The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows | Book Review

Title: The Orphan Queen

Author: Jodi Meadows

Series: The Orphan Queen #1

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Romance

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Publication date: March 10th, 2015

Pages: 391

My rating:

Wilhelmina has a hundred identities.

She is a princess. When the Indigo Kingdom conquered her homeland, Wilhelmina and other orphaned children of nobility were taken to Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. Ten years later, they are the Ospreys, experts at stealth and theft. With them, Wilhelmina means to take back her throne.

She is a spy. Wil and her best friend, Melanie, infiltrate Skyvale Palace to study their foes. They assume the identities of nobles from a wraith-fallen kingdom, but enemies fill the palace, and Melanie’s behavior grows suspicious. With Osprey missions becoming increasingly dangerous and their leader more unstable, Wil can’t trust anyone.

She is a threat. Wraith is the toxic by-product of magic, and for a century using magic has been forbidden. Still the wraith pours across the continent, reshaping the land and animals into fresh horrors. Soon it will reach the Indigo Kingdom. Wilhelmina’s magic might be the key to stopping the wraith, but if the vigilante Black Knife discovers Wil’s magic, she will vanish like all the others.

Jodi Meadows introduces a vivid new fantasy full of intrigue, romance, dangerous magic, and one girl’s battle to reclaim her place in the world.

“The Ospreys, these children, were my life. Without them, I had nothing.

But with them… With them, I would take back my kingdom.”

I’ve been wanting to read this duology for forever, but somehow I always forgot about them and pick something else. But I’m so happy I ended up picking it up, because I was pleasantly surprised by this story and these characters.

I don’t know why but I went with pretty low expectations. I heard really good things about this duology, and since I enjoyed her most recent release I decided to give it a try, but I didn’t expect much from these two books. And that’s maybe one of the reasons why I liked it that much.

“Part of me wondered if those praises should make me feel guilty. But while I hadn’t trekked through the wraithland, I had lived through something horrific, and I did want the wraith problem solved.”

I will say first that there were some YA well known tropes in this book, not only when it came to plot but also with the characters and the romance. I feel it wasn’t an amazing unique story, but I have to say that as I kept reading I started to enjoy it more and more.

Though I didn’t fell in love with the characters, and they weren’t that innovative, I really enjoyed the journey each of them had throughout the story. Mel was a witty and intelligent main character, and she had a very interesting development in this installment, and her interactions with the other characters were done pretty well.

I especially loved the female friendship that this book had. Though it wasn’t my favorite type, I still liked how each girl cared and confined in the other, and the dynamics between them. Also I very much enjoyed the romance. It wasn’t insta lovey or rushed, and it took its time to developed and start to happen, which was my favorite part I believe.

“But how could I come all this way only to turn back? What had I told Melanie? A queen who wouldn’t take risks for her people wasn’t worthy of being a queen at all.”

The beginning was a bit slow and it took me a while to fully get into the story, mostly because the first few chapters I was thrown into that new fantasy world where I had to know everything that was going on, and it took me a bit to fully focus on the story.

Also there were some twists that happened more towards the end of the novel that were very predictable. Not only there were foreshadowed multiple times throughout the story, but also I feel one of those twists was a very used trope, and so I knew about it ever since the beginning, mostly.

Overall, it was a super addicting story, and it was one of those fast paced books, that even though they aren’t as innovative as other stories, they still contain some good fantasy things inside it, and I had a great time reading it.