Review: The Girl King

Title: The Girl King
Author: Mimi Yu
Series: 
Volume: 
Genre: fantasy
Release Date: January 8, 2018
eARC received through NetGalley
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Lu has grown up assuming that she will be her father's heir, the first female empress. Her younger sister, Min, has grown up assuming that she will always be stuck in the shadow of her sister. Then, their father names a male cousin, Set, heir to the throne, with Lu as his bride. Lu finds herself, for the first time, lacking the security of the place she assumed would be hers and, shortly after that, a fugitive on the run. She is determined to regain her throne, but for that, she'll need an army. This sets her out on a desperate quest to find a city that nobody has seen in years. Unexpectedly, she finds herself in the company someone who had been a childhood friend- until her family massacred his people in a brutal move to prevent them from holding shape-shifting power outside of the empire's control. Meanwhile, Min is discovering that she has access to a dangerous form of magic- one that could secure Set on the throne, or allow her to claim it for her own. 

Out of Ten: 6/10

Review at a Glance: A story that draws on a lot of familiar tropes, which is enjoyable despite some falterings in character and world-building. 

Review: This book reminded me of a lot of other stories, and it feels like potential, in the way that debuts sometimes do. There's a feeling of almost-there-ness that makes reading a bit frustrating.

In terms of plot, this book feels like a return to a classic formula- or, at least, a return for me. I'm not sure if there was a departure, or if I've just been reading other things. The scaffold it's built on is familiar- heir to a kingdom denied what they've always assumed was theirs by right, now in exile, magic which has been all but eliminated by an empire that hunts those gifted with it, the overshadowed younger sibling of the heir with darkness growing in their heart, pretender to the throne with a shadow adviser... And while The Girl King doesn't totally subvert or breathe completely new life into the old story, it at least does a good enough job of treading that path. 

The main deviation from the traditional recipe I've listed is Lu's gender. In a lot of the stories of this kind that I'm accustomed to (although not all of them) feature a male hero attempting to reclaim his throne. In The Girl King, as the name suggests, Lu is faced with her gender as- if not a barrier, then at least a significant hurdle. While she fully expected to be the heir to her father, the idea of a woman emperor (i.e. a woman playing a role typically only inhabited by men in this world) was not an entirely popular one. "Better him than the Girl King" was a not uncommon reprise throughout the novel. For me this was one of the most interesting parts of the story- the way Lu's cousin, who has taken the throne, feels that, not only is he entitled to it, but that she is not- because of childhood enmity, and because he feels her an unnatural thing, that such ambitions are unnatural in a woman. He at times, seems more obsessed with her lack of right to the throne; than his own right to have it. This insecurity means that even when he could consider himself cemented as emperor; he does not, fixated instead the specter of The Girl King, somehow simultaneously believing her a significant threat to him, and underestimating her in a lot of ways. 

While the novel ostensibly has both Lu and Min set up as main characters, according to the synopsis, Lu gets more screen-time, as it were, more focus, and more development. Nokhai's story and Lu's intertwine pretty early on, shortly after Lu and Min's stories diverge from each other, the result being that the reader winds up spending a lot more time with Lu and Nokhai than with Min, getting to know them both through their own eyes, and through each other's, as the narration switches between Lu, Nokhai, and Min. 

This might have contributed to my lack of equal investment in the sisters' stories, although it's also possible that I just don't find Min terribly compelling. I'm still trying to decide if the fact that it felt like she was supposed seem like she was gaining agency and coming into herself, without giving me the feeling that any of that had actually happened was on purpose or not. So it is entirely possible I'll appreciate her story line more as the story continues.

The romance between Lu and Nok honestly felt rushed and a bit out of place within the story. I know I'm not very romantic and so possibly a bad judge but just. With so much else going on and also the baggage between them, it just seemed improbable that it would move forward with so little communication having happened?

The other deviation from the traditional formula is the world. I found that on the world-building front, the structure of the world was vague, I had some sense what it looked like, a sense of a few significant events in it's history, and even some of the traditions of the various peoples. Somehow, though, not really a sense of what the world felt like to be in.There was a little more telling than showing, which took me out of the story a bit.

So much of this story felt like a sketch of a story. Partly because it does tread the lines of familiar archetypes closely, but also because the characters didn't really resonate with me, and the novel didn't really create a strong sense of place. I enjoyed the action scenes, and I really do think that there's a lot of potential as the story finds its feet. Despite the falterings, I still enjoyed reading it, and plan on picking up the sequel, especially with how it ended. The last 10% or so of the story was by far the strongest for me, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next!

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Some books that thematically reminded me of The Girl King: