Cliste Bella: Book Review | The Fire Queen (The Hundredth Queen #2) by Emily R. King

In the second book in The Hundredth Queen Series, Emily R. King once again follows a young warrior queen’s rise to meet her destiny in a richly imagined world of sorcery and forbidden powers.

Though the tyrant rajah she was forced to marry is dead, Kalinda’s troubles are far from over. A warlord has invaded the imperial city, and now she’s in exile. But she isn’t alone. Kalinda has the allegiance of Captain Deven Naik, her guard and beloved, imprisoned for treason and stripped of command. With the empire at war, their best hope is to find Prince Ashwin, the rajah’s son, who has promised Deven’s freedom on one condition: that Kalinda will fight and defeat three formidable opponents.

But as Kalinda’s tournament strengths are once again challenged, so too is her relationship with Deven. While Deven fears her powers, Ashwin reveres them—as well as the courageous woman who wields them. Kalinda comes to regard Ashwin as the only man who can repair a warring world and finds herself torn between her allegiance to Deven and a newly found respect for the young prince.

With both the responsibility to protect her people and the fate of those she loves weighing heavily upon her, Kalinda is forced again to compete. She must test the limits of her fire powers and her hard-won wisdom. But will that be enough to unite the empire without sacrificing all she holds dear?

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I've written my review for this book in a separate article for my Netgalley eARCs, but after reading the third book I knew this deserved it's own review post.

I wrote in my short review in my Netgalley post that I did like this book better than the first one. I guess I need to elaborate further. If you have not encountered The Hundredth Queen by Emily R. Kind I would suggest you read it first to get a little back ground about the story. If you've read the first book and have not read the next two then I'm ust going to refresh your memory.

We have Kalinda, an orphan who was trained with other girls in a temple to one day be chosen by men to lead them. In a twist of fate, Kalinda is chosen by non other than Rajah Tarek and becomes his kindered or 1st queen after defeating the current Kindered in trails. To top it off, Kalina also discovers she is a Burner Bhuta - mortals with the power of the gods.

In book 1 Kalinda falls in love with Captain Deven Naik and also kills Rajah Tarek on their wedding night. Book 2 opens with the band of Kalinda and her band after they fled their kingdom in the aftermath of the Rajahs death and the siege of Bhuta rebels. They've been going from one monastery to another looking for the Crown Prince Deven.

If this was a movie I'm betting the cinematography would be amazing. The description alone of the Kingdoms, the characters, what they were wearing, just to name a few was enough to keep me hooked on this book and wanting to read more.

I would definitely recommend this series.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