Monday, April 20, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review:The Queen's Assassin by Melissa De La Cruz




The Queen's Assassin is the first in a new Young Adult Fantasy series by YA author Melissa De La Cruz.  It's a fairly classical YA Fantasy setup - two main characters of different experience and skill levels go on a quest, with secrets between them hanging over the plot the whole time, and a natural romance growing along the way to make things more complicated.  But classics are classics for a reason - they can work fairly well, and an excellent writer can easily make those classic structures into new classic works - or at least very good ones.

I'm not sure The Queen's Assassin quite hits either of those levels, but it's a solid addition to the genre, with decently sketched out characters and an intriguing setting along the way.  It reads rather well and never drags and even manages a last act plot twist which threw me by surprise in a positive way.  Still, its characters rarely break out of their traditional molds in too interesting ways and its romance feels more perfunctory than anything - it occurs more because you know it should in such a book rather than as a result of any particularly great chemistry on the page.  But as the first in a new fantasy series it ends in a satisfying way that intrigues, and leaves room for the series to take another leap with its sequel.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
The Country of Avantine was once ruled by a well loved magic-gifted royal family until a jealous younger brother seized power for himself.  That king, becoming known as the "Tyrant King", ruled with an iron fist, and gathered all the knowledge of magic he could into his clutches and those of his cult, the Aphrasians, leaving only small bits of magical knowledge that the common people were able to hide for themselves.  But when the Tyrant King died, the kingdom split into 4 separate kingdoms, with the Aphrasians still holding tight to power in the country of Renovia, until the beloved King Esban fought to destroy them.  In the end, the Aphrasians seemed to be defeated, but the magic Deian Scrolls they kept were never found, and the King was killed in the process.

Years later, Caledon Holt serves as the Queen's Assassin, her most trusted agent, having been cursed from birth to have to find the Deian Scrolls and put an end to the Aphrasian menace.....or else he will suffer greatly.  But the Aphrasians appear to be on the rise once again with new magical power, with designs on killing the Queen and the heir to the throne, the Princess Lilac.  To stop them, Caledon will need to enter a foreign country to find out who really is behind the Aphrasian uprising....and to end them for good.

Caledon's only ally will be a strange one, a girl named Shadow, with magical skill over nature and illusions and a recklessness to match.  Shadow is secretly on the run from her own summons to the Renovian Palace, for she would rather at as an agent or magical assassin than be another Lady at Court, and sees Caledon as her ticket to proving her worth to her family.  But Shadow's recklessness may put the two of them both in danger, as might Caledon and Shadow's attraction to one another, as they find themselves in the middle of foreign agents, any one of whom might be secretly plotting behind their backs......
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As I noted above the Jump, The Queen's Assassin follows a classic structure, with two main characters coming from different places who need to team up in order to achieve the mission to stop the bad guys, and the two characters first coming frequently in conflict before learning to work together and to like each other (and more than like) as the plot goes on.  This structure is told from alternating perspectives, although which character - Cal or Shadow - the story is told from doesn't necessarily alternate with each successive chapter.  For no particular reason, Cal's story is told in the third person while Shadow's perspective is told in first person, which is extremely awkward and seems to serve no real purpose.

Still despite this weird use of different voices, both Shadow and Caledon are very solid main characters it's easy to like.  Caledon is generally competent at his job, having been trained properly since birth, but a bit bitter about it due to his curse.  This makes him an excellent complement to Shadow, who is trained vaguely in her magic but otherwise has never been trained for such a role - since she is supposed to be a Lady instead - and thus acts constantly rashly in the hopes of proving herself.

The romance between the two of them doesn't really work - it just seems to happen because it's supposed to and the chemistry never feels that real - but their complement and contrast of personalities makes the plot move forward at a really nice pace and really helps keep the intrigue and action fresh.  It's a plot that takes some shortcuts to get things moving - our heroes go from nobodies in the neighboring kingdom to meting with the neighboring king hilariously quickly for instance - but the result is that the plot never drags and it's easy to keep going at any given point.  Add to that a setting that provides for a multitude of possibilities - with magic on both the good and evil sides to go along with court intrigue - and it mostly all works.

It all winds up leading to an ending that features a hell of a plot twist, which some readers may spot coming but which actually surprised me completely.  It's the one thing that takes this book up a notch, throwing events prior into new relief just in time for the ending to come and promise more to come in future books.  So yeah I'll be back for the sequel, to see how things play out from here, because that twist opens up a lot more possibilities for the future, even if this book only gets to see the first of them play out.
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