Saturday 16 December 2023

BOOKS | Review: The True Queen by Zen Cho

Name: The True Queen (Sorcerer Royal series #2)

Author: Zen Cho

Publisher: Pan Books

Date published: November 2019

Genre: Fiction, adult, fantasy, romance, historical

Pages: 367

Rating: 4/5

When sisters Muna and Sakti wake up on the peaceful beach of the island of Janda Baik, they can't remember anything, except that they are bound as only sisters can be. They have been cursed by an unknown enchanter, and slowly Sakti starts to fade away. The only hope of saving her is to go to distant Britain, where the Sorceress Royal has established an academy to train women in magic.

If Muna is to save her sister, she must learn to navigate high society, and trick the English magicians into believing she is a magical prodigy. As she's drawn into their intrigues, she must uncover the secrets of her past, and journey into a world with more magic than she had ever dreamed.

- From Goodreads.

I liked that in this sequel we got to see old characters as well as new ones and that the story was told from more perspectives because of that. We got to see the characters we already knew in a new light and learnt to love them even more at the same time we were getting to know the new characters, and growing to love them too.

I think it did a good job of building upon the world we already knew, adding details to characters and places we were already familiar with and filling in the gaps in our knowledge. It was especially nice to see more of Henrietta, to learn more about her and see more depth to her character, I thought she was really sweet and lovely. I am glad we got to see quite a bit of Prunell, but it would have been nice to see a little more of Zacharias as he was such an important part of the first book, although we did get a couple of scenes with him, I did still miss his presence in this one.

The romance in this book could have been built up more in the beginning, with a few more little hints at what might happen between the two characters and more moments between them as they only really had time for the romance to grow in the third part of the book, and I think the romance in the first book was developed slightly better, although this one was still very sweet and I did really like how it ended, it was very heart-warming.

There could have been a bit more at the end to wrap up the story more thoroughly and see a little more from each character, but overall I did enjoy the ending. Generally I really liked this duology and how creative and unique and heartfelt it was, and I would definitely like to read more from this author.

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