Queens Of Innis Lear by Tess Gratton
Book Review - 3/5 🌟🌟🌟

So I received this title arc, through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. This title will release March 27, 2018. While I did enjoy the overall plot and charcter building. At times it seemed to drag on, or get too wordy. I feel like some of the details were simply unnecessary. However, there was a closeness to Three Dark Crowns that also made it very hard to keep going. It was like re reading a book I had already read. There are some very good points, but more so I think it could have been different and much better. Unfortunately it was not until I reached the end of the book that it picked up to a more enjoyable pace. Also, I would have liked to have read more action scenes. 

King Lear has lived on the island of Innis Lear as its Star Priest and Ruler. Lears wife had died by his hands, because of the stars prophecy for her. Now the three daughters are waiting to see who the king will name as his heir. Elia being the closest to her father, should have the crown, but everything is about to change for Elia, and her sisters. The stars could not have seen this coming. 

Add this title to your GoodReads now, If you liked Three Dark Crowns, or Red Queen you may find this title intriguing. Not that is was bad, just not my pace. Remember you can get this title March 27th!!!

My opinion is only of the preview excerpt provided by Netgalley. The beginning of the book was a bit of slow for me, but overall I like it, and I'd buy it to see how this story develops.

(Review is for the entire book, not just the excerpt) First of all, this is a massively ginormous book-- it is over 700 pages. So don't expect to fly through this instantaneously, but it's well worth the read.
Someone compared this book to Mists of Avalon, and I think it's a worthy comparison. It's written in third person from multiple perspectives of the key players. This is a fantasy retelling of the Shakespearean tragedy King Lear. The three sister vying for the throne include Elia, the youngest and the most beloved of King Lear who is progressively becoming more and more mad, Regan, the middle, who is fiercely in love with Connely and becoming a mother, and the eldest, Gaela, who is a fierce warrior and who always was heir to the throne. Other key players include the husbands of the first two girls, and Ban the Fox, bastard son of Errigal, who has always been in love with Elia. Each of these characters is richly painted, as is the world building, which is fantastic. Even though this book is massive, I never had a hard time going back to it or wanting to finish it (and I've become more impatient with this as I read more and more books), and I actually wanted to savor the prose because it is beautifully written. I enjoyed most of the characters but probably my least favorite was Elia herself, although she needs to be allowed to grow throughout the book. This book is impressive to say the least, but just to warn YA readers, it's definitely not written in a YA format; it is very much written in an adult style, so just abandon those expectations, but I feel like if you do, it's well worth the ride.
Overall, an impressive epic fantasy Shakespearean tragedy.

I got a sample of about 200 pages. The first few pages when we were first getting to know the characters were a little slow for me, but overall I’ve enjoyed the characters and am looking forward to reading to full book.

The Queens of Innis Lear is an amazing high fantasy novel. I fell in love with the writing right away, it was so poetic and that made me just flew through it.
And the characters were also so amazing, each one of them were so perfectly developed,
Thankyou Tessa Gratton for writing this book and giving me the change to read and review it!

Really fun excerpt! It's a great start to the story and definitely something that I'm interested in delving more into in the future!

Very intrigued based on this preview! Can’t wait to read the whole book!

This book is a heavy read, but it is beautifully written. I've already preordered a copy so that I can finish the book!

I might like this book if I were to complete it (full disclosure, I only made it about 25 percent of the way through this sample), but right now I find myself avoiding reading because I'm just not excited to pick this book up. With a new world and so many POVs, it's hard to get invested in the story and understand what's happening. I'm not sure why I don't mind that structure in other stories but am not a fan in this instance, but it's not working for me in this book. If other people wind up raving about The Queens of Innis Lear, I'd probably give it another chance and make myself push through more of it, but right now I don't care for it and decided to put it down so that I stop avoiding reading.

Perhaps choosing to read what we were given of this book in eBook form was a mistake for us.

The Queens of Innis Lear is a retelling of sorts of the Shakespearean tale of Lear and while it has a new fantasy setting that's intriguing, we found ourselves unable to follow along the changing viewpoints and the threads of story that wove them all together.

I was a bit torn on this book. Reading the blurb, I thought it would have a Three Dark Crowns feel for some reason, but its completely different and I cant say it’s in a good way. I feel like nothing much happened to be honest. The book was set around this one night, where the King is going to choose his heir and it’s all about people getting there. There are some schemes in works for example, Ban The Fox, bastard of Errigal. I don’t understand his full involvement in this story.

