Review: The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows

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Title: The Orphan Queen
Author: Jodi Meadows
Publish Date: March 10th 2015

"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."


I'm still reeling. I stayed up way way late last night, I'm talking 4 hours later than I usually do, because I couldn't go to bed without finishing this book. Let's just say that by the time I finally went to bed, some people where just waking up for work. Yeah. But, it was worth it. Even though the story and characters and ending infiltrated my dreams.

Cover: I love the colors, and I love the font.

StoryLine: The story pick up in the middle of a robbery, and the story never stops from there. Chock full of spy missions, vigilantism, betrayals, secret identities, and plans to take back a kingdom, this books will suck you in and keep you there until the very last page.

Beneath all the action is some awesome world building. Magic has been outlawed since Wraith, the byproduct of magic use, has been creeping across the lands devouring and destroying everything. We get to see Glowmen, people who abused wraith like a drug and are now mutated and less than human, wraith creatures, things like kittens and bugs that the wraith has twisted into scary monsters, and all kinds of crazy other anomalies like floating roads and trees growing upside down. The visuals here are great and I can picture all of the terrors from the wraith so vividly.

And let me just take a second to rant about that ending. It's cruel, it's criminal, there should be a big ol' warning on the cover: "major devastating cliffhanger, precede with caution". I'm having a hard time articulating how this cliffhanger left me feeling. It's like I was standing a thousand feet up in the air, overlooking one of those views that just brings a bit of hope, and suddenly this trap door opens up underneath and I'm plummeting down down down. There's even #OQsupportgroup on Twitter.

Characters: I loved the characters here. Wilhelmina, Melanie, the Ospreys, James, Black Knife, even Prince Tobiah and the King. Meadows did a great job making complex characters, especially making you second guess assumptions you made about characters and creating sympathy for certain characters. And can we just take a second to talk about Black Knife? He was my favorite character in the book. I kind of fell a little in love with him. Dark and mysterious, is he a hero? Is he a menace? What are his intentions? Who is he? Just love.

Parting Thoughts: I don't read fantasy books too often, and this book had me asking myself: Why the heck not? I can not wait for 2016 to get here so I can see how this story ends. I have to know. Time to build a time machine so I can read The Mirror King.

4/5 Stars

Click the book's cover to go to it's Amazon page(Disclaimer: I am an Amazon Associate, meaning I earn a small percentage for the items bought through my links). Description from Goodreads.