Customer Reviews

The Born Queen (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 4)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In this finale to the kingdoms of thorn and bone, I was dismayed at the strange story progression, nonsensical plot-turns and personality-refits of some of the main characters.

Actually, it looked like Greg Keyes couldn't figure out *what* to do with Anne & Stephen and their story lines follow weird arcs. An author shouldn't simply invert the basic personalities of his main characters and say its because of "magic" and "power".

The only thing still lovable about this book was Cazio - and who cares if he is cliched?

But though this book doesn't really match up to its predecessors, it does concludes the series (albeit in a hurry towards the end) and there are bits and pieces of action that are enjoyable.

All in all - an average fantasy story. The first two books of the kingdoms of thorn and bone were good enough to leave you breathless. The last two just leave you listless.

I really wanted to like "The Born Queen," as I enjoyed the previous entries in this four book series immensely. I felt that the first two books were the strongest, with "The Blood Knight" starting to go in a direction that was...disturbing. The fabulously rich world and great mystery created in the first books seemed to give way to more convoluted plots and magical deus ex machina, but I still had to read Born Queen. With whole chunks taken up by overly complicated magical dilemmas and unclear descriptive sequences, it seems Keyes rushed his usual detailed but clear writing style so that "Born Queen" could hit the stores ASAP.

Don't get me wrong, I still think Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone is a great series, worthy of mention alongside Erikson, Bakkar, Cook and of course GRRM when talking about great "dark epic fantasy." I am in no way saying don't read Born Queen, especially if you have read the other three books. There's certainly something to be said about closure. I just wish that it had been done in a more satisfying manner.

The series overall is a 4.5/5 to me, with "Born Queen" being the only real blemish. But I'd still recommend the series in a heartbeat to anyone who enjoys epic fantasy.

The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, has been one of the most refreshing and authentic fantasy series in the past decade that still manages to deliver the goods. The ideas, the characters, the myths rang otherworldy in unique ways and wove a great story.

I knew I would be sad at the end of this book, to put Anne Dare, her compatriots and enemies to rest in my mind. But I had hoped for a nice 15 year aged port to complete the 3 course gourmet meal, and ended up with someting passable.

It was my distinct impression that too many words devoted to physical battles with monsters could have given way to flehsing out character interactions/motivations and a better denoument. Sure the pace stays fast, but at what cost?

The fourth book missed, where they other three played a phenomenal stage. Take it for what it is.

First off let me say that I read the books one after the other. That made all the more evident the disjointed plot line and nonsensical twists.

And dues ex machina in droves. I don't think I've ever read a story that has so much 'get the character in trouble in every chapter' and then rescue him. Almost everyone in every chapter was rescued in the nick of time. Add to that the characters were for the most part, completely out of character. There is a difference between character development and personality changes on this scale.

Usually I enjoy books that make the conclusion hard to guess, but not this one. Events happened that made no sense and seemed to have no bearing on the story. The pacing was also too fast. It made one character blend into another because all they ever did was visit magic places, fight or flee.

The writing itself was good and the story had potential. (the world did as well despite essentially being a copy of the medieval Christian church, Scotland, England, Norway and Italy with only enough change in actual languages to make me wonder why Keyes thought a pretense language necessary. I mean wairwulf instead of werewolf? What's the point?

Add to all this the plotting and pace were terrible, wild and all over the place. You had so much to work with Greg, but I'm sorry, you blew it.

Extremely poor ending book in an otherwise lightweight but enjoyable series. Based on this ending volume I do NOT recommend this series to anybody.

The author aaccomplishes one thing in this book that I have never seen before. Rather than develop his characters he managed to actually diminish them as the book progressed. Half way through "The Briar King" I felt an emotional bond to many of the lead characters. But by the mid point of "The Born Queen" I honestly no longer cared what happened to any of them.

For example take the character of Asper. I call him the "angry guy who is always chasing stuff". Not very interesting at all. Most other characters who were interesting at one time ended up truncated down to similar one sentence descriptions.

How I hated the huge multitude of chapter ending mini-cliffhangers. It's cartoonish to constantly put characters in deadly peril only in the last sentences of a chapter only to miraculously free them from danger in the first sentences of the next chapter dedicated to them. The author doesn't use this tired plot device a mere ten or twenty times, he uses it 200 or 300 times over the course of the four book series.

I could go on but it's not really worth it. Worst concluding book in a fantasy series that I have ever read (or skimmed, as it was too painful to wade through all the repetitive blather).

I must say that when I started this book I was immediately entertained. There was action, intrigue, etc. It continued on this way and I enjoyed every moment, eagerly awaiting each new plot twist, and then ... the final section.