What I do like about this book, it was easy to read. The words flowed for me and before I knew it, I was half-way. Maybe because there are like five different point of views in this book, there wasn’t time time for lots to happen.

I am also torn on the characters. I don’t hate Gaela and Regan even though they completely shun their younger sister because she chose to still love her father after their mothers death. I had hoped for more details on that in the end. There is just so much unanswered so I am hoping there will be more in this series.

I also have to touch on the relationships in this book. Gaela has taken their mothers death extremely hard. She is unable to form proper relationships with people and the relationship between her and her husband seems really unhealthy. The only person she is able to love is Regan. Regan believes herself to be the other half of Gaela and will do anything for her. Their dislike of their youngest sister also seems extremely harsh seeing as she was just a kid when their mother died.

The most interesting relationship is between Ban and Elia. Childhood love that goes on top adulthood yet they are separated by status and distance. At first Ban seems like a really good character but his obsession with how others see him is a problem. I dont know what silliness this will cause.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. It has left a lot open for further books and I am hoping for a lot more to happen in a possible sequel because this isn’t enough to be a fantastic book in my opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me review this book and Tor books for supplying it for a honest review.

When I requested the arc of The Queens of Innis Lear  I almost knew next to nothing about this book. I knew it was a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear with a very strong female cast and to be honest that is all I needed to know. I love Shakespeare and as followers of my blog might know all-ready,, I have weak spot for powerful woman. You don't need to be a huge Shakespeare fan to enjoy this book, but I would highly recommend you look up the synopsis of King Lear before diving into this story.

 I myself absolutely loved it. It is my first 5 star read of 2018 and it just blew me away. I loved how the story kept largely true to the original story, but how Tessa Graton added several more layers and depth to the story. Even small parts of the original story were in-bedded in this retelling but got a whole new meaning in this fantasy context. And of course that is the main difference with the original the fantasy setting. 

Marvelously executed! I absolutely loved the detailed world-building.Lots of time is spend describing places and settings, but it never gets boring. Quite the opposite really, it brings this mystical world to live. I hope the printed edition will have a map because that would have made my reading experience even better. I kept feeling the need to look at the map so I could visualize even more. 

Apart from that The Queens of Innis Lear has a very intriguing, mysterious dark magic and believe system. In this first installment not everything is explained and revealed. But that what you do experience makes you long for more. I want to know all about how the tree magic works and how the stars are read. The magic system in itself goes wonderfully with the dark and mysterious world that is created. Its complicated with a serious amount of depth.

And the writing, lets talk about the writing for a moment. It was so hard not to fall head over heels in love with the lyrical and poetic writing style. You really could feel Shakespeare in the story, but more accessible. It is not as heavy and confusing as an original Shakespearean play might ready. Its a big book, but you fly through the pages, just wanting to know what is going to happen next. And for me that proofs how good this book really is, because I know what was coming next and still I kept craving more and more.

And then there are of course the ladies in this story. The Queens of Innis Lear.... The story is told from multiple POV's and apart from one they are all female; Tessa Graton did a wonderfull job giving each of the Lear Daughters their own voice. The characters are well developed and have their own background story; And yes, each in their own way are strong, independent woman who fight for what they believe in. 

I can hardly wait to continue on with the series! I wouldn't be surprised of The Queens of Innis Lear  would end up in my top 10 favorite books of 2018!

...Was that it? Was that the end of the book? Was that all that happened in this long, backstory-infested exposition-fest?

I'm so unbelievably disappointed.

The Writing and the Worldbuilding

The writing was excellent—truly. Tessa Gratton really has a way with words. Plots, on the other hand? Ehh, not so much. She seems to be of the opinion that you don't need a plot as long as you continue to "develop" your characters, and that said characters don't need plot to develop, but rather incessant backstory, every other chapter, for 500 pages. You can write as lyrically as you want, with as many crazy long paragraphs that go nowhere as your heart desires, but you'll never literally be Shakespeare, Gratton.

This book didn't actually do anything until the literal 50% mark, and when it did finally do something exciting, Gratton decided the best way to ruin it was to write the whole climax (or inciting incident? I can't tell anymore) in an omniscient, nonphysical narrator perspective, instead of any of the gathered characters present in the scene (all of them, to be exact; all of the perspective characters were in that scene), which only made what should have been exciting and intense feel distant, detached, unimportant, unfeeling. She decided that the only scene of any real, immediate significance was better off reminiscent of a movie playing on a TV in the background of a diner, with the audio turned off, and the subtitles lagging. That was what it felt like.

