The Tearling Queen

What an interesting chapter! I really didn’t expect a whole chapter from Thorne’s perspective. Especially since in the Tearling universe he is thought of as pure evil, he’s seen in the way we see Hitler. And I thought the inner workings of his mind would remain a mystery so this was very interesting. 

Chapter Recap:

The chapter starts with the excerpt referencing Arlen Thorne as part of a song. This reveals there are many songs of the shipment and I love this insight to the culture of the Tearling. 

Thorne, Brenna and a member of the Caden are waiting around a bunch of trash and filth as they watch a building. The Caden is growing ever impatient and Thorne is too, they are waiting for someone. But Brenna assures everyone that the person will arrive as she saw. She gets mad and scolds Thorne. 

It is revealed that they are plotting to kill the Fetch. When he finally arrives and enters the building at least 50 other Blue Horizon members. Brenna reassures the Caden that yes, she is sure that that the Fetch had arrived. And she does that by revealing just how much she knows about that Caden and that shuts him up. The caden spring forth and together shut in the doors of the building with massive wagons. 

While Brenna and Thorne watch Brenna becomes anxious, she wants to leave but Thorne wants to watch. 

The caden all light the building on fire and it starts to burn easily. Everything is so dry because of the drought. 

Brenna is anxious about the baby that Elyssa is carrying. She keeps bringing it up and Thorne is exasperated. He says, “Is this about the baby again? Of course you can’t see it. It’s the size of a fucking slug.” But he does find it weird that Brenna can’t see the baby. He also notes that Mhurn has been kicked out of the Keep. 

Thorne wants to sell the sapphires over to the Red Queen but first he wants to wear them, just as a little “fuck you” to the kingdom that has made him suffer so much. 

As the building burns Brenna begs Thorne to let them leave, she is on the brink of tears. He finally relents, takes her hand and they walk away from the scene together as Thorne thinks about what a waste it is to have to kill the fetch and the blue horizon, but he has to do it for his plans. 

My Thoughts:

Concerning Thorne: This chapter gave us a lot of insight into Thorne’s past and motivations. He find out he had been sold into the deepest levels of the Creche when he was only a few hours old. Even the other “creche babies” stayed away from him because of his skinny strange appearance. He doesn’t go into detail about what he was forced to do but he does think about plotting revenge all this time. Bringing horror to the world “topside.” 

Chapter Recap:

This is another Aislinn chapter. It is short and the overall feel of it is that the walls are closing in, the end of the rebellion is quite literally on the horizon. 

The text in the beginning discusses the downfall of the rebellion, something that has been eluded to since the first “Aislinn chapter” as I call them.

Now living in Lady Andrew’s manse, Aislinn is using the stores of flour to make bread. Though there will not be enough food for even three months, and tenants- now refugees from all around keep arriving every day. The starving tenants who have arrived have horrible stories, of eating dogs, eating mud and clay and even digging up a graveyard in order to survive. 

On the horizon the Tear troops are spotted on horseback. Aislinn must tell everyone and rally them to defend the manse with whoever stays. And many leave in droves, knowing they are out numbered and outmatched. There is a quote in this sections, “The tear army is not the mort but even they will kill us all.” 

Elyssa withdrawing her support of the Blue Horizon publicly has already weakened the movement and the ripples are being felt throughout the tear. 

The chapter ends as they must prepare to face the troops coming for them, and there is an overwhelming sense of incoming doom. 

My Thoughts:

Well I think the end of the rebellion is near. And I wonder if Aislinn’s story will somehow tie into everyone else’s or if this is just a secondary plot line to deepen the lore of the Tearling universe. But I don’t think that will be the case, I think  Aislinn may be brought into the keep or something like that. 

We also see from this chapter that the Mort has an extremely bad reputation already. They are already known for the cruelty their army inflicts on others and the horrors their culture condones. 

This chapter was a lot, a LOT in rapid succession. It left me reeling!

Chapter Recap:

This chapter is from Lazarus’s perspective and it opens up back in court as  Queen Arla listens to the concerns or rather, the complaints of the nobles and people. Lady Andrews appears wearing a cloak of peacock feathers, Lazarus’s intrigue at the sight of the feathers was sweet in a weird way, he’s still so new to this world. 

