Tuesday 23 January 2018

Series Review of The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows


Series: The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows

Book 1: The Orphan Queen
Book 2: The Mirror King

Goodreads Description of book 1, The Orphan Queen:
Wilhelmina has a hundred identities.

She is a princess. When the Indigo Kingdom conquered her homeland, Wilhelmina and other orphaned children of nobility were taken to Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. Ten years later, they are the Ospreys, experts at stealth and theft. With them, Wilhelmina means to take back her throne.

She is a spy. Wil and her best friend, Melanie, infiltrate Skyvale Palace to study their foes. They assume the identities of nobles from a wraith-fallen kingdom, but enemies fill the palace, and Melanie’s behavior grows suspicious. With Osprey missions becoming increasingly dangerous and their leader more unstable, Wil can’t trust anyone.

She is a threat. Wraith is the toxic by-product of magic, and for a century using magic has been forbidden. Still the wraith pours across the continent, reshaping the land and animals into fresh horrors. Soon it will reach the Indigo Kingdom. Wilhelmina’s magic might be the key to stopping the wraith, but if the vigilante Black Knife discovers Wil’s magic, she will vanish like all the others.

Jodi Meadows introduces a vivid new fantasy full of intrigue, romance, dangerous magic, and one girl’s battle to reclaim her place in the world.
 

My thoughts: (spoiler free for both books!)
The Orphan Queen 
The Orphan Queen is a very easy YA fantasy. To me it was not anything special or amazing.

The start was pretty meh and I was constantly thinking I've read this before. It was very reminiscent of a lot of other YA fantasy books that were out a few years ago but I do think if you are new to YA fantasy and haven't read much in the genre you won't notice these similarities so you might enjoy The Orphan Queen more than I did.

I also felt it was very info dumpy which made it hard to get through, I was put off with it being similar to other stories and then it was very slow to get going because there would be big chunks of world building and history and such which stopped the plot moving.

The Orphan Queen is very predictable. While reading I was making predictions and I was a bit disappointed that my predictions were correct because I thought there was going to be a big twist and I'd be wrong but nope that didn't happen.

The main character was also a bit bland. I felt like she was very generic and her personality was a bit boring to me.

It was a fine book there was nothing bad about it, it was an easy fantasy read and it did get quite good towards the end; enough for me to want to continue with the series.

The Mirror King 
I enjoyed The Mirror King a lot more than I did book 1; the plot took a much more interesting direction and there was a lot more happening that was original, I will say that it is still a very predictable book like book 1 but that didn't hinder my enjoyment this time around.

I do think the book suffered from being first person POV. The point of view limited the scope of the story and I think it missed a lot of opportunities for some really good action/battle scenes as well as things on the political side.

I didn't care enough to ship the main character and the love interest in the first book but there was a few moments in The Mirror King that their chemistry came through and I enjoyed reading their scenes together. 

Overall I think I didn't enjoy this series as much as I would have had I not read as much YA fantasy as I have the last few years. 

My rating: 3.5

Thanks for reading,
A :)

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