It's time for more book reviews!
Jun. 29th, 2010 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
uberreinigerRichelle Mead's Thorn Queen picks up almost exactly where it's predecessor Storm Born leaves off. Eugenie "Dark Swan" Markham is now trying to balance two very different lives, one as the new queen of a former enemy's realm in the lands of the Fae, and one as a shamanic exorcist trying to keep Fae out of our world. A conflict of interests arises when it appears that a human shaman might be kidnapping Fae women - usually it's the other way around. Being a good queen and a good supernatural detective, Eugenie sets out to solve an increasingly ugly mystery while growing ever more troubled about where her loyalties lie.
The characters that Mead established in her first Dark Swan novel are really coming into their own here. And it's very fascinating the way several minor characters from the first book carry over and grow in this one. Eugenie's passionate love triangle from the previous book involving a half-human fox spirit and a Fae noble definitely becomes more grown up and real, her love life beset by very believable, relatable problems even though the participants are far from normal people. As far as the missing girls plot goes, Mead writes a very good detective story without it being overly complicated, but without it being so simple you can see things coming a mile away all the time either. Thorn Queen is a good, solid piece of urban fiction.
Be warned that the tone and situation of the book take a radical turn in the third act. I don't want to spoil it, but something you never thought would actually happen in this series happens and keeps happening. In series like this you think certain characters are invulnerable to certain things and Mead makes it brutally clear that in this story they're not. So be ready for some serious business at the end of the book.
The characters that Mead established in her first Dark Swan novel are really coming into their own here. And it's very fascinating the way several minor characters from the first book carry over and grow in this one. Eugenie's passionate love triangle from the previous book involving a half-human fox spirit and a Fae noble definitely becomes more grown up and real, her love life beset by very believable, relatable problems even though the participants are far from normal people. As far as the missing girls plot goes, Mead writes a very good detective story without it being overly complicated, but without it being so simple you can see things coming a mile away all the time either. Thorn Queen is a good, solid piece of urban fiction.
Be warned that the tone and situation of the book take a radical turn in the third act. I don't want to spoil it, but something you never thought would actually happen in this series happens and keeps happening. In series like this you think certain characters are invulnerable to certain things and Mead makes it brutally clear that in this story they're not. So be ready for some serious business at the end of the book.
