The Queen's Bastard (The Inheritors' Cycle, Book 1) (Paperback)

by C.E. Murphy (Author)
Key Phrases: tiny dagger, Belinda Primrose, Beatrice Irvine, Lady Irvine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Taking a break from urban fantasy, Murphy (House of Cards) turns to this uneven opener for a Reformation-inspired fantasy series. Belinda Primrose is a lovely young woman whose mysterious father, Lord Drake, has trained her to be an assassin serving Lorraine, the queen of Aulun. While Belinda is Lorraine's unacknowledged bastard, young Prince Javier of Gallin was secretly adopted by Lorraine's dangerous rival, Queen Sandalia, when her husband's untimely death caused her to miscarry the child who was to be Gallin's heir. When Javier encounters Belinda while she's on a spy mission in Gallin, he falls hopelessly in love with her, a devotion that deepens when they discover they're both witchbreed magic users. Murphy excels in depicting their passion, but readers looking for romance will be shocked when Belinda incites and abets Javier's rape of another woman, and the talky political intrigue frequently comes at the expense of much-needed action. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* In a world in which women are considered weak and lesser than men, three remarkable women wind up ruling three powerful kingdoms in the first of what promises to be an outstanding series featuring a masterfully intricate dance of politics and intrigue in a world with parallels to the Elizabethan era. Belinda Primrose, supposedly an orphan but truly the bastard of Queen Lorraine and her secret spymaster, Robert Drake, learns to hide her thoughts and feelings at a very young age, masters several combat skills, and executes her first assassination before she is 12. Assuming the identity of Beatrice Irvine, a young widow from a Scotland-like country, her pious attendance at church draws the attention of a wealthy young merchant prince who is an intimate of young Javier, who will be king when his mother steps aside as regent. Belinda and Javier recognize in each other a kinship in their ability to harness powers and do things that would ensure their execution as witches should anyone discover them. Readers will be eagerly awaiting their story’s next installment in the Inheritors’ Cycle. --Diana Tixier Herald

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (April 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345494644
• ISBN-13: 978-0345494641
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #202,389 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 1 in The Inheritors' Cycle Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Feminism, Masochism, and the Renaissance, May 3, 2008

By	J. Hanses (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a simple story of a trained assassin who also happens to be the bastard daughter of a queen. Our heroine is Belinda Primrose, raised by the queen's spymaster. She kills her way around Europe, posing as a lower class girl, and is finally given a cushy but more demanding posting in an enemy country, where she becomes the prince's lover. Rather than killing, she must prove her wit by finding evidence of a political plot. Unfortunately for her, she finds that the prince is the only person besides her father to share her own magical powers, and in their mutual feelings of loneliness and their feelings of empathy for each other, real love blooms. The fantasy/sci fi elements are low key.

I want to like this book, I really do, but I have several problems with it. Firstly, the plot to take down the enemy queen because she has some claim to territory belonging to Lorraine, Belinda's queen, shows poor diplomatic planning. There's a real absence to heirs to most of the thrones in play, with almost all of them going to Javier, Belinda's prince. Lorraine has no heir, and without an heir to continue her own political interests after death, it would make more sense to naturalize Belinda and marry her off to Javier, or just plain naturalize Belinda and make her the heir to the throne. The problem of Lorraine's lack of an heir needs to be solved before she tries to remove the other queens from her playing board, but it never even comes up in the story. Big gaping plot hole here that nagged me through the entire book.

Secondly, the book often depicts the weakness of women's positions. Yes, historically women of all classes have held less power than men. I think, however, that they managed to get through their daily lives without constantly thinking about the injustice of the world toward their sex. It's great to draw attention to the dark ages before the sexual revolution, but I'd rather see the characters coping with their regular lives than going about like a Monty Python peasant constantly thinking about how oppressed she is. It gets old.

And of course there's the masochism of Belinda's repression and the dominance/submission issues that run through every sexual encounter and almost all of Belinda's flirting. For the most part, this added to the story, but there's an extended physical and emotional rape scene, at which point the characterization of Belinda and Marius falls apart at the seams some. From that point on, when sex comes up, Belinda changes personalities and is neither herself nor her assumed role of Beatrice. It's as if Murphy wanted to write a sexually aggressive woman, but failed to write it into the character early enough. It's a very abrupt change from the doesn't care about sex attitude she had before, and if its going to be blamed on her witchpower then it needed to either be more subtle or more answers provided for the reader.