While standing guard Lazarus spots a nasty man in the crowd who has the sae clown tattoo on his hand that Lord Latimer had. He also spots Arlen Thorne, right in the front row staring at Brenna, who is beside the queen. Thorne is blinking, it’s some sort of code but Lazarus doesn’t know what it is. Another notable observation of course is that Thomas has “Rapist” branded or tattooed on his forehead in blue ink and the castle staff is struggling to get it removed and Arla has forbidden him from covering it in any way. 

Lady Andrews describes the attack on her manse as she goes before Queen Arla. The nobility all laugh as they hear that her manse was broken into and Queen Arla is amused. Arla is playing with Lady Andrews and it becomes clear that she doesn’t like Lady Andrews. Arla declares she will not send the tear army to assist lady Andrews. That is until Princess Elyssa leans over and whispers into Arla’s ear, then Arla publicly changes her mind. Niya is shocked and so are Elyssa’s guards. But everyone tries to save face. The court closes and everyone is shooed out. 

As Lazarus notices Niya’s reaction he also let’s us in on the fact that Niya is “popular” with the guards. They think she is beautiful especially because of her red hair but everyone knows not to approach her, apparently she is “cold” and has no tolerance for flirting guards. 

Arla takes Elyssa’s hand and leads them away, everyone is surprised by how chummy the two of them are being, Elyssa seems completely blank and empty. Like she’s completely disassociating. As they are leaving Arla explains how they are doing damage control, pedaling back Elyssa’s speech and everything. Niya is appalled. Then the bomb drops. Arla announced that Elyssa is pregnant and Mhurn is the father. Everyone is shocked, Givens recovers first. Everyone gives their congratulations but Elyssa just seems numb.

News has arrived that Lord Latimer is MIA, his family wants an investigation launched which Queen Arla denies in a very colorful way. 

At dinner that night Lazarus thinks about how the wolf is coming, Arlen Thorne is up to something. 

My Thoughts:

What a doozey. So much happened, I nearly got whiplash and the ending of the chapter. The reveals about Elyssa having to save face now and being pregnant was shocking because I felt like the time line was off. 

Concerning the pregnancy: For one thing we know Elyssa hasn’t had access to her syrup and we know from the trilogy that Elyssa had pregnancies before conceiving Kelsea and the reason she did not terminate that pregnancy was because she was afraid she would die during the procedure because lots of people wanted her dead. Now if someone else interpreted this different please let me know, but the way I took that was that this occurred after the first Mort invasion, after Queen Elyssa signed the treaty selling her own people over to the mort. When speaking about Mhurn to Kelsea in Fate of the Tearling Elyssa said he was a “mess” and how she “can’t resist a mess”. We know Mhurn was a mess after the invasion when his wife and child were horrifically raped and murdered. So to me the fact we have no mention of Elyss’s previous pregnancies or anything ike that it feels like the timeline is different than what we were given in the trilogy. And considering Elyssa is the main female character it’s weird that there is no mention of her being pregnant, seems like an important part of her life. 

Concerning Mhurn: Mhurn being Kelsea’s father was very hyped up in the books. I forget which character exactly, but I think it was Thomas, lamenting that Kelsea’s father was the reason why she was shaking things up so much. That he wished the father was anyone else. When it was revealed in Fate of the Tearling that Mhurn was the father this made sense because Mhurn who was so broken by the wrongs of the world he probably wanted more than anything to change it. In this book we’ve gotten close to NOTHING about Mhurn’s personality or history and now he’s going to be let go. I feel robbed, since I am dying to know more about him. Also hard to picture Elyssa getting pregnant while she is suffering and struggling so much and numb to the world. 

Overall this chapter was very sad, very disturbing and frustrating. I feel like as reader’s we’re missing steps in this story. We’re watching a development take place but it has holes in it. But I’ll get to my feelings on that a lil’ later. I might start splitting all these informal reviews into sections since I am having more thoughts to share so if anyone sees them they can skip the parts they have no interest in. :) 

Chapter Recap:

The chapter opens with Elyssa having another terrible night, apparently these horrible nights keep happening again and again. We know from Niya that Elyssa has been very unwell and now we see the full extent of it. We still don’t know what Brenna did to her, or what happened and neither does Elyssa. But we do know Brenna wants those sapphires and she has been torturing Elyssa. 

