Friday, May 22, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Vanished Queen by Lisbeth Campbell


The Vanished Queen is the upcoming debut novel of author Lisbeth Campbell.  It's a low fantasy novel with a trio of main characters we follow from beginning to end. As with a lot of such novels, it features heavily the politics of a repressive monarchy, and how a resistance to such oppression should be formed, with characters on both sides of the noble/commoner divide.  When this is done well, it can result in fascinating books that pose questions for the reader to ponder about today's world and also results in fascinating stories that are had to put down.

The Vanished Queen isn't quite done that well alas.  It's a fine story in general, with three enjoyable characters as its leads, each with their own interesting personalities, and the romance between two of them is fine.  It's setting also works well to pose interesting questions of power, oppression and revolution - but after 3/4 of the book sets that up in a way that could lead to a long exploration of it all - perhaps in a longer series - the book instead quickly wraps things up and resolves everything.  It's....fine, and thus a mildly satisfying ending, but it just feels like most of the interesting groundwork Campbell lays out goes nowhere.  I don't want to judge a book based upon what I was hoping it to be, but what this winds up being is merely a solid fine book and not anything more.

Note: This review is based upon an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) won through a Goodreads giveaway, and this book is scheduled to be released on August 18, 2020.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Years ago, the Queen of Vatia disappeared.  Her husband, the cruel King Karolje, blamed her disappearance on a neighboring country and started a war over it, but the people of Vatia had no doubt that Karolje had killed the Queen herself.

Years later, a student named Anza finds the vanished queen's diary, in which the Queen recounts her life as wife of the wicked King and her hopes that she can somehow prevent her two sons, Esvar and and Tevin from following their father's example.

Two years later, Esvar and Tevin have attempted to follow their mother's wishes, having promised each other to never be as cruel as their father.  But even as their father is dying of disease, his cruelty has only ramped up, and Esvar lacks the patience to play the slow power game to put his brother on the throne.  To force things forward, Esvar will seek to join forces with the underground resistance to help overthrow his father.

Esvar's search leads him to Anza, who has responded to her father's execution by joining up to overthrow the king.  But as Anza soon learns, the Resistance is willing to take absolutely any steps needed to overthow Karolje....and they're not too interested in putting Esvar or Tevin on the throne and hoping for the best.  Esvar and Ana will have to prove the Queen's hopes true - that Esvar and his brother are not like their father - if they have any chance of uniting to take down the tyrant.....
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The above plot summary is bad, I know, but I just didn't feel up to making it better.  The important part to know is this story has three narratives each centered around a different point of view character. In the present you have Anza, a young woman desperate to help the Resistance overthrow the corrupt and cruel king who murdered her father, and who finds that she might not have the stomach for all hte things the resistance might want her to do.  Also in the present you have Esvar, the younger prince who wants desperately to put his older brother on the throne instead of his father, but is desperately scared that he himself isn't as different from his cruel father as he might wish.  Esvar and Anza's narratives naturally intersect fairly early in the story (not a spoiler) and tie in together fairly tightly.

Then there's the third narrative, that of the eponymous Vanished Queen Mirantha.*  This is the strongest narrative of the three, and it takes place mainly in the past, showing Mirantha's thoughts as she deals with being married to an absolute cruel man before he becomes king and afterwards, and what she tries to do with it.  She has the clearest arc of the trio, going from being passive and trying just to impart good ideals to her children and relying upon others to learning to rely on her own self  and to resist with her own efforts.  And it works....but the book seemingly can't decide whether this is the primary arc or the secondary one, with it sort of taking priority in the final pages despite it clearly having a backseat for most of the novel.

*Confusingly this narrative is NOT the words of Mirantha from the journal found in the prologue, which really confused me by the middle of this book since that's the natural conclusion for what's going on with it.  It's a bit weird.*

 Unfortunately, the other two narratives don't work nearly as well.  Both Anza and Esvar are solid characters, but the book's repeated attempts to challenge the two of them with their fears wind up going nowhere, and as a result, they don't actually develop in any way.  For Anza, there's the fear that she doesn't have the stomach for what the Resistance may want her to do - and she doesn't (although the Resistance actually wouldn't be too upset with her if they knew, they'd just reassign her) but this goes absolutely nowhere.  For Esvar, there's the fear that he might be inwardly as cruel as his father - or that his brother Tevin might also be so secretly, given Tevin's hiding of secrets from him.  But there's never any doubt for the reader from his actions that his heart is in the right place, so its' not like there's anything there for him to overcome.  And as for Tevin.....

Tevin is emblematic of the problems of this book: the posing of ideas and questions that could be really interesting and wind up going nowhere or being forgotten so the book can reach its ending.  Tevin has no character of his own - he's off page for most of the book, and we know from Esvar he has his own secret plans in furtherance of what we think is his agenda.  These secrets lead to....absolutely nothing, and in the final act he just sublimates himself entirely to Esvar and Anza's views just so that everyone can have a happy ending.*

Spoiler in ROT13:  N cnegvphyneyl oyngnag cneg bs guvf pbzrf va gur ynfg npg, jurer Griva tbrf zvffvat zlfgrevbhfyl yrnqvat gb pbashfvba.  Ur gura fubjf hc, jvgu ab rkcynangvba va gvzr sbe Rfine gb unir eha bhg bs gur Pvgnqry naq znqr uvf shyy pbzzvgzrag gb gur Erfvfgnapr naq cebzcgyl qebcf nyy uvf bowrpgvbaf gb Rfine'f cynaf naq nterrf gb rirelguvat, rira gur tvivat hc bs cbjre.  Fb jul gur urpx qvq ur qvfnccrne va gur svefg cynpr? V qhaab!

Similar problems are elsewhere in the plot and the setting.  The resistance has a number of leaders from different economic and social backgrounds with their own agendas!  This makes it feel more realistic sure, but when those factions have an issue with each other near the final act, you'd expect it to have some impact.....nope!  Might as well not have existed.  The result is an abrupt contrived ending to provide a happily ever after, which is fine, but feels unsatisfying given how the book feels like it was setting up interesting questions about nature vs nurture, of the aftermath of resistance and of the powers of monarchy, etc - all of which it basically drops.  A different book might have ended differently with a cliffhanger that led to questions as these, but this book insists upon wrapping everything up, and it does so in a way that undercuts most of what was interesting about the story in the first place.

So yeah, Campbell's debut novel shows craft, and it is very readable - I read through it in a single day and didn't quite want to put it down.  I'll be interested in reading future works from her.  But this one's mostly a miss on its potential, and you can probably skip it: it's fine, but it's nothing more than that and it could have been.
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