The Invasion of the Tearling: A Novel

The Invasion of the Tearling is the second book in The Queen of the Tearling trilogy by Erika Johansen. While I merely liked the first installment of this series, I was genuinely surprised to find The Invasion of the Tearling take a complete 180 turn from its predecessor; it is a fast-paced, action-filled, genre-bending read that you CANNOT put down!!Genre-bending: noun, def.: the act in which an author takes a seemingly simple story and swipes it across a medium of several different genres, seamlessly flowing from one to the other without separation or transition, and consequently BLOWS THE READERS MIND!! What started as a cut-and-dry medieval fantasy novel has now morphed into this hybrid breed of fantasy/sci-fi/dystopian wünderbuch (that's German for FREAKING FANTASTIC BOOK... in case you were wondering).If I could narrow down a proper description of this book into one word it would be GRIT. From the lead character's disposition, to the no-nonsense attitude the author takes on intimacy between characters, from the sinister role the Church plays within political maneuverings, to the realistic illustration of domestic abuse, violence amidst war, looting, pillaging, and, in some instances, rape.. .Grit is everywhere, present at all times throughout this novel.Don't be fooled: this is NOT your typical YA fantasy novel. YA is probably an inappropriate label in this case. I would only refer this book to older audiences, in an effort not to wrongly influence anyone who still has pliable and/or unformed opinions on religion or violence against women. Hence my 18+ age recommendation above. As a reader, I respect the narrative voice that Erika Johansen chose to use. I felt that certain uncomfortable topics were used to drive the storyline in a horrifying and brutal manner, but the author never once romanticized, minimized, or in any way endorsed domestic violence or rape where it was written. You have been warned.What I liked:There are quite a few things in this novel that I quite enjoyed. To name a few:Kelsea's Character Development: We see a significant difference in Kelsea's maturity from what we witnessed in the first book. In The Queen of the Tearling, we witness a naive, shallow, conceited girl who places herself first before her people and her kingdom. Mind you, I gave her much more leniency then some, considering the circumstances of her ascension, her age, and proper lack of any sort of societal norms to base her actions on. However, in Book #2 Kelsea has, for lack of a better term, grown up. She's developed a hardness to her. A darkness. And it was delicious to watch!!New Characters (surprisingly): Normally, it takes me a while to sink into a new character. I spend at least half a book hating them, wishing the author would move on to our beloved leads. Not so in Invasion. Lily, from Pre-Crossing Connecticut (that's right...like in the USA...not so medieval now, are we?), shows us what the world was like before the Tearling, before Kelsea, before the Mort Queen... A life lived in a cage, where people were micro-chipped and monitored, women were nothing more then chattel, owned by their husbands, whose only purpose in life was to serve and birth offspring... (see quote below)Wicked Plot Twists: There are so many times that this book knocked me off my feet with insane twists. Without spoilers: a) We get to learn more about how the Queen of Mort came to power and WHO she really is. b) We're shown how the sapphires played a role in starting the New World, as well as what their true powers really are. c) So many questions are answered regarding what The Crossing actually is, how it was started, and the timeline for this whole world, which was so frustrating at times in the first book.“Being childless was a failure; she heard this message constantly, from her friends, from the minister, from the government bulletins online (the tone of these had grown increasingly panicked in the past ten years, as the ratio of poor to rich had quadrupled). There were even tax incentives now, deductions for people above a certain income level who had multiple children. To the outward eye, Lily had failed at her most important task, but she could only dissemble the shame that her friends would have felt.”— LilyWhat I didn't like:Again we are left high and dry as to the identity of Kelsea's father. Up until the last 10% of the book, I was convinced it was The Mace. But Erika Johansen has seriously impressed me with her plot-weaving skills, so I'll concede to the master and wait patiently for the third book to get my explanation.The pacing in the first part of the book is a bit cloddish. Coupled with the interchanging POV's between Kelsea and Lily in modern Pre-Crossing Era (which the reader DOES NOT know right off the bat, making for a very confused Unapologetic Nerd), it took me until about 40% in for me to find my reading stride. Once Kelsea's visions of Lily's were more fleshed out, I picked up a rhythm pretty quickly and blew through the rest of the book.Overall:There are so many questions left unanswered in this second installment!! I can't wait to see what Erika Johansen pulls out of her bottomless bag of bobbins and trickery. I am a huge fan of cross-blending genres, and she has done a FANTASTIC job of it with this series.The last book in this trilogy, The Fate of the Tearling, is expected to release June 7th, 2016.I highly recommend this book to anyone who will not be offended and/or disturbed by scenes of rape, domestic abuse, assault, and/or be uncomfortable with negative implications towards organized religion. Again, I do NOT recommend this for younger audiences.I give this 4/5 stars.

