Abjectly awful worldbuidling and forgettable characters

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When I first picked up this book, the title and summary caught my eye. I don’t usually read murder mysteries, but the plot sounded interesting enough to give it a try. Unfortunately, the book didn’t live up to my expectations.


I had a lot of issues with this book though I don’t want to go into too much detail because it hasn’t been published yet. My biggest gripe was the plot. I’m a plot over characters person, so even if I don’t like the characters (I didn’t), I can still enjoy a book if the plot is interesting. The plot of this book is a basic murder mystery, and the fun part of murder mysteries is playing whodunnit and trying to guess who the murderer is. The middle section of the book, where the queens are being killed one by one (this is not a spoiler, the title says they die), was an enjoyable section. I was having fun trying to figure out motives for each character to be killing the queens. However, the actual murderer isn’t even introduced until the last quarter of the book, which entirely ruins (IMO) the point of a murder mystery.

Secondly, I really didn’t care much for the characters. Varin was bland, but all Eonian’s are portrayed as bland since they’re literally supposed to be emotionless so I guess he’s just being a successful Eonian. Keralie, however, was insufferable. She read like those angsty female YA character that insists she’s dark without ever acting as such (see: Adelina Amouteru, Kate Harker). Their romance seemed forced at best, with the two of them managing to fall for each other in the span of less than a week. There wasn’t much of a build up other than Keralie’s occasional badly-timed innuendo. This was made even worse by their incredibly inappropriate time/place for their first make-out session.

Finally, and this is what pains me the most, was the worldbuilding. At times, locations felt oddly empty. Quadara is run by four queens, each with an advisor, and the queens aren’t allowed to leave the palace. There are some guards and some maids but it seems like that’s it? There’s no reference to any of the other bureaucratic positions usually required to keep a country running. Supposedly, there are other countries that Quadara trades with, but they seem to be of so little importance that they’re not even considered as potential queen-murdering suspects.

Other times, the worldbuilding felt almost non-sensical. Each quadrant of Quadara has their specialties, but what isn’t mentioned is that trade and travel between quadrants is so highly regulated that citizens of one quadrant would attend black market auctions to get a taste of life in a different quadrant. When one quadrant has holographic projections and genetically modified citizens while another is in a literal pre-Industrial Revolution era (‘no electricity!’ says one queen early on), you really have to wonder why? What could possibly be the justification for preventing the one quadrant that can make food from using machinery to increase and optimize food production. Or create genetically modified crops that could have the potential of growing in other quadrants. If genetically modified humans are a norm, surely crops can’t be much more difficult.

Overall, I give this book a 2/5. I can see where other people would enjoy this book, but it simply was not for me.