The Queen of Days has an excellent premise, a solid story arch, and a namesake–Tassiel–who rocks. Although the story alternates randomly from Balthazar’s point of view and Tassiel’s, the story feels very much like it belongs to Tass and not so much to Bal and his crew of thieves. It is unclear if this was the author’s intent, but the outcome is not hurt by this at all. In fact, time spent with Bal and his family gang is a bit tedious, since they are always bickering and shouting; it does make the reader wonder how they function in their profession. Tass on the other hand is a cool-handed character who doesn’t get swept up in the pettiness. However, this is a book that gains in strength as it progresses and the fantasy world mythology is intriguing. There is freshness in a young adult novel that doesn’t focus on love triangles but rather on family relationships. Lovers of both the heist novel and of fantasy will enjoy this book.

Review of an Advance Reading Copy Provided by the Publisher

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language: 87 mild obscenities; 14 religious profanities; 16 derogatory names; 50 scatological words; 13 anatomical terms; 1 offensive hand gesture; 42 F-word derivatives.

Violence/Gore: Reference to a bar fight; report of death of family members; character imagines blood spraying across face; extended scene in which lightning strikes (unnatural) a building and person (with brief description of person’s eye sockets smoking) and mass killing of individuals, charred bodies everywhere; character is knocked unconscious; verbal threats; plans to inflict violence; severe injury with copious amounts of blood; report of monster attacking family members; family members attempt to kill family members (in the past); pursuit with intent to do harm; reports and reference to prior acts of violence; extended fight scene involving explosions, bullets, punching, threats, magic, taken a hostage; characters attacked by magical creatures with shooting, grenades, pursuit, and destruction of one of the creatures; character attacked by another; reference to a father beating his daughter; brief torture scene; characters snap another’s necks (2 instances); characters detained at gunpoint; extended climatic fight scene involving shooting, explosions, magic to fight, destruction of property, resulting in death and injuries.

Sex/Nudity: Innuendo; reference to “peddling flesh”; a brothel; males strips clothes in front of a female and bathes, he becomes aroused (non-descriptive) pulls female into tub and she straddles him as they talk and kiss, cut to a scene the next morning where they awake in bed together, clearly after having sex; characters enter a room and a male is in bed with a man and woman and they hastily leave; reference to gods begetting demi-gods with mortals; reference to a dead father’s mistress; character is known illegitimate son of a man; male is attracted to a female; someone accuses a male of being in love with a female (not the case).

Mature Subject Matter:

Death, death of family members, massacre, treason, betrayal, politics, thievery, neglect/mistreatment of family member, revenge, banishment.

Alcohol/Drug Use:

Reference to bars; character started a fight in a bar; character is said to go drinking in bars; reference to wine; characters are drinking wine to excess at an event; a perfume is a poison.