The Invasion of the Tearling is the second in Erika Johansen’s YA Tearling fantasy trilogy. It continues the story of young queen Kelsea Glynn as she prepares to deal with the aftermath of her actions in the first novel, The Queen of the Tearling.I’ll start this review by stating that I hadn’t actually intended to continue with this series, given that I had significant issues with Johansen’s worldbuilding and character development in the first book. However, I recently read the book blurb which indicated to me that Johansen was taking clear steps to address some of the issues with the worldbuilding at least and so I decided to give the series a second chance.What I likedAdditional point of view character. For this second outing, Johansen has added a second point of view character, Lily. Lily is a woman from the pre-Crossing era who has a strange connection with our protagonist, Kelsea. Through her eyes we learn more about the history of the Tearling’s founding and what led William Tear to strike out to begin his utopia.I absolutely loved Lily’s story and, personally, I was far more engaged with her plight than Kelsea’s. These sections were wonderful both from a plot point of view and character development. Throughout, I really found myself rooting for her. This section of the book reads more like a dystopian novel than the traditional fantasy of Kelsea’s section, but it worked very well.It should be noted that Lily’s section deals with some issues which are far grittier and more adult than those generally found in young adult or even new adult books, and was written in a more adult manner. Lily is notably older than Kelsea and is in a different life stage. It could well be that’s why I connected more with her, as I too, am older than your average young adult protagonist!Lily’s character development was beautifully written.Kelsea’s romantic life. Often in YA, this can be a particularly problematic area, with the romance either subjected to the inevitable love triangle or so overblown with stars and rainbows it becomes intolerable. I get it. First love can be awesome. Too often though YA authors portray it through rose-tinted spectacles. Johansen’s portrayal of this part of Kelsea’s life felt grounded in reality and was excellently written.In general I found Kelsea more consistently written in Invasion of the Tearling than she was in Queen. I particularly enjoyed how the connection between her and Lily played out.The pre-Crossing history. The promise of learning more about the founding of the Tearling was what drew me back in to give this series a second chance and Johansen certainly made good on that promise. I loved what we got, but I’m not one hundred percent convinced, though, that she has allayed the concerns I had from the first book. I still can’t see the logic in why Harry Potter survived the Crossing but the internal combustion engine didn’t. We still have a lot to discover, so I’ll suspend final judgement on this aspect until after the final book.What I didn’t likeAdditional point of view. Yes, I know I had this listed in part of my Likes; let me explain. The two main point of view characters are in different worlds, and are at different life stages and more, importantly, are written as such. It feels almost like two completely separate books, and I’m not certain that they are targeting the same audience.The audio narration. I had a bit of a problem with the audio narration. The book is narrated by Davina Porter, who, don’t get me wrong, does a great job. My issue is that she is best known to me as the narrator of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. Ms Porter has a distinctive voice and half the time I kept expecting Jamie Fraser to come sauntering into the scene. That was my personal issue though and it may not be one for you.In summary then, I found Invasion a stronger book than Queen of the Tearling. That’s not to say it’s perfect by any means. I’m still not completely certain Johansen can pull together a completely cohesive overall story arc by the end of the trilogy, but I’m invested enough that I want to read book three to find out.I gave Invasion of the Tearling 3.5-4 stars out of five.

WELL. I absolutely loved the first in this trilogy, so much so I will definitely read the third book when it comes out. The overall concept is absolutely brilliant, and the writing is so compelling: a truly powerful, intelligent, relatable heroine, and a startlingly original premise and wonderfully worked-out world.However this second in the series didn't really follow through, for me. The main focus was on the very early part of the founding of the world we know from book 1, so it was set in the 'modern world' (really a futuristic dystopia, but not so very far removed from our own world today), and not in Kelsea's world. It's a very clever idea but I didn't love it in the same way I did the Tearling, and I was impatient to get back to what's happening in the Tearling, to be honest. It didn't feel like the stuff inside matched what was on the tin, which I know is sometimes just the case. I also found this very violent and really a lot of focus on the violence, particularly sexual violence, which I felt pretty uncomfortable with, and this comment comes from someone who has watched and loved ever series of Game of Thrones so I'm no Mary Whitehouse!Still amazingly written though, and I will definitely be buying book 3 and reading it in one gulp, when it comes out!