She proceeds to have a terrible nightmare/vision of Gareth’s corpse haunting her in her room. It’s graphic, it’s disturbing and it gets worse and worse until the point of all Elyssa’s guards coming in and holding her down as she screams and panics- so much so that they were going to drug her to get her to clam down. Brenna is in the room- or the image of her is and only Elyssa can see her until Brenna screeches to high heaven and then apparently even the guards can see her. 

Then the bomb drops, or at least it did for me. Elyssa in all her despair thinks to herself, she’ll never be the true queen. She’ll never be the queen she wants to be. She cannot take off her sapphire until... Kelsea. 

My Thoughts about the chapter:

The Seven of Swords starts with another quote from our girl Kelsea. We love to see it. 

This was the most interesting Niya chapter so far, her insight in this chapter was interesting and getting to be inside the keep and seeing through her eyes. 

The chapter starts by telling us Elyssa is not well. She’s pale, she’s distant, she ain’t doing good. We still don’t know what happened with the witch because Niya isn’t aware. But Elyssa is probably really depressed after having to kill Gareth. 

Niya has caught wind that Brenna belongs to Thorne. She’s also heard about Thorne buying up “perfect” children. The detail about straight perfect teeth is mentioned again, since this is the second time this detail is brought up I can’t help but wonder if there’s deeper meaning for that teeth thing. Despite thinking about murdering her mother Elyssa says she wants Niya to order a grand red dress for her mother’s birthday for her to wear to the giant party. She mentions she wants it to be red twice and that it should astound the world. This stood out to me because red in this series is often used in association with the Red Queen, it’s symbolic in that way. Also a huge party coming up? What could possibly go wrong? Wink. 

Niya thinks of Elston and Mace as giants, very funny. We also got a couple details which I’m starved for. Lazarus has dark hair. Mhurn and Kibb are farm boys. Dyer seems to have a sense of humor and Elyssa is nice to the servants. 

The ceremony making Lazarus a guard was rather lack luster, and there really wasn’t any interaction between Elyssa and Lazarus which was a let down. 

Brenna’s reaction to seeing Lazarus was great. She is clearly scared of him and hisses about the “seven of swords” and “the reaper of death”. I was so glad to see her scramble away, she’s like a rat and I just want to spray her with like bug spray or something and chase her away. Nasty. 

Topside was a much lighter chapter than chapter 17. We get to hear what Lazarus is seeing and experiencing outside of the nasty tunnels.  Getting more of Lazarus’s inner dialog was great, especially all his little inner remarks about Carroll. It was a nice to get some humorous moments in there. Honestly I really want more of that in this book- hell I want more of the guards in general, because what we do get is really enjoyable. I like thinking about their interpersonal relationships, their sense of humor, their personalities. They might not be THE most important characters but they feel important to me, they were Kelsea’s friends and Elyssa’s too. They protect Kelsea to the very death and look out for her, I want to know more about them. In particular Mhurn but I suppose that’s a whole topic for another day.  One of the most obvious take-aways from this chapter was just how different Carroll and Lazarus are. Carroll really tries to be a knight in shining armor on the white horse where as Lazarus is the opposite. They are complete opposites in regards to their morals and how they operate. The result is this really nice yin yang that I found very enjoyable. I love getting to know both of these characters and Carroll has really grown on me. 

The comment about Carroll looking like he’s in love when he talks about Elyssa is interesting. Allegedly, supposedly, Elyssa slept with all her guards though this scandalous stuff hasn’t really come up yet except for poor Gareth. Will we get more details about it? I don’t have high hopes haha. 

The Edge on the Blade was a trip and a half. It was brutal, as brutal as Queen Arla. And Queen Arla is right up there with the Mort Queen. They should sit and have tea together.  This chapter started perfectly, the descriptions of the scene were vivid and life like. The detail and pacing was fantastic in my opinion. Arla is a cold calculated predator. She’s like ice until suddenly she strikes Elyssa so hard that she sends her to the ground, despite her daughter being 21 years old she still has almost complete control of her. The way she talks to Elyssa is nasty and the line about Elyssa’s womb not belonging to herself stood out. Unfortunately that statement applies to women all over the world as well. 

