Review: The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen, #1) by Jodi Meadows

The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Received: Bought
Publication Date: March 10th 2015
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Point of View: 1st Person & Feminine
Genres & Themes: Young Adult, Fantasy, Magic, Kingship

BLURB:

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.

REVIEW:

… Is that it? Is that all this book had to deliver? I am feeling more than underwhelmed by The Orphan Queen right now.

It was a complete disappointment. From start to finish. As a matter of fact, the only thing I found myself appreciating was the writing. Pretty and well fit to a fantasy story, it might have been the only thing that kept me on reading.

There was nothing I actually ‘‘hated’’ but it is rare for me to ‘‘hate’’ something inside a book, unless a character, scene, relationship, world-building or any other relatively important element inside a story is frustrating or peeving enough for myself to not being able to handle it.

This was just completely boring and unsurprising. I had been curious about the infiltrating a palace happening and the magic, verily, but even the balls and the activity at court sparkled no interest in my eyes, as it usually does. And princes… I usually cannot resist them, but Tobiah – dull, monotonous and phony Tobiah – didn’t even TRY to make us like him.

Surely, when you do not feel any affinity for the main character of a story, it is pretty difficult to take full enjoyment in this latter. Wil was your typical fantasy heroine – ready to fight, rash by moments and always fixed on a certain goal to achieve. Not that this is a bad thing – of course not. But there was nothing noteworthy about her… nothing that would make her standing out in a crowd of determined girls. She sure had qualities that I can admire in my general fierce heroine but too much of the same becomes… unstimulating.

Perhaps the whole masked-vigilante-with-a-fancy-name-watching-over-villagers thing might have interested me, if only I had not already read about a quite similar character before, showing an even higher intentness to help others, in Je savais que je te rencontrerais (more than recommended). It might have. But then again, I absolutely and even bizarrely, found no character to be exciting.

The pacing was okay – not too fast, not too slow. Sometimes, though, events occurred way too rapidly (not letting time to build some substantial emotion inside us) and not enough world-building backed them. I can’t see how this series could get any better if the world-building isn’t upraised to a less simplistic and shallow level.

In short: not recommended.