
Title: Shadow Queen
Auther: Deborah Kalin
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 302
Rating: 3.5/5
From the Blurb
'I put out a hand to steady myself as the vision took me. The parquetry floor washed to black... As if sparked by the hard galre, a fire burst and raged through the room, the flames hot enough to crisp bones and raise the smell of marrow burning to cinders. And me in the middle, wrapped int he balck shroud of the dead.'
For Matilde of House Svanaten, accession to the Turasi throne is long overdue. But her imperious grandmother remains reluctant to hand over power.
When Matilde's mysterious aunt, Helena, turns up for the Turasi's most important festival, suspicions abound. Why has Helena returned? And why are there soldiers from the despised Ilthean empire massed at the southern border?
Hard on Helena's arrival, Matilde is struck by a vision marning of doom. And it isn't long before a powerful enemy strikes at the very heart of power, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake.
After narrowly surviving, the conflgration that shatters her entire world, Matilde must pit herself against her family's conqueror in a battle not just for the throne, but for her very existence.
review here @ my journal
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Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is intelligent and frightening. Agricultural companies rule the world, distributing sterilized versions of crops long ruined with diseases like blister rust, cibiscosis, and scabis mold. The Earth of the future is one gone to waste; politics, climate, and resources like food and energy (i.e. oil) have deteriorated. In Thailand, the government has set up factions to control their most precious material: a genebank containing original crop DNA free from existing disease and genetic enhancement, the epitome of all that is natural and good to the Thai people.






