I really liked the premise of this book. A long-forgotten sister of Arthur, Anne Pendragon and his only full blooded sibling. I loved that the focus, although set around the familiar tales we all know and love, but focused on the woman of the times rather than Arthur and his Knights.

The narrative was a little different than what I have read before, where it feels like we are following a character as they recall their past rather. than living in the moments with them. The beginning chapter was amazing, but then I felt the pacing was a bit off as I struggled to grasp what was happening and it got vey boring in the middle before it picked up again at around the 75% mark.

However, I did enjoy Anna as a character and seeing her growth throughout the story.

3.5 ⭐️

Anna Pendragon is to be forgotten. Married off at age 12. A mother at 13. She becomes a widow. Married off again for someone else’s selfish gain.

This poor girl deserves a break!

Beautiful Nimue will be the tool she wields to exact revenge, but will it accomplish what she hopes for?

👉🏻 I wanted to be obsessed with this book… and I just wasn’t. There were plenty of moments that were well written and lovely and made me want more. Unfortunately there were many more moments where I found myself skimming or reaching for my phone while reading.
I appreciated the commitment to the time period, but it felt like it was pushed too hard. Like at times, it felt forced, and like an over abundance of words to make it fit in the time period.

Queen of None is a retelling of King Arthur from the point of view of his sister, Anna, following her return to court after her husband's death.

This is a story of subtle rage and scheming, Anna was shipped off at 13 to marry a man in order to benefit her brother, and her return 20 years later is filled with pain and suffering. Used as a pawn, Anna desires to have more and enact revenge in ways she does not even realise. Once more she is married off by her brother, but this time she uses her power to create changes alongside her sisters.

Anna is more than just a sister, a wife, a mother - she is schemer and has the power to wield shadows to not be seen, allowing her to move pieces on the playing court to create change. The nature of the story itself is refreshing, Anna is willing to go to extreme lengths to not fall into a pit of desperation and allow men to keep using her.

The narrative is told in an interesting way, it seems as though Anna is recalling her past, and we see nudges and hints to the events to follow from the way she remembers certain events.

I did feel that the last third of the story was very different to the rest, and struggled to fully understand why everything was being done and the purpose of such a change.

This isn't a fantasy romance in my opinion, whilst there is romance the story is much more focused on Anna's growth as a character and her identity within the narrative. And the little romance that is in this is mostly about arranged marriages, something that Anna explicitly does not like.

This was an enthralling fantasy story on female identity, and I really enjoyed all the different character interactions!

This book was interesting. As someone who knows nothing about Arthurian tales, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the story. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I could. Lady Anna is quite the character. I wouldn’t say she was super likable, but I was rooting for her. She’s stronger than I could ever be under her circumstances. My heart ached for her in more ways than one.
One thing I will say is this is absolutely NOT romance. I’ve seen it categorized as such in a few places, but I think that’s misleading. This book is about Lady Anna taking back some power for herself and the women around/before her.

*Spoilers*
My biggest problem with this book was around the end. The first half of the book was strong, but it started to slack once Nimue came to be. I found that I couldn’t wait to get back to Anna’s Pov and when we did get back to her, she gave nothing.

Overall, I enjoyed the book.
3.25 stars

First, I love the cover of this book, it's so well done and eye catching. Second, this is an interesting take on Authorian legends. I'd not heard a lot about this side of it so it was cool to see it fleshed out.

I was intrigued by this re-release of a story from the world of Arthurian legend, focusing on the less written sister of Arthur, Anna.

When she was born, Merlin prophesied she would be forgotten about, and when Arthur marries her off to the much older Lot of Orkney, it seems to have already come true.

The plot thickens when she finally returns to court, hoping to be with her childhood sweetheart when Arthur (under Merlin’s influence) marries her off again, this time to the mysterious knight Lanceloch.

Barron perfectly highlights how women’s agency was often stifled in the medieval period, but women’s magic was a powerful force to be reckoned with, especially when women could work together. Various women characters in Carelon utilise magic to try and divert their destinies and fight back against Merlin, including Anna.

As I don’t have a huge amount of Arthurian knowledge, a few scenes slipped past me without a lot of context - two babies got swapped at birth without resolution and an eminent lady of the court disappears without explanation - I don’t know if that’s because a certain amount of knowledge if the myths is assumed, or their stories will get picked up in the remaining two books of the trilogy.

Throughout the book I really felt for Anna - her struggle with her prophecy became self fulfilling and she failed to see her own importance to those who cared about her, a flaw that clearly impacted her children and the course of history as she almost lost her sense of self. I’d definitely be interested to see how the story unfolds!

I will post a review on Instagram on the 8th May.

I really enjoyed this retelling of King Arthur. Anna is a character with great depth. Sometimes, I liked her. Other times, I was frustrated by her. I loved the strange power that awoke within her, a reflection of her own strength. It was interesting to read a women's perspective of King Arthur's story that was not Morgan's, though she has her place in the book. Well written!

I would like to thank NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you NetGalley for the eArc copy of this book for an honest review.

Such a pretty cover! It's detailed and it's blue. Definitely had me intrigued.

If you love the show Merlin and you love a good Arthurian retelling. Than you will love this book.

4/5- I would recommend

DNF at 76% because it was just not very interesting.

This was a very interesting concept about the forgotten sister of King Arthur which I found intriguing but nothing about the actual story actually lifted off the page for me in anyway for this to be interesting or engaging or exciting.

