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Mele’s Musings: Misadventures at Great Adventure

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Update: Wyoming man missing since Monday has been found

<p>I was raised on a healthy diet of fantasy novels. My mother read &#8220;Lord of the Rings&#8221; to me when I was 7, setting up a lifelong love for the genre. From David Eddings to Robert Jordan, I devoured epic novels for most of my childhood.</p><p>Eventually I grew out of it. I became very particular about the fantasy I chose to read. So much of it is terribly cliched and filled with the usual archetypes. I grew a little bored.</p><p>Besides &#8220;A Song of Ice and Fire&#8221; (&#8220;Game of Thrones&#8221;), I haven&#8217;t picked up a fantasy novel in a long time, until last year when Erika Johansen&#8217;s &#8220;Queen of the Tearling&#8221; received great buzz. By the time it was published, it was optioned as a movie. And since it was only a planned trilogy (rather than a 10 book saga), it was worth reading.</p><p>&#8220;Queen of the Tearlings&#8221; is the story of Kelsea Glynn, heir to the Tearling throne. She was raised in hiding after the death of her mother but when she turns 19, the queen&#8217;s guard arrives from New London to take her home.</p><p>Her journey to the city is fraught with peril. She is dismissed by her own guards as a silly girl (which she most certainly is not) and contends with assassins, thieves and an evil neighboring empire. When she reaches her home, she has to get rid of her uncle, the Regent, and is forced to face some hard truths about her kingdom.</p><p>The Tearlings must send slaves to the Mortmesne Empire, as tribute after losing a war under Kelsea&#8217;s mother&#8217;s reign. Kelsea sets her sights on stopping the human trafficking despite that it could start another war with the Mort.</p><p>While this sounds like it would make for a dark novel, &#8220;The Queen of the Tearlings&#8221; is one fun fantasy. It&#8217;s partially a coming of age novel as Kelsea has to prove herself. She makes mistakes, but she makes a promising start as a strong ruler. She also discovers magical powers.</p><p>Despite seeming a bit of a Mary Sue, Kelsea is a very real young woman. She&#8217;s insecure, especially about her rather plain looks, awkward and headstrong.</p><p>She lives in a fascinating world. It&#8217;s unclear where exactly the Tearling is, but the book is set in the 24th century, generations after something called &#8220;The Crossing&#8221; where Americans came to to start over. Along the way, modern medicine was lost and the &#8220;new land&#8221; devolved into something out of the Middle Ages.</p><p>The book doesn&#8217;t go into all the whys and hows of The Crossing, but there are aspects of our world that still exist in Kelsea&#8217;s. For instance, The Hobbit and Harry Potter make appearances, and there are other vague references to the lost world.</p><p>The sequel, &#8220;The Invasion of the Tearling,&#8221; goes into more detail. In Kelsea&#8217;s time, she contends with the threat of invasion from the Mort, and her own emerging powers and internal struggles with the corrupt Tear church.</p><p>She somehow shifts back into the past and observes, or perhaps lives out, life as an American woman named Lily. Several chapters are told from Lily&#8217;s perspective and as the story shifts, so does the genre. Kelsea&#8217;s story remains pure fantasy, but Lily&#8217;s is a Margaret Atwood-esque dystopian plot.</p><p>Lily&#8217;s America is a totalitarian police state where women are property of their husbands and have few rights of their own. The wealthy live behind walled communities, the poor wander the country. Lily is married to Greg, a horribly abusive man who makes her life hell.</p><p>However, a &#8220;terrorist&#8221; group called Blue Horizon is growing in power and through a series of events, Lily ends up meeting William Tear, the very same man who led Kelsea&#8217;s ancestors through The Crossing and became the first king of the Tearling.</p><p>I thought the insertion of Lily&#8217;s story was fascinating. What role does Lily have to play in Kelsea&#8217;s life? The answer isn&#8217;t immediately clear, although it is connected to the mystery of who Kelsea&#8217;s father is - something that hopefully will be addressed and answered in the final book of the trilogy.</p><p>The Tearling books are quick reads: a fun take on the fantasy genre featuring a strong willed and powerful heroine. With a movie starring Emma Watson on the horizon, this series is worth picking up, especially if you&#8217;re a fan of fantasy novels.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8220;The Invasion of the Tearling&#8221;</p><p>Author: Erika Johansen</p><p>Page Count: 528</p><p>Publisher: Harper</p><p>Rating: &#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her daughter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: “The Invasion of the Tearling” combines future and past for a fun fantasy read