After hearing so many good things about this indie novel, I was excited to finally read it. Unfortunately, I found The Queen of All that Dies to be disappointing for a number of reasons. Because my feelings toward this book are so jumbled, rather than writing a typical essay review, I am going to separate my thoughts into different sections.
What I liked:
1) The pacing-from the first page of the novel, I was hooked. The relatively simple, yet suspenseful prose was riveting, and even when the plot was lacking, I still wanted to continue because it was such a fast and easy read.
2) The potential– This goes along with the pacing in that in the first thirty pages, there was so much potential to build a rich and original apocalyptic setting as well as a seemingly impossible, but epic love story. In the end, however, the reader was given neither, which ultimately leads me to…
What I didn’t like:
1) The pacing-While at the beginning, the fast pacing was originally what drew me in, as the novel progressed the succession of events became almost dizzying because they happened so quickly. Rather than spending adequate time with each scene by including appropriate and enriching details, it felt like the author was rushing through everything almost with barely any thought.
2) The plot– …I just didn’t get it. I mean, well I understood the basics; The female protagonist has spent all her life fighting against an evil king of the world only to be forced to marry him and fall in love with him while turning on her own people. Sure, there were twists, but instead of a compelling storyline, the reader was left with only a skeleton of a plot that’s events were half-hazardly strewn together.
3) The worldbuilding– There was none. Usually when I read, I can at least visualize the characters and settings to a certain extent, but when I read this all I could see was the black font and white paper in front of my eyes.
4) The romance/characters-Once again, in the beginning I liked the main character Serenity. She was tough if a little bit one-dimensional. But I liked her.
King Lazuli, on the other hand, was downright horrible. Oh, in the first part of the book, he was charming, and I seriously thought the author would reveal some good side to him, some possible reason or motivation–however misguided–for performing all the horrendous things he did. Only…she didn’t. There was nothing, NOTHING redeemable about this character. He was a power-hungry mass murderer who felt no remorse for any of his actions. Even as a potential villain, he was entirely one dimensional, and the fact that he was supposed to be portrayed as a love interest? I couldn’t believe it.
Even worse, as soon as Serenity falls in love with him (though Thalassa never explains how she could actually love such a monster in the first place) all her strength vanishes. Seemingly within a handful of pages, she turns on her own people and believes that Lazuli is rightfully the king of the world even though he was directly responsible for *Spoiler* the murder of her entire family.
In conclusion, this novel started out strong, but left a bad taste in mouth for days afterward.
📚✔︎ Honestly wouldn’t recommend. I was looking for a compelling romance and what this book provided was an unhealthy, controlling and bordering-on-abusive relationship.
If I could summarize the book in one word: disappointing
writingthedreamblog 
July 29, 2017 at 6:28 pm
Good review–fair and honest. It’s too bad the book was not of equal quality.
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July 30, 2017 at 12:01 am
Thank you! Yeah, I was really hoping it would blow me away, and it just didn’t.
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