This review was originally written and posted in January 2016.

This book only has fourteen chapters, and they are all ridiculously long. So, uh, we’ll have to see how this goes but I don’t think we’ll be doing one chapter per post this time.

We start with our heroine, Kelsea, sitting in a tree as she watches some royal guards approaching her homestead. The guards approach her door and then for no reason put hand-to-sword, like they expect to have to draw quickly and fight, but the guy that answers the door clearly expects them to be there.

Kelsea muses about how she’s spent the whole morning outside, “saying goodbye to the woods.”

She’d even snared a rabbit, for something to do, before letting it go; Barty and Carlin had no need for meat, and she took no pleasure in killing.

…then why the fuck did you do that? That’s incredibly mean, and traps usually have this nasty side effect of injuring the animals. Even if they don’t, you’ve just terrified this poor creature that you had no intention of using, so…like, for shits and giggles? If this were CSI, that would be a clue you’re about to grow up into a serial killer.

Also snaring usually involves setting a trap and then leaving for several hours/days, so I don’t know why that would be entertaining.

Kelsea shows up, and the guards all bow to her, but also they demand to see a scar and a necklace that proves she’s the princess, because she looks so little like her mother.

She wasn’t statuesque by any stretch of the word, either; she got plenty of exercise, but she had a healthy appetite too.

Okay, so I think this means that she’s got some heft to her, which YAY, but I’m confused by the first part of that statement? Statuesque means “attractively tall and dignified” and I don’t see why saying she’s muscled and filled out would belie that? I mean, doesn’t prove it, either, but they’re just two separate descriptions with punctuation that implies they should be (inversely) related.

Kelsea pulled the sapphire pendant from beneath her shirt and held it up to the light. The necklace had lain around her neck ever since she could remember

If you already have scar-proof, do you really need this as well? Especially for someone who apparently spends a lot of time out in the woods, where such things are easily lost.

Kelsea, it turns out, is not happy to go off and be queen. Alas, she has no choice.

She was the crown princess of the Tearling, and this was her nineteenth birthday, the age of ascension for Tearling monarchs all the way back to Jonathan Tear.

Why do so many YA fantasies do this? Super young monarchs are not a good idea! Besides, it’s not like you can’t do it the regicide way, dead parents abound in this genre.

She also has a scar that goes from wrist to bicep which…seems like a really easy thing to fake? Not sure how that proves anything. Maybe some unique scar, or a birthmark, sure, but just a big, straight line down the arm?

Kelsea’s guardians demand proof that the guards are legit guards before they’ll hand her over, but apparently not before telling her to come down from her hiding spot in the tree. I mean, if these guys are assassins set to murder the soon-to-be-queen, wouldn’t keeping said queen hidden be a good idea?

They produce some sort of documentation, which satisfies her guardians. Also apparently Kelsea’s mother died a long time ago. So, does that mean that the country just doesn’t do underage royals, rather than saying every princess becomes queen at the same age regardless of living parents? Because that would at least make more sense.

Kelsea goes into the house to get her things and also muse about her past there. Apparently the cottage has a library, which normally I would complain about in a society that also uses horses as a primary mode of transportation: books are hella expensive in a pre-industrial world. Except these are guardians of princess who also educated her; I don’t see why they couldn’t have packed up a bunch of books when they packed up the princess as well.

In front of the cottage, the soldiers shifted uneasily, darting quick glances around the woods.

They’re accustomed to enclosure, thought Kelsea; open space alarms them.

…when they were introduced, they were described as battle-hardened, so unless there was a war fought entirely indoors at some point, I really doubt that. It would be far more reasonable t say they were alert for an attack, not that the mere act of being out of doors was unusual to them.

But, then Kelsea couldn’t whine about how horrible it will be to live in a giant palace. Can’t a character just miss their old home without thinking everything else is the worst thing ever? Things from our childhood are comforting because they are familiar, not because they are objectively better than the rest of the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Apparently Kelsea’s uncle is the Regent, and he’s a power-hungry sort of guy who would happily kill the legitimate queen to stay in power, so that sucks.

Carlin often said that history was everything, for it was in man’s nature to make the same mistakes over and over.

[…]

Carlin finally replied, “We swore to your mother that we would not tell you of her failures, Kelsea, and we’ve kept our promise.

…well that was kind of stupid of you, wasn’t it.?

Carlin finally replied, “We swore to your mother that we would not tell you of her failures, Kelsea, and we’ve kept our promise. But not everything at the Keep will be as you thought. Barty and I have given you good tools; that was our charge. But once you sit on the throne, you’ll have to make your own hard decisions.”

Okay, I get that she was given an education via all the books in the place, and that Carlin seems to be a pretty well-educated lady and good tutor, but that doesn’t actually substitute in for experience and practice. Especially since her social skills are going to be severely lacking after all this time spent out in a cottage with only two old people for company. If this was some sort of necessity, fine, but I have a hard time imagining that nothing even slightly more social would have fit their needs just as well.

Nothing will substitute for practice. Nothing. People raised not around people will have a hard time dealing with people. Short of being magical or a jedi, there is no getting around this.

For years now, the Regent’s guards had ranged over every part of the country, looking for a child with the necklace and the scar. Looking for Kelsea.

Okay, so she had to stay in hiding because of this? But…now she’s just going to march on home? It feels like publicity would have helped her more than secrecy, although that depends on if her uncle wants to maintain and air of legitimacy. He can’t just have his people march up and stab her and still expect to be uncontested king, he’d have to kill her in secret, so the more eyes on her the better. Maybe not at the palace, sure, but perhaps the country estate of a really rich/powerful duke who was loyal to her mother? Preferably one with a lot of knights on the payroll?

And if Uncle is willing to openly kill her and just say “nya nya, I’m king anyway,” then it doesn’t seem like going home at all is a good idea.

We spend a lot of time on the relationship dynamics of her foster parents, which aren’t bad, just don’t seem really relevant since we’re about to leave them. Foster-mom is stern and willful, but not cruel. Foster-dad is lamed by an injury and…for some reason this makes him a doormat?

Nothing in the cottage was up to Barty; Carlin was in charge. Carlin was smarter, Carlin was physically whole. Barty came second.

That…really uncomfortably equates able-bodied status with authority, especially since Barty merely has a limp and also nothing going on seems like it requires two good legs. Carlin is in charge because she’s got the personality of someone in charge and Barty is somewhat less assertive. Why bring the injury into this? It should be immaterial.

She spends several pages saying goodbye to her foster parents, and then it’s time to saddle up and leave. Apparently they are worried about the Regent’s guards tracking them. (Still confused, won’t there be more Regent’s guards at the end of their journey? Is this Keep they are heading to not the seat of power?)

For all the information we’re getting about Carlin and Barty, we’re getting very little about what’s going on here. Kelsea has been in hiding, the old queen is at least several years dead, and her uncle is the regent and also looking for her, possibly with murderous intent. And…that’s it.