A Desperate Attempt To Take Charge Of Her Own Destiny.

I recently finished reading The Scorpion Queen by Mina Fears.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 2.5/5 stars

"Deep within the imperial palace at Timbuktu, Amie has suffered a devastating loss. Once the daughter of a prosperous salt merchant Amie’s life was cruelly overturned in a matter of months. At sixteen, Amie now finds herself disinherited, framed for a scandalous crime, and forced to serve Princess Mariama of Mali . Her father, Emperor Sulyeman, has created a series of impossible trials for his daughter's suitors. When they fail, he publicly boils them alive, littering Mariama’s path to marriage with ninety-nine corpses.

At first, Amie’s life at court is drudgery—the chores are difficult, the servants despise her, and Princess Mariama is prone to mood swings—but the more she learns about the princess's circumstances, the closer the two girls become. Amie and her intended, Kader, plan to escape Timbuktu and make a new life far away from the shadow of death that has fallen upon the emperor’s court, but she finds herself increasingly drawn to the princess in ways she doesn’t understand.

When a mysterious discovery forces her hand, she must choose between fleeing with the boy she loves or helping the princess to end the trials forever. Amie will need to draw on all of her strength and courage to make the perilous journey through the desert to seek the aid of an exiled god in a final, desperate attempt to take charge of her own destiny."

The Scorpion Queen had a lot of potential and a lot of good ideas that never really coalesced into a good story.

The first forty percent of this story or so felt like an entirely different book than the last. The first part is almost entirely devoid of magic and is more a royal family drama while the last half goes into a completely different world with so much magic and very quickly built systems and world building. The first half of any book should be establishing the second half but this felt like they were so disconnected to as not be necessary to each other. Magic goes from not really existing to being the solution to every problem.

Well let me start with what I liked: the plot, especially at the beginning was really well thought out. I typically don’t like stories that lean heavily into “men are terrible to women” territory because it usually isn’t done well and the men are written as cartoonishly evil and not enough priority is leant to the ideology of female friendships being so strong in worlds like this. But, this author had a very strong inclination towards female friendships, and the cruelty of many of the men presented is actually depicted as quite realistic.

The FMC, Amie, was very realistically written, being smart but also having her moments of immaturity. Amie was actually a pretty interesting character to me, she was one of the few I have seen who was just happy with her lot in life to be married and just settle down in the society that works for her until all that was taken away and even after that, she is more fighting to go back to the status quo of marrying this guy than trying for anything broader or more grand. It's a different perspective from a lot of YA heroines so I didn't mind it but I don't know if it was utilized that well in her development as the author seemed to get wishy washy about her motives and actions.

What could’ve been done better: The plot progression starts very very slow but then ramps up after 100 pages or so. It then slows down again without picking up until the last 3 chapters of the book. The plot of the book isn’t even technically resolved. Yeah they complete their main mission but like…another issue is presented during the course of their quest and it’s left unresolved. Same with the entire concept of the rebellion, which is happening in the background without progression or resolution. We are introduced to the concept of the “Scorpion Order” early on which is a group that has magic and so, logically, I believed that the title of the book “The Scorpion Queen” was referring to either the FMC getting involved with the order and learning magic to progress her plot or someone else being involved with them or with magic. None of that happens. They’re just kind of…there. And show up a couple times. The one queen we do meet or have contact with has nothing to do with magic, the order, or even really scorpions at all. The character’s also seemed to be written rather flatly. A lot of character development is harried along by saying, more or less, “and then for the next few weeks we became friends”. I know this is probably a fault of this being a debut novel, but it is such a cop out to short cut character building and relationship building by saying “and then we became friends over a period of time!” The same could be said between the romance of our FMC and Kader. I’m told a lot that Amie loves him but I don’t really experience it or even know why. We are just told she does. At first I thought it was intentional but the more I read the more I realized the author just doesn’t build up any character relationships at all. The language and structure felt a little immature but I don’t know if that is because of the author or because this book is maybe a lower level YA book. The FMC is 16 so it could go either way.

I think the biggest disservice goes to the author, Mina Fears. She had a great idea with this story, and I wish that her publisher and editor would have taken more time to review and edit this book before rushing to publish it. Instead, they rushed through and left a debut author to fend off readers. This book could have been a much higher rating for me, had there been more of a contribution from the editors.

As a total and complete side note I was 100% convinced at some point in this book it was going to become a sapphic novel. The way Amie talks about the princess, how beautiful she is, how her heart races when she’s around her, how she has an “unnamed feeling” she is “too afraid to examine” about her, how she can feel the heat of where their skin presses together, how the princess smells….all felt very sapphic to me. The princess even, at some point says she loves Amie only for the end of the book for them to shove them into the friendship box. SHE EVEN SAYS SHE MISSES THE PRINCESS MORE THAN THE DUDE SHE CLAIMS TO BE IN LOVE WITH AND WANTS TO SEE HER MORE WHEN ON HER QUEST! Bruh. What a waste.

In all I see so much potential but alas, there are too many elements that fell flat to me. Overall, this was just pretty disappointing.

Check out The Scorpion Queen, and discover what happens when your left with a challenge.

Happy Reading :)