Review: North Queen

North Queen by Nicola Tyche
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

*Huge thanks to the author and Netgalley for an opportunity to review an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

What a polarizing book this was for me. I have some stuff to say but before that, let's talk about things that did work for me (with one rule: ignore the first 25% of the book).

I appreciated the barest hint of magic in this one. For once, you know, I think a hint of magic in a book is exactly what I need (especially when I was tandem reading this book with a heavy magic/fantasy book). Also, court drama? I'm always into the internal turbulence of any type of institution. The messy, the better. Also, I didn't expect the marriage of convenience plot there. I was expecting the pining for the childhood best friend type of love but nope. Nice job by the author there.

Nevertheless, what the author did right, she also went completely off the track in another way. Well, at least in my humble opinion. Because listen, that first 25%, was utter shit. I swear, I've never read something so useless to the plot it was infuriating. I probably would've dnfed it so fast if it wasn't an ARC. Everything in that first quarter is cringy, hard to read, and nonsensical. I wanted to reach my hands into the story and pushed the characters in the right direction, repositioning them right, smacking their heads some. It was that frustrating.

With that said, as this was this author's debut work, I get it.

It felt lost. Yup, the plot seems to be lost. It doesn't know what it was supposed to be, so it was kinda wandering in the dark, trying to find its pacing and direction. You can condense the first 25% in a few pages and you wouldn't lose anything from the story, it was that redundant. In this case, since I don't know anything about publishing, editing or writing, I wish someone could point this author in the right direction because, beneath all these issues, this book has its better moment. Or as I like to call it, this book has some good meat. The bones need to be restructured a bit but the meat is there.

The characters sure need some better characterizations, it sent shivers down my spine whenever I remember how bad it was in that first 100 pages. The motives were there, it was pretty decently established. The worldbuilding could need some help, especially during the first half *brrr shivers* but it was pretty good.

To make it easier to imagine what I went through with this book, here were my feelings. The first 25%, shit. The next 50%, average. The final 25%, amazing.

So, where did that leave me? This book was NOT bad though, despite my frustrations. Just because it took me almost a month to get through the shitty part, it's not that unreadable. It left me wanting to continue the series. There's this also complicated fond feeling I have for this book because this was a debut work from the author and the book did find its pacing and rhythm in the end.

No matter what, I believe that this author is just going to get better from now on. And also, hey, maybe it was just me that found the whole initial establishment of the story unbearable.

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