I really enjoyed this read. There were twists and turns and I was thoroughly entertained. I highly recommend… if you like that sort of thing. ;)

With thanks for Netgalley and the author for giving me the chance to review this book.

The Queens of Innis Lear is the retelling and King Lear .

I really enjoyed this book.

Tessa Gratton’s The Queens of Innis Lear is an impressive retelling, managing to closely follow the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear while offering something completely unique.

Innis Lear is a beautiful and brutal land, a place with a deep-rooted culture of elemental magic. The arrogant and proud King Lear spurns the magic of the earth and rootwells, finding it “low” and vulgar. Under his reign, the only tradition that can be openly practiced is the reading of star prophecies. But the people and the land itself must have the magic of the earth, the rootwells, and the stars to survive.

But the princesses of Innis Lear may not embrace these traditions wholeheartedly. Gaela, Regan, and Elia each have their own reason to love or hate the magics of their land. With their own ambitions and desires, each woman struggles under the yoke of the star prophecies that supposedly foretell their fate. Gaela, a respected military commander who rejects all things feminine; Regan, a cunning and manipulative consort who’s desperate to become a mother; and Elia, a star-priest in training who knows nothing but obedience to her father.

These characters captured my heart – and broke it. Gratton made me care about each of her characters (and there are many), so the inevitable consequences of their poor decisions hit hard. I expected a dark story since the source material is a tragedy, but my heart was not prepared. One character’s struggles with infertility and miscarriage were particularly gut-wrenching.

This story is concerned with destiny and inheritance in a way that almost echoes the debates are nature versus nurture. Are Gaela, Regan, and Elia fit for the crown? And if they are not, is it because of their stars…or their choices? No easy answers are provided by the text, but I did find Gratton’s conclusion much more satisfying than the original story. Take that, Shakespeare.

Highly recommended.

Gosh darn it. I really wanted to like this. But it was dense and at times so boring. I hated the characters and felt like they were extremely predictable. Obviously this is a retelling so that makes sense but the sisters just felt like arechetypes: the tomboy, the pretty girl and the innocent one. Bah. Sad face.

This type of book is absolutely up my alley, I enjoyed the book but overall it took a lot longer to get through than it probably should. I actually haven't read King Lear and thought that what was tripping me up I don't think so. It was quite heavy and detailed and I think it bogged down the progress a bit.

Overall meh book. There was so much detail that it made the whole thing overwhelming. I think it was trying to be like The Queen of the Tearling but it just didn't hit the mark. It was interesting to be a fantasy retelling of King Lear and the characters were interesting but the book fell flat for me unfortunately.

Now hold on a second - this is the go-to type of fantasy I look for when shopping. Whoever wrote the book's description did a great job in presenting a story that many would want to read. A King Lear retelling is enough to get me and probably anyone to read it! I do think that sometimes, with certain authors, when they have such a beautiful talent for writing stunning pros, that their story can get a bit lost. We see this a lot in high fantasy with these giants of kingdoms and magical systems - so while I do not hate it, I think it would really aid the readers to have a sort of simplicity when explaining certain things that are key to understanding the stories. There is never a time where I will hate on beautiful writing, but I think sometimes it can cloud or overwhelm the reader to where they cannot really see the story needing to be told.

I'd hoped that this would be a compellingly different book in a range of titles who all boast similar premises - royalty, blood, magic, and intrigue - but as I read the story it felt like a rehash of these themes in an unexciting manner. I'll look toward other books to bring me the range I'm looking for.

Not really loving Sci-Fi/Fantasy right now, so I'm passing on reading this. I do love Tessa Gratton so I'm hoping to get to this eventually but I don't want to DNF based on a slump.

Excellent sampler that shows what is to come. This sampler was so enticing that I bought the book so I could see what happens next. Very entertaining though short.

I would like to begin this review by apologising to the publisher for my very late review. The Queens of Innis Lear was released back in 2018 and for one reason or the other I never picked it up which sucks, so I’m sorry.

Now moving on to my review. I don’t know if it would have been better if I hadn’t picked TQOIL at all after all. I didn’t like it. At all. Let me tell you why.

For starters, it was long. Very very very long, and the story dragged so much I had to literally force myself to keep reading. Even if it weren’t for everything else I’ll discuss later on, just the fact that it was so boring is enough for me to give a bad rating.

The reason I found it so boring is I think linked to the fact that I found no purpose to the story itself. Why was the book written? What purpose does this book serve? What new does it bring to the table, because as I see it, this is a retelling of King Lear that adds nothing new to the story it draws upon. In my understanding, retellings are supposed to draw on the source material and expand: show readers a side of the original story they have missed, or taking an aspect of the story an unravelling it in an unexpected way. All that to show a different side of the story, to highlight an issue, to do something. For the life of me I could not find this something in TQOIL. Just a pointless reimagining of King Lear.

Was I supposed to think that the new element would be adding black people, having female povs, or introducing magical elements? Is this the revolutionary way the author chose to change the story? Because I have strong objections for all those things.

I guess making the daughters black is supposed to add the much needed diversity the story has been lacking; ok I can understand that. But I can’t even categorise this story as diverse, since there is no blackness in the sisters apart from the colour of their skin. What I mean is that there is no culture behind them; they are just black for the sake of having black people in the book. Not only that, but they are also constantly being exoticised, which we all know, I hope, is part of being racist. How shiny their skins is, how big their hair, how exotic and different they are from the other people in the kingdom. Always talking about them and their beauty in contrast to the white people of the story, as if they cannot exist without an antithesis. Their mother is supposed to be a princess of this other kingdom full of black people but guess what; we never learn anything about them. All we know is that they are warriors, another case of stereotyping I don’t even want to begin discussing.

