The Unburied Queen is a tale of struggle, survival, and the Island. This new adult (almost) high fantasy novel, presents an unique fantasy world and an intriguing plot.

There's a lot of good things about this novel. There's a main character who communicates through sign language, and a cast of interesting characters. There's the main character, Loon, who is an anonymous royal. Nomor, Loon's best friend is a force to be reckoned with (& the aforementioned character who uses sign language). Kala is an orchardist turned assassin. Peter is Kala's best friend and town charmer. Tetra is a mage's apprentice and Kala's older brother. Slugs is an Oracle & Mage, who recently gained slugs as hair. This cast was a really unique combination, and I wish the focus was more evenly distributed amongst them.

All in all, this was a decent read, but it just didn't work for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Capes, & Capas LLC for an eARC of The Unburied Queen! I really appreciate the opportunity to read this!

Thank you Netgalley for my advanced copy of The Unburied Queen. I found this novel incredibly difficult to get into and I unfortunately did not finish this book. I just couldn’t push myself to continue with it.

The Unburied Queen sounded like a promising novel and something that I would have thoroughly enjoyed. However, I found it lacklustre. Particularly the first chapter which is filled with so much information it becomes distracting and boring. The first chapter just dragged on and on and on.

I wish I could have enjoyed this novel because it seemed like something I normally would have liked a lot. It is for this reason I rate this novel 1 out of 5 stars.

I like the story idea, I wasn't a huge fan of how it was done. The map feels very child-oriented and practically unneeded as it doesn't really show much. The writing style switches between basic and trying too hard to show off use of a wide vocabulary.

The Unburied Queen is a NA fantasy about a magical, sentient island sustained by the lives of royals. 20-year-old Loon is one of the islands princesses. After a storm takes away everything she has known, both magical and mundane threats lurk around every corner.

I really liked the overall premise of this - a magical, sentient island that consumes its royals' life force. There was some great fantastical and horror-esque potential here. However, I had a few issues with the execution.

One of those starts right at the beginning - the first chapter. The first chapter starts with two characters just sitting and having a long conversation. While I understand this is to rely information about the world to the reader, it does nothing to suck the reader into the story. In the second chapter, there are new characters introduced that also just wait and talk. It would have been more exciting to start out with some action - perhaps Loon going into the Pond instead of just having a long-wided conversation about it first.

Another issue was the plot in general for me. The current Heart of the Island, Queen Petrel, is unburied, which is to say she isn't sustaining the island with magic anymore. After that, it is unclear which of the royals will become the next Heart. Then there is a plot of a magician to usurp and kill all the Royals in which the commoners are also involved. This made absolutely no sense to me since you would think they want the island to actually flourish which it only does if a royal becomes the Heart. Then, all the royals are killed until only Loon remains. Why would Loon not want to save her siblings? If not for an emotional connection, then to make sure she's not the only option for the sacrifice. It would have been very interesting to see Loon find her siblings and a more organic way to introduce her to Kala.

Loon's character was another negative for me. Her entire arc was about finding a man and procreating. Nowadays, that is a highly problematic arc for a female protagonist. She had no actual objectives beyond that and at some point, becoming Heart. I'm unclear why she waited so long to do it, since the Island was slowly deteriorating. Her sensuality was a fine character trait but she needed some sort of agency. Her actions seemed very immature for someone in their twenties, she behaved more like a lovestruck teenager in my opinion. The only characters I liked were Nomor and Peter and I thought the disability and bisexual representation was well done.

Another thing that was lacking for me was the worldbuilding. There were a few things that weren't explained. For example, we are told that wizards are corrupted by reading Manuscripts, yet we are never told what the Manuscripts actually are or why they corrupt their reader. Then there was a bit of a cultural mess - we had a Middle Eastern genie and a European dragon, the names ranged from biblical to made up to bird names. Some consistency would have been nice here.

We also had time jumps every few chapters which was in some cases unnecessary and in others confusing. While this book is billed as NA, the prose level is YA. The sentence structure was repeated a lot and some passages were worded awkwardly, e.g. the author using phrases like "falling on my butt" quite frequently.

