Serena’s Review: “The Hemlock Queen”

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Book: “The Hemlock Queen” by Hannah Whitten

Publishing Info: Orbit, April 2024

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: The corrupt king August is dead. Prince Bastian has seized the throne and raised Lore—a necromancer and former smuggler—to his right hand side. Together they plan to cut out the rot from the heart of the sainted court and help the people of Dellaire. But not everyone is happy with the changes. The nobles are sowing dissent, the Kyrithean Empire is beating down their door, and Lore’s old allies are pulling away. Even Prince Bastian’s changed. No longer the hopeful, rakish, charismatic man Lore knows and loves, instead he’s reckless, domineering and cold. 

And something’s been whispering in her ear. A voice, dark and haunting, that’s telling her there’s more to the story than she knows and more to her power than she can even imagine. A truth buried deep that could change everything. 

With Bastian’s coronation fast approaching and enemies whispering on all sides, Lore must figure out how to protect herself, her prince, and her country before they all come crumbling down and whatever dark power has been creeping through the catacombs is unleashed.

Previously Reviewed: “The Foxglove King”

Review: While “The Foxglove King” wasn’t a perfect read for me, it did solidly set up the series in all of the ways that mattered. The world seemed interesting. The characters drew me in. The ending set up a bigger conflict to come. And, best of all, I wasn’t completely turned off by the love triangle being set up (truly a rare thing). On top of that, Whitten has yet to truly let me down with any of her books, even if I’ve liked some more than others. So it was with great eagerness that I finally got to this book when going through my TBR pile!

This was an incredibly interesting second book in this series. On one hand, I do think it’s the kind of sequel that asks its readers to put a lot of trust in the author and the over-arching plot of the trilogy as a whole. Its’ definitely a middle book, setting up a lot of moving pieces that will not see a conclusion in this story. As well, in the first third to even half of the book, several of the characters read very differently from how they appeared in the first book. Lore, our feisty survivor, spends much of the beginning of this story in a very passive, reactive role. So much so, that we see her willfully sticking her head in the sand about what is going on around her and becoming distrusted to reliably act by those close to her. But, as the story progresses, I really enjoyed the character reflection that this brought about. In the first book, we see a Lore who will fight to survive. But much of survival is also endurance and remaining out of the way in dangerous situations, and in this book we see a Lore who knows how to adapt quickly to whatever circumstances she finds herself in, prioritizing her day-to-day existence over radically challenging anything around her. This is a much less sexy side of survival, but I think there’s a case to be made that this trait is even more important than “fighting.”

I also enjoyed the nice parallels between Lore’s awakening to the reality of her own situation alongside the stirrings of the old gods themselves. We get so much great information and backstory for these gods and the story twisted and turned in many exciting ways. There were tons of reveals, but by the end, I still felt like I had barely scratched the surface of what is currently going on with the gods and what had happened between them in the past.

Returning to the “trusting the author” theme, Bastian, too, was a character who read very different at times in this book than he had in the first. Here, I feel like the explanation/understanding of what was going on was fairly easy to predict early on, thus assuaging any fears of fans. But I have still seen several disappointing Goodreads reviews where readers essentially DNF’d this early saying that Bastian had gotten the “Tamlin treatment” from ACOTAR. This book just goes to show how readers need to give stories a chance to develop before jumping to conclusions and potentially missing out on an excellent story.

As for the third member of our group, we see a lot less of Gabe in this book than in the first, which was my biggest disappointment. I did like the scenes we had with him, but he very much felt like a background character for much of the story. This makes sense as far as the story goes, especially with Lore’s own character arc of slowly accepting the truth about their situation, but it does leave him with a much-reduced plot from what we saw in the first.

As far as the romance goes, I feel like the author has to be setting up more of a throuple situation at this point than a true love triangle. If anything, I found Lore’s repetitive thoughts about “why can’t I have both” to be a bit too on the nose, especially given how often she reflected on this point. Now, I don’t love throuple stories personally, but I will say, this is by far the best variation on this type of romance that I’ve read. While it’s not my preference, Whitten has laid down excellent groundwork building up strong relationships between all three characters. There’s also the very real possibility that this will all end in tears. Who knows!

Overall, I thought this was an incredibly successful sequel. The story is slow to start and asks the readers to trust that the characters will work through their challenges, but once it gets going, boy does it move! There is a ton of world-building included in this one, and I also enjoyed the greater scope of the political situation, with other countries now nipping at the heels of a seemingly weakened new King. The story also ends on a fairly massive cliffhanger, so readers beware as far as that goes! But, if you enjoyed the first book this series, definitely check this one out!

Rating 8: A sense of dread slowly simmers to build to a climatic crescendo that will leave readers aching for the next book in the series!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Hemlock Queen” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Most Anticipated Adult Romances of 2024 and Epic High Fantasy/Romance/Mythology in 2024