The Fate of the Tearling, by Erika Johansen | Book Review #269

The thrilling conclusion to the Tearling trilogy.

In less than a year, Kelsea Glynn has transformed from a gawky teenager into a powerful monarch. As she has come into her own as the Queen of the Tearling, the headstrong, visionary leader has also transformed her realm. In her quest to end corruption and restore justice, she has made many enemies—including the evil Red Queen, her fiercest rival, who has set her armies against the Tear.

To protect her people from a devastating invasion, Kelsea did the unthinkable—she gave herself and her magical sapphires to her enemy—and named the Mace, the trusted head of her personal guards, regent in her place. But the Mace will not rest until he and his men rescue their sovereign, imprisoned in Mortmesne.

Now, as the suspenseful endgame begins, the fate of Queen Kelsea—and the Tearling itself—will finally be revealed.

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The prologue to The Fate of the Tearling was incredibly interesting

, and probably one of my favourite parts of this book. As prologues do, they shed light on parts of the plot; which is exactly what this prologue did. And frankly, if the prologue wasn’t so intriguing I don’t think I would have read the rest of The Fate of the Tearling.

Something that is important to note about this book is that there are multiple points of view. There are actually 7 points of view. We read from the Fetch, Kelsea, Aisa, Katie Rice, Red Queen, Javel, Tyler and maybe a one or two more other characters. 

• Kelsea; current queen and ruler of the tearling; but in the last book gave her crown to her most favoured guard
• The Fetch, who I found out is old as heckle. There’s a lot of intrigue and secrecy around the Fetch, so I’m glad that we found out some things about him that we otherwise wouldn’t have. Yes, I am being vague here..I don’t want to spoil anything!!
• Aisa; a young girl was such an amazing character. It is disappointing that she ended up the way she did. Aisa was honestly one of my favourite characters in this trilogy. 
• Katie Rice — I found Katie to be an alright character. She wasn’t my favourite, but I didn’t hate her either. Katie proves to be an important character though.
• Red Queen; I had a prediction about the Red Queen and it turn out not to be true –which is a bummer. If my prediction had come true I’d thought that the Red Queen would have turned out waaay more interesting, since I only found the Red Queen to be annoying and baby-ish. 
• Javel —  I didn’t really like Javel’s point of view all that much honestly. Javel’s a drunk, proved to be a traitor in the last , just wanted to get back his wife. She’ll have nothing to do with him though
• Tyler‘s character was pretty confusing for me to read. His thoughts are pretty jumbled, and when Tyler gets paranoid his thoughts are even more of a mess. Tyler is a former low level priest that for the most part, is targeted and treated like complete crap from the head priest. 

I didn’t actually enjoy reading from all these points of view. Switching points of view so quickly can either be well done, or done not so well. While there were a few times that the changing pov’s were welcomed (i.e., I didn’t want to read from that character anymore), for the most part, I still would have liked the book more if the point of view was either from less people, or only from Kelsey’s point of view. In the end, all the changing points of view made the story slow and lagging. 

I liked that story wasn’t all that predictable. I mean, there were definitely some predictable parts. For the most part though the story wasn’t predictable at all. I’d think the story would go one way, and then the story would do a 180 degree turn and go someplace else. There were two other predictions that I had made, and they didn’t even come close to coming true. Which is a good thing, since I had predicted the death of a prominent character.

‘”Forget that!” Katie replied shortly; the word *sin* never failed to irritate her, and she was sickened by the idea that he had not found Katie worth saving until she was carrying a child.”‘

I thought the ending to The Fate of the Tearling was certainly an interesting one. I can’t say that it was my favourite, but I did enjoy reading what the characters were up to, after the fact.

There are a multitude of things that come to my mind right away when I think of what I didn’t like about the book. However, the only thing that immediately comes to mind is that there’s a sex scene in this book and the character has an insta-orgasm, which is so freakin’ dumb. 

I thought that the ending of this book was interesting. What I thought would happen certainly DID NOT happen at all. The ending actually feels like Johansen was trying to redeem the series.

I gave The Fate of the Tearling, 2 of 5 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read The Fate of the Tearling? What’d you think of it?

Happy Reading!
Adele