All in all, the overall concept was great but the execution was sadly lacking. To be publishable, the book needs to undergo a lot of editing. I ended up giving it 2/5 stars.

The idea was good, but the book in general is too confuse. Some things are too elaborate, some are way too fast. Again the idea was good but I didn’t like the way it was written.

I went into this one with low expectations and was completely blown away. The Unburied Queen centers around Loon, a hidden royal who’s in the running with the rest of her siblings to become the next Heart of the island. The Heart is responsible for maintaining the magic and the balance of the island, submerged in the middle of a pond. The premise of the book is incredibly unique, the pace is pretty well grounded, and the world building is fantastic! There were some aspects I would have liked to see explained or expanded upon (like why it was necessary for the royals to remain hidden) but overall the writing style, plot and characters all pulled me in and captivated me! The deaf representation also made my heart very happy!

"The Unburied Queen": 3⭐

(Unpaid Review: thank you to @netgalley, @capes and the publishers for allowing me to read this eArc copy in exchange for a review).

What's the most interesting world you've ever visited in a while? Was it Ketterdam? Was it Wonderland? Or perhaps, Neverland? Well, you should definitely visit this one!

'The Unburied Queen' is a story of disability, brotherhood and family bonds. While I did like the concept of this book a lot, I felt a certain difficulty in keeping up with the matters at hand.

However, this is a quick read and very enjoyable! I recommend it to everyone who's starting fantasy!

I really tried to like this book, but unfortunately that feeling never came to me through out reading this book. The concept and the world building of the story was interesting, but the execution fell flat for me, and I find myself getting quite restless while reading this due to the writing and the confusing time jumps. That being sad, I would definitely try and read it again if some revisions are made.

Thank you to the Author and to NetGalley for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review!

I loved the premise for this book, however the execution fell short for me!

I found the world-building to be confusing at times and due to the number of characters I found myself getting confused on who was who at times!

That being said I believe the world that is built is beautiful and the rep in this read is written well!!

The idea behind this book is interesting and promises an exciting and unique storyline; unfortunately, the execution is where it falls short.

First of all, the world that the author creates is extremely beautiful. The descriptive writing surrounding the world building allows you to get sucked into the pages, and it really felt at times like I could smell, see, hear and taste everything that was being described.

The disability rep is something that should be commended; it was written very well and was refreshing to see in a fantasy book.

As a whole, the magic system was interesting and quite unique, but was let down by a few factors.

The characters felt flat and unmemorable, the info dump in the first chapter is unforgiving and doesn’t serve the story well, and the pages dragged quite a bit.

In general, I’m not a massive fan of time jumps in books, and each chapter of this has a jump in some way or another. If it’s not a jump, then it’s an unnecessary clarification of what time of day it is, which I found distracting.

Overall, an incredibly promising story, but needs a little more refining.

Firstly, thank you so much @simonschusterca for this ARC!!
If you love fantasy and world building with tons of magic and magically beings, go get this book on October 23rd!!
This book was super interesting because it takes a very decolonized look at fantasy and magic and it has some really great diverse characters!
There’s characters of colour, queer characters, deaf and hard of hearing characters… it was amazing seeing so many groups represented in this fantasy world!
It is super world building heavy so the book was a little slow for my personal liking but the middle and end were action packed and really mysterious.
I could hardly put the book down after the first couple hundred pages because I just wanted to know what was happening!
I definitely recommend if that sounds at all interesting to you because I think it’s something that a lot of the fantasy genre is missing!

Some positive things I really liked about this book were the disability rep for deafness, the world-building, and the magic system! If you enjoy books with those sorts of things, you may like this book BUT it has ALOT going on. It's hard to follow and so much information. The characters are okay. I didn't really care about most of them except for Slugs. Slugs is one of the characters I liked from the book and Kala might be the one I like second best.

Loon, however, is the protagonist and I did not like her character at all. As you can imagine, it also made it hard for me to enjoy this book more. For starters, she comes off as very immature and underdeveloped. She. doesn't. really. do. anything. I definitely would not call her the heroine of the story whatsoever and by the end of it, I didn't feel she'd shown any growth as a character which would have been amazing to see. I also couldn't really figure out what the race of Loon was exactly. I think the culture and heritage of Loon could have been represented much better. Rep the culture - even in books! If it's made up or a fantasy race, you can still represent it in my opinion. Maybe the intent was not to dance around heritage or culture, but that's how it came across to me. Loon didn't even really seem to have an appreciation or love for her curly hair.