It's not that this is not a good, well-written book. For about 3/4 of the book it was great, but in the end I feel that there were many elements in this story that should have been foreshadowed earlier in the other novels. The fates of Stephen, Aspar, and Anne herself, were surprising, but (especially where Aspar is concerned) I felt that Keyes reached a dead end in his plot and did a quick fix. While this is probably not the case, the lack of previous foreshadowing did not make some of the plot points cohesive enough for the story being told. The result is that instead of being amazed and wowed by the surprises, I was left thinking, "WTH?" and wondering if anything was mentioned previously that made some of these things plausible. Instead of keeping me wrapped up in the story, I was pulled out of it as I tried to recall elements about Aspar and others from the previous novels. I also noticed that some of the characters (Anne and Austra) seemed completely out of character in this novel. It is a bit of a literary betrayal when we, the audience, are lead to expect certain behaviors from characters and then, suddenly, they change up. I will try not to post major spoilers, but Stephen's plot line made very little sense. I understand why a Stephen-like character was needed to advance the story (the thrones, etc.), but it did not blend well with the rest of the story. Another issue that I had is that Keyes seemed to be going for an "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" theme, but if that is the case I think it should have been weaved into the story in earlier volumes. Fend is another sore spot for me in this story. SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING. Fend takes the time to go into a story about how Aspar needs him, blah blah blah when he could have just taken Winna and did what he wanted. This made no sense to me either. Fend is the Blood Knight and he has Vaix, and sedmhari with him, he didn't need Aspar. His subterfuge was unnecessary and added nothing to the plot. There were several other cases similar to Fend's where characters did things that were completely unnecessary and their only motive was to advance the author's plot.

I think that Keyes is a better writer than the last 1/4 of this book shows. While it is not a bad book and if you've already read the other three you'll want to read this to conclude the series, be prepared for some plot twists that make you say, "WTH?"

The Briar King was strong. The Charnel Prince was good. The Blood Knight was very, very flawed, but still tolerable.

The Born Queen is, simply, the worst concluding book in a fantasy series that I have ever read, and a mockery to the rest of the books on my shelves.

THE BAD:
More characters fall in love with each other over the course of 2 pages; 90% of the chapters end with a ridiculous cliff-hanger, half of which end up being revealed in the first sentence of the character's next chapter as having been no big deal at all; plot elements that were made out to be of vital importance end up having literally no bearing whatsoever on the story (for example, the Blood Knight is really not at all discernible from who he was before he became the Blood Knight); character development is virtually non-existent, and in several cases characters' actions are completely contradictory to their nature; one particular confrontation that has been built up to for some 1700 pages comes and goes anticlimactically in the space of a breath; fight scenes are virtually recycled copies of one another (as the utin/greffyn/manticore charges, a few arrows skip off of armor, a few hit their mark, then bow is abandoned for axe and dirk, Aspar takes a wound but ultimately gets the kill...rinse, lather, repeat); and the last 60 pages or so, which should ideally tie everything together and bring them to a nice close, are so rushed, so convuluted, and so utterly preposterous as to be practically unreadable. If not for my stubborn nature, I would have quit reading the book with 20 pages to go.

THE GOOD:
Cazio. He is the only character who I looked forward to reading about, as he was the only one who had any true development. But still, some of that was negated by the fact that every one of his chapters ended with him flying through the air, rapier in hand, beginning a fight against impossible odds.

Keyes was clearly rushed to get something finished, and clearly had no idea how to make it work. The end result is intolerably bad.

Through the first two books of the series, I would have recommended it with flying colors. Through the third, I would have still called it work your time. After reading The Born Queen, I would advise you all to avoid The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone entirely.

Like so many others, I eagerly awaited the release of The Born Queen. I positively loved the other books in the series, and was looking forward to seeing how all of the plot lines came together. I must say, I was a bit disappointed. It's not that this book isn't good, and it isn't that this book isn't an effective ending to the story, it's just that it wasn't up to the level of the other books, books that I ranked just a step below Steven Erikson and a step above George R. R. Martin.

To me, it just seemed like the plot wildly shifted from one idea to the next. I'm still scratching my head about Steven becoming the Black Jester. The whole idea of the "Thrones" smacked way to closely to Erikson and were sketchily explained at best.

I did like the way Keyes reincarnated the Briar King and even pulled the writings from the prelude of the first book into the final book.

Overall, this was a good book and a mostly satisfying conclusion, but I came away feeling a little let down.

The Born Queen by Greg Keyes is the fourth, and final, novel in The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. The previous books are titled; The Briar King (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 1), The Charnel Prince, and The Blood Knight (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Book 3). I had been looking forward tot his book for quite awhile, especially since I really enjoyed the first three books quite a bit. Here are my thoughts on this particular novel.

The plot of this book picks up where book three (The Blood Knight) left off. There are several different storylines going on within this book such as; Anne's rise to power, Aspar's need to protect the King's Forest, and Cazio's story. There are also a couple subplots sprinkled in as well. On the surface this book has a good premise and seems to be outlined well. However, the execution of the book was poor. In fact, there were a couple times during this novel that I felt as though Mr. Keyes did not write this, because it seems so different than his previous novels. The general plot line comes across as jumbled and haphazard. The actual pacing of the novel felt like driving a car that has a bad transmission, fast, slow, fast, dead, slow, repeat. It was very difficult to get into a grove while reading this due to the pacing and unevenness of the flow. The story's progression is also odd in several places. It seems as though all the build-up in the first three novels, setting up plot points, etc, was simply thrown out the window and new ideas and incomplete scenes are put in there place. In the end I was left feeling disappointed and frustrated over the fact that I spent three books getting to this point only to be left in confusion as to how the plot came to be this way. This book does offer an end to the story, but it is done in such a rapid fashion that there is, again, little satisfaction at finishing the story.

The characters in this novel are relatively the same cast as from the previous books, Aaspar, Neil, Mery, Anne, Robert, Cazio, etc. Much like the plot from the first three book, I enjoyed most of these characters in the previous book - particularly Cazio. Yet, in this novel (aside from Cazio) most of the characters felt alien to me. Very few of the characters felt much like they did in the previous three books. The dialogue of a couple characters is very different from how they talked previously. Characters made choices and decisions that they would have never made before, and almost all character development done in the first three books was thrown out the window. I fully understand that some characters were intended to go through dramatic transformations during this series, however, as a reader I still expect those transformations to be logical not just thrown out there to try and liven up the story. Aside from Cazio, I was never able to connect to any of the characters in this novel. This was especially disappointing because I enjoyed these characters so much prior to this book.

A few criticisms about this novel:

1 - The lack of continuity from the first three books to this book. Characters, plot, pacing, etc. I don't think it is too much to expect that in a series of four books, all the books have the same feel to them. That is simply not the case with this book.

2 - The pacing of this novel. I don't know if Mr. Keyes was trying something new with this book or just what happened, but the overall flow of this book made it near impossible to read evenly for a long period of time. Normally I read a book this size in 3-4 days. This one took me almost ten days.

3 - In a four book series the author has time to set things up, and plan things out. The ending of this book felt extremely rush and thrown together. I enjoy books where the ending isn't something that I expected, yet with this ending it seems that Mr. Keyes did things `just because'. It left me feeling cheated and disappointed.

A couple positives about this novel:

1 - Cazio. He is one of the few bright spots of this book. A character with a natural appeal and witty dialogue. I quickly began to look forward to his sections, if for no better reason than I cared about what happened to him.

2 - Solid world building. This is a very solid `real' world where environment makes sense and has a logical progression.

This book simply does not match up to the previous books, even a little. As I said before, I was a big fan of the previous books, but if this book had been the one to start the series I don't think I would have read beyond this book. There are some positives here, but I think the negatives far outweigh anything that resembles a positive. I really don't know precisely what went wrong, if the book was rushed to publication, or what, but I do know that my experience with this book was not a positive one. I have long been recommending the Briar King to readers; however with this book I am not sure I can do that any longer. If I do, I will be warning them that the first three books are very good and the fourth one falls well short. I really wanted to like this book, but in the end, I just could not. I was expecting so much more from this book.

The fourth and final volume in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series opens with war about to consume the kingdom of Crotheny. Anne has taken the throne of the kingdom, but has been declared a heretic and a witch by the Church, who have amassed an army to the south whilst their ally, the King of Hansa, mounts an assault from the north. Meanwhile, the death of the Briar King and the rise of the prophesied Blood Knight both seem to portend a time of great suffering, and Stephen, Neil, Aspar and Cazio face different struggles in different parts of the land to ensure the survival of the kingdom and the world itself.

Right from the off, something feels 'wrong' with The Born Queen. Despite having read the first three books in short order six months ago, I found it very hard to get into this book initially. Characters seemed to have suddenly changed or moved a long way from where they had been at the end of the third book, and were behaving inconsistently with their prior selves (particularly Anne, although that at least is partially deliberate). The plot suddenly felt a lot more mechanical. In the first three books the characters had good reasons for doing what they were doing, but in this final book the characters feel like chess pieces being moved around merely at the author's whim. People do things because visions tell them to, or because they are under a curse, or because certain characters can suddenly see into the future with pinpoint accuracy. Tonally, the book feels a mismatch with the first three, with the more Song of Ice and Fire-like realism of the earlier books suddenly lost in favour of dark twists more akin to those of The Prince of Nothing trilogy or vision and prophecy-based storylines that feel more akin to Dune. Unfortunately, Keyes is a lot less adept at these forms of storytelling.

In short, The Born Queen really feels like a book the author had to write rather than one they wanted to write. Character arcs are truncated and dealt with perfunctorily at best. The end-points for many of the characters are highly dissatisfying. The grand finale is a complete failure, with the story fizzling out without any real sense of menace or tension. We go from the build-up to the final confrontation to the "Where are they now?" epilogue in the space of two or three pages. Major characters' motivations (particularly Hespero and Fend) are left as a confused mess.

The book isn't a total waste of time. Cazio is still written superbly and his storyline can still be fun (everywhere else the good humour and sense of fun that permeated the early books has vanished without trace, leaving the other storylines as a grim slog), and the events of the book are a reasonable conclusion to the story, but the actual depiction of them is severely mishandled.

The Born Queen (**) is a startlingly disappointing and weak conclusion to what had been a very solid series. The book is available now in the UK from Tor in the USA from Del Rey.