Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.89 stars Content Rating: Strong PG-13 for violence and death. Trigger Warnings: Rape is alluded to and threatened, animal abuse, child death, abusive father. In the mythical desert kingdom of Achra, an ancient law forces sixteen-year-old Princess Kateri to fight in the arena to prove her right to rule. For Kateri, winning also means fulfilling a promise to her late mother that she would protect her people, who are struggling through windstorms and drought. The situation is worsened by the gang of Desert Boys that frequently raids the city wells, forcing the king to ration what little water is left. The punishment for stealing water is a choice between two doors: behind one lies freedom, and behind the other is a tiger. But when Kateri’s final opponent is announced, she knows she cannot win. In desperation, she turns to the desert and the one person she never thought she’d side with. What Kateri discovers twists her world—and her heart—upside down. Her future is now behind two doors—only she’s not sure which holds the key to keeping her kingdom and which releases the tiger.(goodreads.com) When I first read the description of this book I thought it sounded awesome. A princess who has to fight her suitors in a gladiator style arena in order to prove her worthiness of the throne? That’s a fantastic concept! It’s like taking the Bachelor/Bachelorette-trope, where a bunch of eligible individuals are competing for the prince/princess’ hand in marriage, and changing it so they don’t have to compete against each other, they have to compete against the princess herself. Which sounds amazing, right? Sadly, that part of the story does not get much coverage so if that’s what you’re looking for, this book doesn’t really provide. However, it was still a fairly enjoyable read! Apparently, this book is a retelling of a short story called The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton which was originally published in 1882. I had never heard of this story before and I didn’t feel particularly inclined to read the entirety of it, but I did read a summary. Basically, there is a desert kingdom and the justice system is this: when you commit a crime, you are put in an arena and given the choice of two doors. One of them has a hungry tiger behind it and the other has a woman who you have to marry if you pick her door. As the story goes, there is a young man whom the princess of the kingdom falls in love with but he ends up in the arena one way or another. If it were a modern fairy tale, you might be inclined to think the princess would put herself behind one of the doors and they’d live happily ever after. But this is a fairytale from the 1800s. So, what happens is that the princess finds out who the woman behind the door is going to be and which door she’s going to be behind. Turns out, the woman who might end up married to the princess’ boyfriend is a woman that the princess hates. So the question that the reader is left with at the end of the story is if the princess tells her boyfriend to open the door with the hated woman or the tiger. Basically, would the princess rather have her man married to a woman she dislikes or eaten by a wild animal? And honestly, this book didn’t really deliver all that much on the retelling end of things either. Although, I guess since there isn’t really that much to retell to begin with, that’s not surprising. There were tigers (who are very much mistreated) and there was a part where someone that Princess Kateri cares about has to choose between tigers and a woman. However, the princess doesn’t really hate the woman, she just kind of distrusts her. Also the whole moral dilemma of the princess being forced to choose loses its impact on the story because there’s a man manipulating her choices behind the scenes. Despite all of this, it was still an interesting read. I was caught up in the plot and excited to see where the story would go with each chapter. The events of the story were compelling and kept my attention. How would everyone survive the drought? Who’s at fault, the king or the Desert Boys? Will Kateri be able to learn enough skills to defeat her final suitor? It was well written and I wanted to know what would happen next. However, I was not at all connected to the characters. You may recall I had this same issue with Annie Sullivan’s other book, A Touch of Gold. Great, exciting, fascinating plot… dull, flat characters that are difficult to relate to or care about. Take Princess Kateri for example. At the beginning of the book she is kind of awful and she’s supposed to be. She has been raised with a hateful lie about the people in her kingdom and since she believes that lie and fights for that lie, it makes her unlikable. She definitely changed her tune by the end of the book, but I kind of got the impression that, if there wasn’t concrete proof of the truth, she would have stubbornly clung to what she’d been told her whole life. It didn’t really feel like she developed as a character, it felt like she learned more facts and acted logically with the new information. By the end, it felt like she was exactly the same as she was at the beginning of the book, but with more friends and she knew the truth of her situation. The other characters had pretty much no development at all. The good guys stayed good and noble, the bad guys stayed bad and conniving. No one changed, we just learned more information about them from Kateri’s viewpoint. One more random gripe at the end here, just because I want to say it: I’m not sure the author has ever spent much time around sand. There is a point where the characters get into a “sand fight” and throw sand at each other. Have you ever tried to throw sand at someone? It just goes POOF and spreads little grains everywhere. Unless it’s wet sand (in which case it goes SPLOP rather than POOF), but they definitely weren’t wasting water in the middle of a desert drought to throw sand at each other. Also, WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU THROW SAND AT EACH OTHER WHEN YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DROUGHT AND HAVE TO CONSERVE WATER AND ARE CONSTANTLY DEHYDRATED?! Sand is so dry and itchy and dirty. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere! It would make you so thirsty to be out in the sun and sand and then it would also make you want to take a bath. Nope. Terrible idea to play in the sand when you are in a drought, it really is foolish. Because of the lack of character development in Annie Sullivan’s stories, I don’t think I will be reading anything of hers again (but never say never). Despite the fun plots, I just get so bored with her characters. They are difficult to relate to and they just feel so flat and one dimensional.
Still, this was a good read and if you care more for the action and plot and don’t really care about characters. I know there are people out there who prefer plot-driven to character-driven, I’m just not one of them. But if you are, then totally check out this book! Well, I’m off to go battle my many, many suitors in an arena so that I can prove myself to be worthy of the throne. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42281646-tiger-queen
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