I'm torn over whether I want to read more of this series or not. It set up some interesting characters (though by the end of the book I found myself unhappy with all of them), uses multiple perspectives to tell a broader tale (though the switch between past and present tense can be irritating), and has some interesting political and social moves that I really like (including some of the sexual politics).

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Prose is lovely; can't get a grip on the heroine, May 30, 2008

By	Melusine (www.FantasyLiterature.net) (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

On paper, this novel is right up my alley. Court intrigue plus magic plus sex? Where do I sign up? I've seen comparisons to the Kushiel series and it's not hard to see why; it's partly the intrigue/magic/sex combination and partly the prose, which is lush and has moments of exquisite beauty. It was the prose that hooked me from the first page.

Unfortunately, other factors "unhooked" me later in the book, and now I'm three-quarters of the way through _The Queen's Bastard_ and not really feeling the urge to go on.

First of all, having the Queen's secret illegitimate daughter become a spy is requiring a lot of suspension of disbelief on my part. One would think Queen Lorraine would want to overprotect Belinda, even if she didn't want to acknowledge her, in case there came a time when she needed to reveal her parentage and name her heir to the throne. So I don't think Lorraine would be sending Belinda into mortal danger. And even if Lorraine never planned to legitimize Belinda or name her heir, Belinda would be a valuable piece on the board in terms of dynastic marriages. So I can't see Lorraine sending Belinda to seduce in the name of espionage. She'd want to keep her untouched. Stifling, maybe, but such was the life of noblewomen of the time Murphy is evoking. Jacqueline Carey's Phedre was able to do the spy/courtesan thing because she was a commoner.

I managed to shove this out of my mind, though, and sink into the story, at least until Belinda lost my sympathy completely. I think what Murphy is trying to show is that Belinda's witchpower, once unleashed, takes over her in some way and goads her to dominate others, but I feel like it was taken too far in the scene where Belinda sets up her maid to be raped. Belinda lost me there. I put down the book for about a week after that, and when I started reading it again, I had to put the rape out of my mind in order to keep going and keep caring what happened to Belinda.

I agree with the previous reviewer who says that Belinda's sexual aggressiveness seems pasted on; if this was part of the character's personality, there needed to be hints of it sooner. As it is, the dominant Belinda fits uneasily alongside the daytime Belinda and her "stillness."

Now I find myself simply bogged down. I don't know if Belinda's supposed to be the heroine or the villain, and I've lost all my interest in the dramas of Prince Javier's circle of friends. It's a pity; I was so excited to read this book and now I can't seem to prod myself to finish it. Maybe I'll come back to it with fresh eyes another time and give it another try.

I will say that I am enjoying the conflict within Belinda about her motives for being with Javier. It's interesting watching her shift from doing it as a scheme to further Lorraine's ends, to wondering what she and Javier could do as a team.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, May 1, 2008

By	Lisa "Fantasy fan" (Plano, TX) - See all my reviews

I can't believe I get to be the first to review this amazing book. I am a fan of C.E.Murphy's Urban Shaman series (not such a fan of the House of Cards), so I got this book as soon as it came out. I gulped it down in one setting staying up to 3am becuse it was so engrossing. This is nothing like the Urban Shaman or House of Cards series, it is hard to even believe it was written by the same author since the style is so different (in a good way).

The book is set in a version of Elizabethan England/Europe. Country names are changed (Aulun=England,Parna=Italy,Lanyarch=Scotlan),etc). Our heroine Belinda is the bastard daughter of the Queen of Aulun(aka, Elizabeth). The twist is that her father Robert Drake trains her to be an assasin at age twelve. The fantasy part comes in because Belinda, her father and certain other characters have powers called witchbreed.

Belinda is sent on various assasination/spy trips by her father. And on one of these meets another witchbreed powered character, our hero, Javier. The story, which is the first part in the series (? a trilogy) goes on from there.

What makes this story so amazing is the character of Belinda and the Machiavellan politics in which she is enmeshed. Belinda is not a sympathetic character- she uses sex as a tool, kills without remorse, and uses those around her to further her mission. There is a lot of sex because when she uses the witchbreed power she goes into an sexual frenzy. The things she does are not pretty, and at points I was disgusted/repelled and fascinated all at once. Hopefully there will be redemption (through love with Javier?)for her at the end of this series. The ending is a cliff hnager. There is mystery surrounding what exactly the witchbreed are (hints of some kind of alien race?).

All in all this is an intricate and amazing book.
The sex scenes(there are a lot) are not for the squeemish because of some graphic descriptions.

I can't wait for the next book!