The Exiled Queen

The book I’m doing a report on is “ The Exiled Queen” by Cinda Williams Chima. It is an intense fiction and fantasy book following the first book “The Demon King.” There are a couple ideas that I believe the author was trying to produce when making this book. The one that I picked up on the most was that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. The book starts by picking up where the first book left off Raisa just escapes and Han Is heading for Oden’s fort. Han is leaving to go study his new found magic and Raisa is running from wizards who are trying to force her to marry one of them.

            From Han’s point of view, he just found out about his magic and is on his what to go study up so he can protect himself from the Bayer’s who are after his amulet. When he arrives at his new school everything starts out fine until he shows up to his magic mastery class. As it turns out a few of the Bayer’s were studying there too. This raises question as to if Han’s life is at risk being there.

            Raisa ran away from her kingdom to avoid marrying Micah Bayer. Although the two of them had a “thing,” it was strictly prohibited for her to marry him. Now the Bayer’s were forcing her into it by trying to use magic. She ends up at Oden’s fort to study as a soldier and to hide her identity. The curriculum is tough and what’s worse is she has to be on constant guard to make sure no one finds out who she really is. Even those who are protecting her don’t know her real name or her title. Every day she wonders how much longer she is going to be able to stay hidden.

            Above all I thing this book is suspenseful. As readers we know that Rebecca (Raisa in disguise) and Han (Raisa’s former captor) are at the same school. With that in mind I personally wanted to know if and how they would end up interacting with each other. On top of that you get the problem with the Bayer’s. Micah has it out for Han’s amulet and to retrieve his runaway bride and will stop at nothing to get them back. I remember constantly wondering if he was ever going to succeed.

            For me I can somewhat relate to almost everything they did. Aside from the killing, I completely understand why each character reacted the way they did. As for my opinion on the subject I am more in favor of the way they acted than I was in the beginning of the book.

            I loved this book and I feel it was beautifully constructed storyline. I would advise reading this book highly after you read this first one. There were a lot of tough situations that were creatively resolved.