"A Queen in Hiding" by Sarah Kozloff, secret love-child of Tamora Pierce and GRRM

So Tor’s schtick with this series is that it’s a four-book series, but all four books were released in quick succession. Book one came out in January, and book four came out like two weeks ago. Great for those who don’t like beginning finished series (I’m not one of them). But there are very, very good reasons that sort of thing isn’t usual. For one thing, most authors can’t really afford to just write and write and wait until they have the entire series to start publishing them. It’s also a major gamble on the part of publishers - much safer to release one, see how it does, and then decide to release the rest if it sells. So for Tor to do this with this series is a HUGE vote of confidence on their part. It seemed like a bit of a shaky investment at first, but Kozloff made a believer out of me. I’m super interested in reading the rest of the series. So! Premise. Queen Cressa is the ruler of Wierandale, a nation watched over and protected by Nargis, the spirit of fresh waters. The Queens of Wierandale are always granted a magical power of some sort by Nargis, though Cressa finds hers (the ability to make people forget something through her touch) rather less than useful when it comes to the day to day ruling of her country. She is in a degree of consternation because her daughter Cerúlia, at 8 years old, has yet to manifest her powers despite being a few years past when she should have. Her talk of being able to speak to animals is dismissed as childish fancy. (Spoiler alert: she really can talk to animals.) The plot thickens in two different directions. One, the rival nation of Oromondo, which has been under a mysterious blight for years, is getting belligerent and eyeing its neighbors because the people of Oromondo, it turns out, like food. Two, Cressa is a rather ineffectual ruler, and her council is making moves to usurp her. She flees the capital before that can happen, hiding Cerúlia with a peasant family (and erasing their memories of who Cerúlia really is as a safety precaution) and fleeing to join her husband (admiral of the Wierandale fleet) at sea. There are also a few secondary points-of-view sprinkled about: a servant at the royal palace, the usurping Lord Regent, a high-ranking Oromondo military officer, and a young scholar in the Free Cities. I can certainly work with that as a premise, but I’m not going to lie, the beginning of this book was slow. I definitely had to push myself a bit to keep reading for the first half or so. That was one of my complaints. The other is the Lord Regent, who seemed very much like a cookie-cutter villain. I’m not concerned so much by either complaint. As for the first, things speed way up around the midpoint, give or take. Definitely had trouble putting this book down for the second half. And the Lord Regent is … not as central as I thought he was going to be, at first. So, what about that admittedly-click-baity title? That’s really how it felt to me. It kind of swung back and forth between young-girl-who-can-talk-to-animals and Westerosi brutality. And it works. It definitely works.