Just finished reading The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows. It is the first book of a two-part series. The setting is a land where magic was outlawed 100 years ago in an effort to fight wraith, a destructive by-product of magic-use which is slowly expanding across the land..
The main character is Wilhelmina aka Wil, a crown princess who, 10 years ago, as a young child witnessed the death of her parents by forces from the kingdom of Indigo and was then sent under an assumed identity to an orphanage in Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. She and a group of children escaped the orphanage and formed a gang called the Ospreys whose driving goal is to reinstate Wil as the queen she was born to be. Wil infiltrates the Indigo royal house to gain tactical information and finds out much more than she expects.
This book is really well written and has solid character development combined with action and intrigue. The motivation of the primary characters is revealed steadily throughout the chapters with twists and turns that are exciting and satisfying. This is not a standalone book, the end definitely leaves situations open that hopefully will be wrapped up in the next book, but the first book is good enough that I want to read the second. I can highly recommend this book as a good read.
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