Tuesday, April 30, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The True Queen by Zen Cho




The True Queen is the latest novel from author Zen Cho, and the sequel to her 2015 novel "Sorcerer to the Crown."  It's been a long time since I read SotC, and I wasn't as much of a fan of the book as most people (it was highly acclaimed), but it was definitely a solid book in terms of being a fantasy story in which racism and sexism are as much the antagonists to the heroes as any actual characters.  So I was very curious about how the follow-up would read....although again, it's been so long since I read the original book that I was a bit worried that I'd be a bit behind in trying out the sequel.

The good news is that despite my lack of memory of SotC, I had very little trouble following "The True Queen" - and I suspect new readers will be able to start the story here if they want.  The bad news is that The True Queen is honestly a less interesting novel, with some solid characters to be sure, but none that truly stood out and a plot that is so predictable it kind of hurts.  It's pulled off well, mind you, but the lack of any surprise is a bummer, and the book doesn't really play with the issues of race and sexism as much in interesting ways - the two issues are still present, but more as a side part of the setting than something to be dealt with.  There's still clearly interesting battles over those forces to be had in this setting, but it's not found in this book.


--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
When sisters Muna and Sakti wash up on a beach on the island of Janda Baik, they remember nothing other than that the two of them are sisters.  Strong, assertive Sakti soon discovers she has powerful magic while the more conservative and deliberative Muna has none....but the two soon discover Sakti is cursed, and her physical body is wasting away.  In order to try and reverse the curse, the two find themselves set on a pathway through the Unseen Realm - the magical realm filled not only with danger but the Fairy Kingdom- to England, to meet up with the Sorceress Royal.  But on this pathway Sakti disappears, leaving Muna alone in England.

There, unsure of who to trust, Muna hides her lack of magic, as the Sorceress Royal attempts to integrate Muna into England's new academy for female magiciennes, while secretly plotting to find a way back into the Unseen Realm to search for Sakti.  And when a representative of the Fairy Queen shows up in England in search of a stolen artifact, Muna sees her chance.  But what she and her companions find as they both search for the stolen artifact and Sakti is a past that will threaten to change everything Muna knows...irreversibly, and maybe not for the better....
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The True Queen is mainly Muna's story, although the book occasionally alternates the 3rd person point of view the story is being told from - Chapters and Partial Chapters are written from several other characters' points of view, for instance, usually but not always with the new POV announced at the start of each chapter.  It mainly works but it does feel a little bit like outside of Muna and Henrietta's perspectives, the others are a bit superfluous.

Muna is particularly of course a pretty strong character - which is good because due to incomplete information, she takes some actions the reader is well aware are unnecessary: namely, hiding information from Prunella, the Sorceress Royal (who the reader knows is trustworthy from the first book, but Muna doesn't).  Cho makes this work by making it quite understandable why Muna takes such actions, and Muna's fairly quick thinking actions, if sometimes a little rash and misinformed, make her a nice heroine to center the story.  And Muna's feelings toward her sister and toward some other characters are nicely done, so you understand why she takes the actions and makes the sacrifices she does, making it very easy to root for her.

The other characters are perhaps a bit more hit or miss, and are clearly mainly secondary alas.  Henrietta is basically our second lead, and she basically has three interrelated storylines: her trying to figure out her place in the world, her feelings of romance toward an unknown character, and her attempting to hide her magical practice from her family. The first and third storylines work well enough (the storyline of Henrietta and her family is probably my favorite part of this book, honestly) but the romance just did not work for me, seeming to come from nowhere even as it became predictable near the end where it was going.  The other characters just don't get enough time for true development, which I wish wasn't the case.  Meanwhile, while the book is set in England it still deals with the issues of men opposing the teaching of magic to women - especially to women of color like Muna and the Sorceress Royal - but these issues largely get tossed to the wayside whenever we leave England for plot reasons.

Alas, my biggest issue with the book (aside from the romance plotline not working for me) is that it was so predictable as to be painful.  To its credit, the book isn't really trying to hide its "twists" from the reader, and the heroine discovers the truth decently quickly, but the reader will still know where most of the action is going chapters ahead of the characters, which is just a bit distracting.  Again, it's executed well, and the ending works fine, but it takes away more than a bit from the book that there's no surprise at all there.  And without the surprise, despite the potential of the setting, the book just feels like a pretty standard unexceptional fantasy tale.  It just doesn't really stand out.

If you loved Sorcerer to the Crown (and again I only liked that book), The True Queen might be worth checking out.  But I suspect most readers will not be quite so thrilled with the follow-up to that first novel, which just doesn't carry the same interest.
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