Bubble in the Ale wasn’t particularly interesting or exciting chapter for me. It serves it’s purpose in pushing the plot along and furthering the connection between Arliss and Lazarus. It also gives us more insight on Arliss and why Lazarus chose him to be the book keeper for Kelsea. 

Song of the Scythe was an absolutely wild chapter, but in a way that is vastly different than chapter 14.  Aislinn has become a leader of a budding rebellion of angry farmers. They break in and string up the bailiffs on Aislinn’s command. Considering it must have taken all the bailiffs or nearly all of them to horrifically murder her family, I didn’t feel bad. Either way they stood back and watched an 11 year old girl get raped horrifically and did nothing. Good riddance.

What was interesting to me was that the farmers had already strung up the priest. Granted the priest stood by during the violence, but I was curious if there was more to it than that or not but I don’t think we will find out. 

The description of the Pearce family was powerful, the grief that has turned to cold anger. The mother in particular saying she will die trying to kill Lady Andrews was powerful, after all she had to cut off her own child’s leg. If she can do that to try and save her beloved child then I’m sure nothing is off the table after such horror and loss. 

This chapter’s excerpt at the beginning is a quote by the one, the only the legend herself, True Queen, our girl Kelsea. Very exciting, we love to see it. Too bad it was followed by a chapter of her mother acting a fool. Earlier I thought Kelsea would be proud if she could see her mother giving the circus speech, let’s not show her this chapter, haha. 

The beginning was very scary and almost frustrating how she didn’t look for help. Choosing to go see Gareth didn’t really make sense, I suppose we are giving her some benefit of the doubt that she may be in part under some of Brenna’s spell. 

Choosing to get down and dirty with Gareth in the damn medical wing was ugh, just one of those things that made me shake my head. Even if she thought the guards were under some magic sleep spell STILL. I mean I don’t even kiss my partner in front of my family so I mean this was wild. 

Brenna is just one nasty piece of work. I already hated her and now I hate her even more she is so evil and so gross for this whole nasty scene. It makes me even more glad that she finally gets hers in the end, even if it takes decades. Be gone!  The ending of the chapter was sad and horrible, someone should have at least thrown Elyssa a blanket to cover up with, butt ass naked and then on top of that with Gareth’s...fluids running down her leg or something.

Reading the title of this chapter made me nervous, since we know the sketchiest things go on in the “Deep Patch”. I thought it was well suited that this chapter was number 13, considering 13 is the unlucky number, haha.  A few things were strange to me in this chapter. Dog fighting goes on in the Deep Patch? Now, dog fighting is disgusting and horrific but for me on the scale of evil I would think making dogs fight to the death would be less evil than making human children fight to the death. I was under the impression the deep patch was purposely reserved for especially twisted shit, I couldn’t really imagine much being worse than pimping out little girls or making little boys fight to the bloody death. Witchcraft being in the deep patch makes sense to me, dog fighting surprised me. Considering the fights to the death couldn’t even be that deep in the Creche since they were one of the first things poor Carroll. 

Arlene Thorne’s stable with the children with physical abnormalities (feel free to correct me if there is a more appropriate or polite way to phrase that) was surprising but I was almost wincing, waiting for it to get worse. I was curious about what the children said about offering diversions, Lazarus seemed much more freaked out than I felt. I don’t know it was just sad that the children with these conditions were being kept as pets or slaves of some sort but there’s so many things much more sinister than the mere existence of these folks which in it of itself isn’t a bad thing. 

Elyssa chapters are probably the least interesting for me still, but she has grown on me just a little bit. I’ll be honest, the relationsip between Gareth and Elyssa doesn’t really interest me. I did briefly wonder if Gareth was the Fetch using a fake name but I don’t think so now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he is one of the Fetch’s immortal men but right now I don’t remember their names.  Queen Arla is still very intriguing and nasty so I’m interested in what’s going to happen with her.  Thomas getting his ass kicked was great. I was surprised that Elyssa can easily over power him and apparently she’s kicked his ass multiple times. I was so glad when Elyssa left a guard with her but I don’t have high hopes that things will be OK for the poor girl. 

Brenna is still creepy and nasty and untrustworthy. I did find the comment about having to eat on the same table as the bones amusing. I could practically hear the disgust.