Review--The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten

 

In the second installment of New York Times bestselling author Hannah Whitten's lush, romantic epic fantasy series, a young woman who can raise the dead must navigate the dangerous and glamorous world of the Sainted King's royal court.

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.

I am finding that I just have mixed luck when it comes to Hannah Whitten's books. I enjoy the concept and storyline of her books but sometimes I just have a hard time getting into the story. Which is where I fell in with The Hemlock Queen, the second book in The Nightshade Crown trilogy.

This is a series that seems very heavily focused on world building. I feel like things get so built up, so detailed out that I lose focus of what the actual plot is. It's hard to describe really. I guess I just felt there was so much focus put on basically everything but the plot that I felt lost at times.

Needless to say, my memory was pretty fuzzy on the first book as I think I felt the same way about that one as I did this one. But in the moments between all this describing of the world and such, there were some really intense plotlines that I lived for!

We have quite the bit of relationship drama in this world. I mean, I am not even sure what shape we would call this pseudo triangle involving three people who basically all love one another but they can't be together for various reasons. Relationship drama is a pretty apt description. 

Since Gabe has taken on higher title of Priest Exalted, relationships are pretty much out for him despite his growing feelings for Lore. Lore is now entangled with Bastien who is soon to be king since the old king is now dead. But Bastien has been behaving strangely lately and Lore isn't sure what to make of this new development.

Because of my shoddy memory of the first book, I can't quite recall what we learned in that one about things to compare to the "new" things we learned here. Like how new was this or were we aware of these things before? I feel like at least one thing was already known, but alas, memory problems! Needless to say that things took on a serious development in this one that will be life-altering for Lore and her friends.

Despite my muddled confusion over some of the world aspects, this one moves at a somewhat decent pace. I'd say it falls somewhere in the middle of slow and fast...but again, I feel like I was hindered with my memory issues and this weird bogged down feeling I have with the world aspects. But needless to say, I never put it down for good. I was still intrigued enough with what was going on to see how it would pan out and oh boy did things take a turn! 

With the final book coming out this month, I am hoping to pick that one up not super long after I get it so that at least some of these details will be somewhat fresh in my memory center. Lol. Yeah, this is definitely one of those series I kept myself invested in to a certain point. I struggled, but never wanted to throw the towel in, if that makes sense. I had great moments of confusion with what was happening but when we finally turned that spotlight back onto the characters, I was more invested in the story.

Overall Rating 3/5 stars