[Review] Slave, Warrior, Queen - Morgan Rice

Titel: Slave, Warrior, Queen

Series: Of Crowns and Glory #1

Author: Morgan Rice

Publisher: Xxx

Format: Kindle, english, 250p

Synopsis: GoodReads

Review: 4*, GoodReads, LovelyBooks, Amazon

 

17 year old Ceres, a beautiful, poor girl in the Empire city of Delos, lives the harsh and unforgiving life of a commoner. By day she delivers her father’s forged weapons to the palace training grounds, and by night she secretly trains with them, yearning to be a warrior in a land where girls are forbidden to fight. With her pending sale to slavehood, she is desperate.

18 year old Prince Thanos despises everything his royal family stands for. He abhors their harsh treatment of the masses, especially the brutal competition—The Killings—that lies at the heart of the city. He yearns to break free from the restraints of his upbringing, yet he, a fine warrior, sees no way out.

When Ceres stuns the court with her hidden powers, she finds herself wrongfully imprisoned, doomed to an even worse life than she could imagine. Thanos, smitten, must choose if he will risk it all for her. Yet, thrust into a world of duplicity and deadly secrets, Ceres quickly learns there are those who rule, and those who are their pawns. And that sometimes, being chosen is the worst that can happen.

SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN tells an epic tale of tragic love, vengeance, betrayal, ambition, and destiny. Filled with unforgettable characters and heart-pounding action, it transports us into a world we will never forget, and makes us fall in love with fantasy all over again.  

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After I finished ‚Tower of Dawn‘ I was pretty stumped and had no idea what I wanted to read next. It was more a coincidence than anything that I started ‘Slave, Warrior, Queen’ and it was a good decision. I actually finished the book in less than 24 hours, although it is a very short book, with just over 200 pages.

Overall I enjoyed this book immensely. As it was very short and I didn’t know the characters yet it can’t compare to something like ‘ToD’, as there are so many feelings involved, which obviously wasn’t the case here.  Yet it was so easy to read and made me want to continue with the series right away.

Despite how much I enjoyed this book there were quite a few things that could have been done a lot better.

While the plot wasn’t all that original I did enjoy it and it was easy to follow but there were a few inconsistencies that annoyed me a bit. This goes hand in hand with the pacing.

The plot was very fast paced, which I didn’t mind as much, considering both the length of the book and the amount of books in the series, but at some times it seemed like parts of the timeline were cut and the timeline wasn’t ‘updated’. 

On the other hand there were also situations where things were “revealed” that had already been revealed.

Still those were minor inconsistencies and didn’t take away from the plot.

There was also some insta-love between Ceres and Thanos, but I think this was also a result of the pacing and I really appreciated the fact that her feelings for Rexus weren’t just ignored because of Thanos. She tried to work through everything as best as she could.

In general I would have liked to get to know the characters a little better, especially Thanos, as it would have been quite interesting to see more of the conflict between his views and his situation. And I would have liked to know a little more about Rexus, as we don’t know anything about him. But this is a more plot-driven than character-driven story and we have many more books to read and learn about the characters, so it isn’t a problem.

All in all I rated the book 4 stars because I really enjoyed it, but couldn’t quite justify 5 stars.