Also while this is an arc, 'm hoping that perhaps some more revisions and edits take place before publishing! The writing is very hard to follow at times for several reasons like with a few time jumps that happen suddenly, but some revisions would surely help with that. It would also help to shorten this book. It's incredibly long and it dragged on at times. I had to start to skim reading through some of it to get to the meat and potatoes. Furthermore, if you like happy endings, this is not going to be the book for you. I don't always need a happy ending, but this one just didn't work for me. I think overall the story has so much promise and could really be that 5 stars read provided some of those revisions take place.

Thank you to NetGallery for sending me an e-arc for my honest review.

This book had great promise. I was really intrigued by the premise and was excited to jump into it. Unfortunately it needs a bit of work. The world building was clever but needed a little ironing out and more clarification. Also a little bit of more character development was needed.

I would like to start this review by thanking Netgalley and the author of this book, Capes, for this eARC (my very first ARC, yay!)

The Unburied Queen is a unique story, I’ve never read anything remotely similar to this; Capes, the author deserves points for originality but, originality is not everything that a book needs to have in order to succeed. Let’s break down the (in my opinion) pros and cons of this book:

PROS

The world of The Unburied Queen and the world building:
Capes created a world that feels like it’s a character in it’s own right and, if I’m being honest, the world of The Unburied Queen is a better main character than Loon, the actual main character of the book.
Also, the idea that in order to survive and thrive, the Land needs to syphon the life force/energy/magic of off it’s ruler is quite nice and not overly done.
Disability within the story:
I quite liked they way the author wrote a character’s disability, her deafness was apart of who she was and not who she was.

CONS

Info dump:
There’s a major into dump right on the first chapter, which, in my opinion, is a recipe for disaster. I get that some things need to be said in order to grasp the reader’s attention right from the beginning, but that was a bit too much.
Length:
When I saw the page count I did a double take, this book is waaay too long. It’s one thousand a hundred and fourteen pages long, yeah, that’s right, 1114. At times the reading drags and, every few chapters I had to take some time to breath. Sometimes you need time to develop a story, but in this book we have instances that we get more of the same and it gets old pretty quickly.
Characters:
They are boring. Pure and simple. I felt pretty lukewarm about all of them. It’s not that they give off a similar ~vibe~ , they are actually quite diverse but, because I felt very meh about all of them, they eventually became a big indiscernible lump. They are alright I guess, but they are not memorable.

Overall, I will give this book 3 stars. Although The Unburied Queen didn’t work for me I can see where the author wanted to go with their story, the premise was intriguing but the delivery was lacking.

This review was also posted on my Goodreads page

The Unburried Queen is very unique, and I mean that in a very good way. It took me a bit to get into, but once I did, it wouldn’t leave my mind. I didn’t have time to binge read it like I would have wanted to and whenever I set it down to go do something else, I constantly wanted to dive back in and find out what was happening with Lune, Kala, Peter, Nomar, Slugs(and yes her name is slugs, I loved her and I think you will as well), and all the other amazing characters. I couldn’t stop speculating about the plot and what was going to happen next.

The whole book, you were like where is this going, how is this going to end, and then once you read the ending, it was a big wow factor. It ended in a way you wouldn’t expect, but you’d expect at the same time. I know that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but if you read this book you will understand. And I hope, that makes you want to read this book and understand what I’m talking about because I loved this novel and enjoyed reading it.

I’m not normally a fan of time jumps, but in this book I really liked it. They were written well and you could tell it was necessary for the story. In a lot of fantasy books, it takes place in weeks or months, but The Unburried Queen took place over many years and it felt a lot more realistic.