Besides that horrible choice, the book moved at a snail's pace—no, a glacial pace, but without the aid of global warming. It was a glacier moving steadily into an ice age. It was so slow.

Luckily, the world Gratton built was rather interesting, and I found my self intrigued by it.

The Characters

Disclaimer before I begin: This book was so character heavy, any character I might have liked at the beginning, became such a chore to read by the end.

Disowned Princess Elia of Lear: She was nice and trusting. I found myself relating to her a lot, and her loneliness with and without her family was palpable.

Princess Gaela of Lear, Wife of Astore: This freaking psychopath is so freaking annoying and angsty, like, we get it, you wanna be a man so you can be king and all that, and you're willing to do whatever it takes, even a hysterecomy, and you wanna murder your dad because he probably murdered your mom, maybe, idk. I don't need 50 thousand backstory scenes to understand that. I only needed like 2, maybe 3. But...you're an heir even if you're not a man, so can you just, like, cool it?

Princess Regan of Lear, Wife of Connley: She was interesting, but not enough time was spent on her and her relationship with Connley, or the psychologocal ramifications of repeated miscarriages, so she ended up feeling less ~sneaky and manipulative~ and more ~Regina George wannabe~

Ban the Fox, Bastard of Errigal: He was so interesting and cool, but Gaela was Gratton's legitimate child or something, because this poor Jon Snow got ignored way too much. I wanted to know what he was doing! He was actually cool!

Aefa, daughter of the King's Fool: She was fun, but didn't really do anything.

King Lear: He was effective, I guess. Classic mad religious zealot king.

King Morimaros of Aremoria: He was fairly interesting and I'd have liked to learn more about him, but unfortunately, for all the time spent in backstory in this book, it wasn't equally distributed *cough cough* the author picked unfair favorites *cough cough* Why did she like Gaela so much?? *cough cough*

Conclusion

I knew this was a retelling of King Lear by Shakespeare, but apparently it was a retelling of Act 1 only. I haven't read King Lear, but this made me want to, just so I can see if Shakespeare actually sucked this hard, or if Gratton just isn't very good.

If she isn't planning on making a sequel, I'm going to stab someone and then get 50 thousand backstories, and then probably a hysterectomy—you never know when you're gonna be king! But hey, even if she does, I probably won't read it. Not with a first book like this.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review "The Queens of Innis Lear
by Tessa Gratton" Morally, I can't read or review this book. I can't support someone who harasses others.
Sexual harassment is a real thing happening in our society today and I do not take it lightly. I will be removing this author from my Goodreads completely.
https://medium.com/@channelingbrave/these-comments-appeared-on-a-slj-article-comment-thread-regarding-sexual-harassment-in-the-kid-lit-a25e3aef85f1

Excerpt received only. So this is based on what I have read. A good start, with both lovable and hated characters. This one does contain traces of incest and wannabe transgender. Out of all the queens I only liked Elia, although her character appeared to be small and more wallflower. Ban was my favorite. I felt sorry for the husbands married to the two sisters. At some point I’d like to read the rest.

'The Queens of Innis Lear' is a retelling of King Lear set in a world of magic, political intrigue and badass female characters.
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I had a chance to read a long excerpt from #netgalley and holy crap. I loved it so much. The writing is gorgeous and breathes right off of the pages, the world building is i n t e n s e. and so is the magic system. And this is by no means a short book, so I'm extremely curious as to what the whole book will hold.

I haven't ever read King Lear by Shakespeare but i had no trouble with the book but I'm sure if i had it would've been all the more fun. apart from the intricate writing, the characters were my favourite part. They seem so layered and carefully thought out. and most importantly, they are all so flawed and you know I love me some screwed up people. It's undoubtedly my most anticipated release this year.

This was everything i have been looking for in a book. A well written fantasy full of depth and intregue. With a game of thrones feel, this is easily one of my top reads of 2018

The blurb on this story was intriguing but the story itself fell on its face. It was a complete mess of mixed stories that left you hanging. In fact, I wondered if something happened to my copy because the way the story ended was like someone tore out the second half. Confusing and muddled mess.

I was given this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t see this was only a preview before I requested it.
So far it seems intriguing, but I only read a couple of chapters. I won’t leave a full review until I’ve read the whole book.
I’m looking forward to reviewing the book when it’s closer to its final stage.

It's impossible for me, make a review on 190 pages. The book it's composed minimum by 576 (Amazon). It's impossible. I will read this few pages but I don't write a review on a book incomplete.