Title: Kill the Queen

Author: Jennifer Estep

Kill the Queen was an engaging read. Everleigh, Evie, Saffira Winter Blair had a strong voice. And the author, Jennifer Estep, did a pretty good job explaining how Evie went from low status royal family member, seventeenth in line to the throne, to challenging her cousin in a duel for the crown. Sure the training sequence was a little rushed, but waiting years and years for Evie to develop the skills would have been less exciting to read about.

Besides, Bellona is a land of magic mixed with a gladiator tradition. It was interesting setting for the story. I of course liked the strong female presence running through the entire world. Here men and women are treated equally. The rich and the poor are not.

There was political intrigue with the neighbouring courts of Morta, Andvari and Unger. There were fierce fights between skilled gladiators, pageantry with the gladiator shows (feeling more like a circus with their acrobats and food sales) and of course there was a crown up for grabs by the strongest and most cunning of the Blair family line.

In many ways this was a story about family, a large and dysfunctional family that was massacred by one of its one in the first chapter. So, perhaps it is better to say this was a story about surviving ones dysfunctional and very deadly family.

Escaping the castle and its bloody court, Evie joins a gladiator troop where she puts some of her random skills to work and befriends a number of the prominent people in the group. One of the weak points for me was her keeping the secret of her identity for so long. Mostly because the Queen’s final words before dying words were to find the Black Swan gladiator group and seek help from their illustrious leader. It is not like Evie didn’t have a number of opportunities to come clean about who she really was.

That aside, I liked that Evie was an older heroine (~ 28), understandably skilled in a number of random areas like cooking, dancing and small talk. That she was a strong character, who had learned the value of silence. The magic in the world was interesting. The politics were thoughtful. The overall word was detailed.

I lament the way that we equate strength to the physical prowess needed to destroy another person. There are more ways to solving a problem rather than just running a sharp blade through its heart, but that is a general comment on trends in writing and society.

Importantly this was a fun read and I look forward to the next book, which just might address a very important aspect of these power plays. It is one thing to kill the queen, but how do you keep the throne (and stabilize your country). Killing and ruling are not the same skill set, at least not entirely.

Final Rating: 4 / 5 stars