We all know varying tales of Arthur and his knights and Merlin and Guinevere etc., so it was nice to see these characters in a different light i.e. from a different perspective but it just wasn’t exciting enough to warrant any real investment. The pacing was too slow so I wasn’t sure what we were trying to achieve. There were too many names, too many strings of plot that didn’t amount to anything and then the magic that was there wasn’t particularly appealing or seemingly well thought out.

There was little to no romance which again is fine. It’s not a necessity but I tend to lean on romance when other aspects of a plot or characterisation or world building is lacking so when there was no romance it just continued to get more boring.

At one point, there’s a baby switching scandal that I’m still not sure why it was done because we don’t discuss it much again. There’s somebody switching magic that I don’t know why she’s done it. There was a blood magic book that she was able to read and I don’t actually know how or why she was able to read it. There was some incest that noone cared about so it was just constant confusion with no drama or action or engagement and it was just not pulling me in enough to continue or see how it ends because there was nothing for me to care about ending.

Thanks, to netgalley for the arc, but this was not for me.

It was interesting to see the perspective from other's person eyes.. I have to admit that somethings didn't feel properly okay for me and I know is fiction but the 12y old married part, sorry about the spoiler, made me a lot of confusion and I do love a good Merlin and King Arthur re-telling just wasn't the one I expected

This was a great retelling of the Arthurian story. It was a lot like The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker in that it tells about the women behind the crown. Almost all the characters around Arthur are more compelling to me than Arthur himself- Lancelot, Guinevere, Merlin, Morgan Le Fey, etc. But I’d never heard of Anna his sister. Being female in that era (or most others!) and as royalty to live your life as a political pawn wasn't easy. This was a thought-provoking and absorbing read.

2.75/5

I remember being enthralled with the world of King Arthur and Camelot as a kid. As I grew up, that fascination stayed with me. All these years later, I still read and watch anything I can get my hands on that relates to Arthurian legends.

'Queen of None' is an interesting story inspired by the well-known tales. However, there was some weird stuff that really detracted from the book, including some very uncomfortable intimate scenes. The timeline jumps were also off-putting. Despite this, I will probably end up giving the sequel a try at some point.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ebook ARC of the updated first installment of Natania Barron's 'Queens of Fury' series.

DNF. Will not post review to social media.

As much as I was very excited by the premise of this book, I was very turned off by the voice the author chose to use. It had a VERY strong "not like other girls" feel. Not just vibes, but directly in the text. I'm sure a lot of readers will identify with this feeling, but for me, it verged on a whining, self-superior voice that begged the reader to understand how *unique* the main character is. I made it to the end of chapter two, but I nothing truly hooked me enough for me to WANT to work through the aforementioned voice issues. Between that and the abuse in her backstory that isn't engaged with meaningfully beyond to give her a traumatic history (at least up to the point I read. I concede that perhaps the author engages with it later in a way that is complex and interesting), I have to strongly say that this book is not the right fit for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for the ebook ARC. All opinions are mine alone.

I really enjoyed this take of the Arthurian mythos, it was a unique perspective and I enjoyed how she reimagined characters we've known so long! Anna is a very minor figure in the Arthurian legends and I loved seeing her brought out of the mist and given a voice. She is very aware of her role as a woman and is fed up with being traded and used as a broodmare, so she starts to take action. It was a bit of a slow story but never boring and I think it's a good first book for the trilogy!

While this is quite slow paced, this was a great historical fiction! I loved the aspect of this being about a lesser talked about character. I wish it had been a little bit shorter to quicken up the pace but I did enjoy the love subplot !

I know very little about Arthurian legend, and Queen of None drops the reader in the thick of things with very little backstory. I felt quite lost when it came to who was whose parent and the legitimacy of said parentage. That being said, I think that library patrons who've been on a feminist Greek mythology retelling kick will enjoy this one as well. We will probably purchase it for the system.

Coming to this story with very little, general knowledge of King Arthur's legends - and mostly knowing them from Lancelot Du Lac's POV (French literature graduate here!) - I can honestly say I enjoyed this book very much!
The story is very captivating and interesting, and as usual, it's always nice to see legends and myths from female POV, especially if those ladies are crucial to the story, but not the center of it. And it was a nice change of pace, as most of these type of stories concentrate on Greek mythology, but the world offers so much more!
I will definitely read books 2 and 3 from this trilogy - I'm hooked!

Big thanks to NetGalley and the author for the free arc in exchange for the honest opinion.

I absolutely loved this book. With mythology retellings and mythology inspired books being very popular in the last several years, we don't see a lot of Arthurian lore explored. Natania Barron does a fantastic job weaving myth and magic into complex characters and a satisfying revenge arc.

I really liked the premise of the book and the idea, I think for me I enjoyed the book to a certain extent, I just think that maybe the writing style really isnt for me.

Thank you to the publisher for an arc of this book!

I am a huge fan of Arthurian legends, especially retellings from a women's point of view. And so I was excited when I saw this one, because it was from a character that not much is heard about. The author does a fabulous job of placing us in Ancient Britain -- in a way that is also real and fantasy at the same time. It reminded me very much of Mary Stewart or Marion Zimmer Bradley. She admits that she has taken liberties with the story, but honestly, I felt that they worked.

One of the things I like about this book is the main character is a mother, and I won't say she's older because she's in her thirties like me, but she's already lived a hard life.

Another thing I liked about the books is how characters we know are interwoven in! They don't all appear to be the same as we often know them, but it makes them all that more intriguing especially their motivations.

I do love Anna and I love her journey in this book. This was an absolutely interesting historical/fantasy/mythological retelling that was well written and engaging.

I look forward to continuing this series!