Honestly, the whole book felt a lot more realistic than the average fantasy book They has fantasy problems and lived in a fantasy world with fantasy creatures, but it felt realistic. Their thoughts, feelings, how they reacted to problems, and just overall how they acted, interacted, and spoke with one another felt so much like the real world. It was refreshing to see in a fantasy novel because a lot of times it can be hard to connect to the characters, but theses were so easy to because they didn’t act like the typical fantasy character. There was mentions of body hair, disability rep, and love that wasn’t the average fairytale love, but love that would be more likely to happen in our world.

The imagery and world building were astounding. It felt as if you were actually there, that you could smell everything, see everything in vivid colors, and touch and feel what the characters were.

I thinks fans of the Night Circus will like this book because of how it is written, but I also think that this is a book for all lovers of any fantasy. There is an adorable, yet sometimes, annoying bat, a magical island, fickle, but fun creatures. There is an amazingly well written antagonist that you will want to hate. You also get to see multiple sides of the story and why a person did what they did. This is yet another example of something realistic. Im our world, not everything is usually cut and dry and in some cases there are more than one side to the story. Not in all cases, as you can see in the Unburried Queen, but in some. I for sure recommend this book! Go preorder, if you’re seeing this before it’s published, and go buy if you’re seeing after publication!

Thank you to NetGallery for sending me an earc for an honest review!

Capes writes a visually stunning world with interesting characters, though I didn’t completely love Loon’s character, she was hard to relate to and I wish she had done more for herself and siblings.

I like that there was inclusion of a disability that didn’t seemed forced.

There seemed to be a lot of information that took a lot to remember. I didn’t love this book it could of been a lot better but it was interesting.

"He couldn't tell if to love was to fight, or to suurender, or to tire." From The Unburied Queen

2 stars

This book is a thick fog of confusion, with what seems like a few forced love stories throughout. There was a lot of insta-love going on. How does the magic work? We don't know. What does the actul geography look like? Shrug. Why were royals kept a secret before assasains? Who knows. If you can get past that, there is some good writing. It will take you awhile to figure out what it is saying at first. There is a LOT going on, without an explaination of what things mean. SO many things not explained that drove me nuts. There are some red flags with how Loon's hair is described, how it has (?) to be tangled because of the texture, and the way they handled signing and bisexuality; it seemed like it was added as a last minute gimmick. Kala insisting he wasn't an assassin when he was in fact killing people, just the ones on the other side, drove me mad. This was one book I was so happy to be done with; I would have certainly stopped reading if I wasn't reviewing.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchnge for an honest review.

I just want to say a big thank you to Netgalley and Capes for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Capes weaved an intricate world with a brilliant magic system. I loved the flow of the writing but I would really like to know how she decided to name her characters and places. Particularly the name of the Cities.

The flow of the writing was interrupted sometimes when every chapter, it tells you how time has passed. "That afternoon","two weeks later." I feel that that's something that was shown and told in the writing itself and didn't need to be announced at the beginning of every chapter.

The only character I really ended up liking was Kala.
I found Loon too boring and Peter's Jealousy about Kala and Loon's relationship soured his character. Nomor's suspicion and general dislike of everyone also kinda took away from her character.

This book was just...so sad.
It felt as if no one was granted a happy ending.
I know not every book needs a happy ending but it was just one thing after another.

All in all, I loved the world Capes built and the magic system that runs it. I just wish at least one character had a happy ending.

The Unburied Queen by Capes

Full feature for this title will be posted at: @cattleboobooks on Instagram!

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and Capes for sending me an eARC of this phenomenal book. I was excited from the get-go because that cover is stunning and the synopsis seemed so intriguing. Hi, here to let you know...it was that and more.

Just going to list off the things I loved, in no particular order: the premise, the stakes, Slugs, Kala, the writing, Peter's deep introspective drunkenness, Loon's forever unkempt hair, Nomor and Loon's friendship, deaf representation, how this book left me feeling briefly hollowed out but then filled me with such cute and bittersweet hope, Nomor's braid, the dragon, the genie, the concept of magic fueling an island and how that happens, the concept of loving and listening to the land, pollen on Kala's face, slime on Tetra's, Tetra, KALAAAAAAAAAA, Kala doing things and thinking things and stepping up for people and just Kala breathing.

This book comes out October 23, 2021 and I HIGHLY recommend it.