, but he was banished by her father from the kingdom, and since then she has devoted her time to being a star priestess to please her father.  Where her sisters are ambitious, Elia is not sure what she wants.  Two foreign kings court her hand, so as to gain power in the Island, but Elia has no interest in marriage.

And then comes the fateful day where everything changes.  When King Lear chooses how the Island will be divided amongst his daughters, setting everything into chaos.  And aiding this chaos is the returned Ban, now known as Ban the Fox.  Ban has returned to the Island to cause unrest to allow his new friend and ruler, the King of Aremoria, to conquer Lear, but what Ban really wants is to cause pain to those who have never shown him unconditional love.  And Ban is not just a bastard son of some random lord - he is also the bastard son of Innis Lear's most powerful witch, and is a powerful wizard capable of great feats....and with the need to bring all of Innis Lear to its knees.

And so the table is set for tragedy, for the battle of the Queens of Innis Lear, and the fate of the Island for time to come.
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This is one of my longest plot summaries I've written in a while, because again, there's a lot going on in this book (and I barely touched one of the more relevant characters, the King of Aremoria).  Like many other books, the book splits its chapters up into showing different points of view, with for the most part the chapter POV being titled in bold at the start of each chapter.  There are six of these POV characters - Galea, Regan, Elia, Morimaros (the aforementioned king), Ban, and Aefa (another character I barely touched on above), and other characters get small POV chapters dedicated to them as well on occasion, particularly in flashback scenes.  And then there are the 3-4 chapters which do not have a fixed Point of View, which contain momentous scenes for the plot.

Here's the thing - while in another's hands this could be a mess, this all works really well here because the characters and writing are all very very tight.  The reason this book is so long is because it is VERY dedicated toward making sure that all of the characters' motivations are readily understood by the reader, to the point where a few minor characters get flashbacks to that effect immediately after they are killed, which kind of seemed unnecessary.

Still, the end result is a very very strong book, with very strong characters.  Where in the original play Lear's two older daughters are almost paper-thin villains, in this book they are both very sympathetic, though very different characters whose actions - even when they're over the line - are very understandable and emphathizable.

Honestly, the middle daughter Regan and her husband Connley might be my favorite characters from this book, with the two having one of the best loving relationships between a husband and wife I've seen in a while.  Regan is desperate to have a child and is willing to try anything, including dangerous magic, and while Connley wants a child as well, he wants foremost for Regan to be happy (in the book's beginning when Regan is feeling miserable about another miscarriage and blaming herself, he emphasizes to her that their failures could be his seed's fault, not hers, but she won't hear it).

Still, as the story comes to its conclusion, it becomes in large part about the actions of Ban and Elea, both of whom are very very different characters from the play (them both having magic is the least of it).  Whereas Ban was sort of the evil villain of the play, here he's a character who's been broken by mistreatment returning to the site of that mistreatment and falling apart, but doing so in a way that will cause the most harm to everyone else.  Elea would be the typical hero in another book, the princess that was chosen, but she wants desperately to refuse the call despite many other side characters begging her to take it.

But again, while everything above is very different from King Lear except for the very basics of the setup, the book is still a tragedy.  And it's there I have the most issues with the book, which spends its final two acts causing misery upon nearly every character.  Most of this is well set-up, but some of it (one character's death in particular) is the result of some really stupid actions that just flabbergasted me.

Again, it generally works - as hinted above, the book could probably also be about 70 pages shorter by cutting some minor character backstory, and one POV character could probably be cut entirely - but well, while I don't mind some tragic books, this got kind of so over the top as to be a bit ridiculous near the end, so it didn't quite have as much of an impact as it should have.

Again, this might be more of a personal preference thing here, and The Queens of Innis Lear is certainly worth reading if you like this genre, but the end result just had me feeling mixed.  No other way to say it.