![9780062290366_0_Cover[1]](https://s48612.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/6a0105368f4fef970b019b00b41f3c970c-250wi.jpg "9780062290366_0_Cover[1]")
Do you like George R. R. Martin? Kristin Cashore? Phillippa Gregory? If you’re like me and pretty much go crazy for strong heroines, clashing kingdoms, and a hint of the supernatural, get excited for debut author Erika Johansen’s The Queen of the Tearling.
Nineteen-year-old Kelsea Glynn is finally coming out of hiding. Kelsea’s mother, the beautiful yet vain and stupid Queen Elyssa, died mysteriously eighteen years before, leaving the Tearling kingdom to be ruled by her equally stupid brother, the Regent. Together they succeeded in running the Tearling into the ground, emptying its coffers and enslaving portions of its population every year as tithes to the larger, fearsome, neighboring kingdom Mortmesme and its tyrant leader The Red Queen. Now that she has come of age, the tattered remnants of the Queen’s Guard retrieve Kelsea from the isolated cabin where she was raised so that she may take back the throne from the Regent, defy The Red Queen, and lead the Tearling out of its darkest times.
Johansen has created a very unique and vivid landscape for this book; an Earth from the future after some mysterious event wiped away all landmarks and technology but also left behind a few cultural relics like The Hobbit and the Harry Potter series. You’ll be rooting the whole way for Kelsea as she faces bands of mercenaries, snobby nobles, and corrupt officials and ultimately begins to blossom into a just and loving ruler for her kingdom. This is the first in a trilogy, and I already am anxious for next book to come out. I guess I’ll accept a movie deal starring Emma Watson as compensation for having to wait. It’s a tough life.
-Amanda