This was really a 2 1/2 stars for me

The Steel Queen by Karen Azinger was..an interesting read. I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review and well here’s my honest review...

What I liked:

I DID like the premise of the novel and a lot of the characters that were introduced to the story.
I also appreciated some of the deeper themes of the novel, like the fact that slavery is bad, seeing people as “other” is bad, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What I didn’t like:

First there was the alternating POV for each chapter - normally I’m perfectly ok with that, I actually enjoy it in most of the time. But in this book it was poorly executed with a lot of the chapters being only 2 or 3 pages, so you never really understand the depth of the character - they’re just there to move the plot along (kinda)
The Spider Queen speaks in the second person the entire time. and. it. was. obnoxious. and. distracting. We didn’t like it at all (see what i did there??)
The main character - Kath - was a total Mary Sue. Maybe she develops into a person in the later books?? I don’t know. But for the entire first book the girl could do no wrong and everyone loved her. (puke)

All in all this novel felt like a goody-two-shoes version of Game of Thrones. I would maybe recommend it for a younger (like in their late teens younger) person who enjoys fantasy but hasn’t really been introduced into “EPIC” fantasy yet. If your a Game of Thrones fan you’ll either love it or hate it. I liked the book enough to stick with it - but I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series.

Happy Reading!

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Unsure; sampled and will either be a really epic, involved series or a wordy morass that doesn't go anywhere. A rather generous sample that was doing a good job of setting up the series/world-building, etc.