The other novelty is making the three sisters the protagonists; I guess this is supposed to make the story the pinacle of feminism. And it could have been, having been done right. What I got from the story is that in the end, the author perpetuated the very same stereotypes she wanted to dispell. Let me give you some context: there are three sisters, Gaela, Regan and Elia.

Gaela is the eldest and the most problematic of them. I’m not talking in sense of her character, because honestly I don’t care that she is cruel, or power hungry or unemotional. What I do care is the way she is written. She is always described as resembling her mother the most in terms of physical appearance. She is the sister with the darkest skin tone and she is the one who “acts as a man” the most. Red flag no. 1: describing your darkest character as the warrior who only cares for war, bloodshed and nothing else. Red flag no. 2: continuously describing your character in terms of male gendering. That would have been more than fine if it was stated somehow that Gaelia is trans; that she identifies as a man. Then yes that would have been awesome. But I’m certain that this wasn’t the case; she was just given male attributes to make her seem more brave and powerful and overall a King, as she likes to call herself. Red flag no. 3: having your character who you have established as very dynamic and powerful not wanting to have kids. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting kids, but in this context, and in the way she has built the character I can’t help but find it problematic. It’s as if she’s perpetuating the stereotype of the woman who in order to be successful and powerful has to shed every inch of her femininity along with motherhood, because god forbid a strong independent woman has such a weakness as caring for anyone else apart from herself. It came a little too close to the “bitch” stereotype for my liking. And last but not least, the issue of her sexuality cause she wasn’t problematic enough as it is. Again and again, we are told that Gaela doesn’t have sexual feelings, she doesn’t care for sex. Cool, and if it was stated that she is asexual (which isn’t)cooler. What’s not cool is making your most vicious and cold character asexual when you know that asexuality has been associated with unemotionality for so long. It is the number one thing asexualphobes (?) claim about asexuals: that supposedly they are cold and emotionless because they don’t like sex.

Moving on to Regan, well again the issue is racial. Regan is supposed to be the one with the lightest skin tone amongst the three; she resembles her mother the least and takes after her father (who is white) the most. And yes, she is described as the most beautiful of the 3. I don’t think I have to add anything else to that. Especially when comparing her to Gaela the racial stereotyping cannot be missed; Gaelia who is darker acts more “manly” whereas Regan who is more light is feminine, the one is bloodthirsty, the other is cunning (smarter in other terms) and many more.

As for Elia I don’t have much to say other than the fact that she was just a good girl. That’s it there’s nothing more to her, she’s just good and kind and honest. Good for her.

I also talked about magic. Well, there is magic in this book yes. And we know nothing about how it started, what puprose it serves, what’s its role in the story apart from making Elia and Ban look somewhat interesting for talking to trees. Following the way of the book, it doesn’t serve any purpose. No world building, no explaining, nothing.

The only thing I can give it is that the writing was semi decent. There was an overall feeling of living inside an ancient myth or something. That’s the only positive thing I can manage to find.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

The prose is gorgeous but the book was kind of a drag to get through in some areas. King Lear was not one of the Shakespear plays that I have read so I do not have much compare this to on that level but overall the story is pretty enjoyable.

I've never read King Lear but when I read the synopsis of this book I was definitely interested. This book was an amazing story with incredible characters that I absolutely fell in love with. It was compelling and addicting and despite feeling a little laborious to read at times, I didn't have any trouble getting back into this book and finishing it.

I would definitely pick this book up again for a reread and I'm sure I would enjoy it just as much the second time as I did the first!

The Queens of Innis Lears is Shakespeare's King Lear retelling and it was interesting to read. The story is divided in 5 parts, like the original tragedy, and it is told from multiple POVs. Some characters were more interesting than others (I preferred Elia, Gaela and Morimaros chapters) and they were all intertwined together until the very end. I also liked the writing style. So, why give 3 stars? The main problem was the pacing. I know I couldn't expect much action and I was fine with that, but after reading half the book this slowness started to bore me. If the book had 100/150 pages less, it could have been a 5 star read. Instead it dragged too much, especially in Part 2 and 3 where almost nothing happens. Plus, sometimes many things or thoughts were repeated unnecessarily. All in all, it wasn't a bad book but it could have been better with some adjustments.

So I've never read Shakespear's King Lear - so keep that in mind while reading this review.

It was honestly really amazing. The author managed to create such an intricate world, characters, and plotline that had me devouring page after page. There are so many morally grey and complex characters that I was just completely blown away by its execution. The writing style is just right too - not heavily descriptive, but enough to engage the reader between the lines. I look forward to re-reading this one in the near future

The sampler was intriguing and I'm curious to read the rest of the novel now. I've been a fan of Tessa's work for some time and look forward to spending more time with these characters.

A bit slow to start, but I loved this gender bent retelling of Lear. Gratton has a particular way of writing that kept my attention without trying and I devoured this story. Would love to read more of her work.

this book contains everything I love about Shakespeare, improved immensely by extra characterization and backstory. If you're a fan (or even if you're not--you'll be more surprised by the plot's twists and turns), I highly recommend The Queens of Innis Lear.

This book is one hell of a ride! The point of views were captivating as with the writing! The plot reminded me of Game of Thrones and just a really well done high fantasy series with epic adventures and badass characters. I loved that this was a female driven novel and the empowerment of women was prominent throughout even with hardships for the characters.

This book is beautifully written. However, it's definitely an awfully long tale of political intrigue and family drama. I liked it but the pacing was unhurried whichw as killer during the POV chapters of the characters I liked the least. Ella and Ban the Fox were absolute bores, especially when compared to the rest of the far more interesting cast.

The charcters more often than not made decisions that made absolutely no sense or had miscommunications that led to needless tragedy. I did like what the author did with the bones of King Lear transplanted into a secondary fantasy world setting