Second volume in the series of fantasy novels entitled 'The Tearling.'First book was 'Queen of the Tearling.' This isn't a jumping on point, as there's very little exposition in here as to what happened in that, and so new readers should do that book first to get the most from this.Those who have read it, read on.This volume runs for five hundred and seventy pages. It's divided into two parts. Further into fourteen chapters and an epilogue.There's a map of the setting at the start.It contains violence, some strong language, and adult moments, so this isn't young adult fantasy.Following on from the end of book one, Kelsea is now Queen. Those who plotted against her are being dealt with. But her army have a hopeless battle ahead of them in fighting off the Red Queen's. And she has all the problems a Monarch can expect to face also. Plus she's still got some growing up to do.On top of all this, she starts having strange dreams. Which might show how her world came to be...This gets off to a superb start by using two supporting characters as viewpoint ones. It is very good indeed at remembering to show things exactly as they would perceive them as well. Kelsea, once she starts getting chapters, remains quite a sympathetic creation. It does then flick between her world and the visions, which are of something very different indeed.These sections of the book are quite dark and don't pull any punches. But they always know exactly where they are going. And do have a sympathetic character to guide you through them.Whilst very much a mid book in a series, in addition to the above mentioned sections, it doesn't feel like things have advanced too much at points, but by the end you see that it has done some very good plotting and has pulled so much together, over the course of this and the opener. You do find yourself admiring some of the plotting as well. There are some excellent revelations.And it has another thing that is common to middle books. It ends on a huge cliffhanger that will leave you desperately wanting to know what comes next.That can be found in book three 'The Fate of the Tearling.'Book two, though, is a very good read in a good series and well worth four out of five.

The best fantasy series I’ve read in years. Erika Johansen is an excellent story teller, of a new world which envelopes you so completely.Each book brings a new twist and mix’s past and present beautifully, slowly unfurling the history and secrets of the Tearling with each discovery, stride and mistake our heroine Kelsea makes.I’ve not fallen in love with a book series so much since Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series.

If you haven’t read the first book in this series, you really should! It’s a very original story with a great cast of characters, and it follows Kelsea Glynn’s journey to take her place as Queen.Now that Kelsey is the Queen of the Tearling, she has to deal with the aftermath of her decision to stop shipping slaves to the kingdom of Mortmesne. This has caused their frighteningly powerful queen to invade the Tearling. The Mort army is approaching, when Kelsey somehow becomes connected to a woman called Lily, who lives in a previous time period. Kelsey must try to save her people, and work out how Lily’s story from the past may impact on their future.I was a huge fan of ‘The Queen of the Tearling’, so I started this with that subtle mixture of anticipation and really hoping this would be good! Fortunately, Erika Johansen has crafted another amazing and utterly engrossing novel.For me, there was a lot to like about this book: three strong female narrators, an array of mysterious and handsome potential love interests and plenty of action. Lily’s new narrative in particular was a great way to flesh out the history of the time period. Kelsea also continued to be an interesting, realistically flawed character, whose impossible situation as ruler made me really feel for her!Without giving too much away, the ending of was very satisfying, tying up the key threads of this story but leaving enough trailing for an exciting sequel.A slight issue I had with this book was the beginning. It started with an extended description of the history, which I found myself skipping over (even though it was probably really important). Then we followed the third person perspectives of two new characters. I grew really attached to both of them, but would have preferred to become reacquainted with familiar faces before getting to grips with new ones.That being said, I would definitely recommend this book. Erika Johansen has created a rich, captivating fantasy world, with a riveting historical element developed in this instalment. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!If you like the sound of this, now try: -The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard -The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury -The Chemical Garden Trilogy by Lauren DeStefano reviews at www.yaundermyskin.co.uk Read more

The Invasion of the Tearling, the second in Erika Johansen’s planned trilogy, took me completely by surprise. I read and loved The Queen of the Tearling a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t wait to get my hands on this sequel.At first I was surprised – the plot you expect, continuing Kelsea’s troubled reign and battling with the Red Queen, continues, but it’s spliced with another, 21st-century-dystopia strand. I didn’t want the focus drawn from the thrilling central plot, but it soon became apparent that Johansen writes her troubled heroines so well that the introduction of Lily Mayhew’s tale is just as good as the Tearling one. Lily’s strand starts to explain pre-Crossing America’s dissolving morality and society, and soon it becomes clear that Lily and Kelsea share a mysterious connection. Lily’s struggles against an oppressive society are beautifully compared to the free world that the Tearling was intended to be, before human nature had its way and created a new dystopia for Kelsea to inherit.This is another powerful, page-turning fantasy from Johansen and far from simply bridging the difficult stage between introduction and glorious finale, the second book in the series draws out the deeper conflicts in Kelsea’s personality and her association with the magical sapphires of her inheritance, whilst it builds on the Red Queen’s own inner turmoil. The back story of the Tearling is elegantly revealed through Lily, whilst the wartime troubles Kelsea faces tease out the sort of Queen she wants to be versus the one that she must become. The pace never lags and the flawed but loveable heroines have you emotionally invested from the first page to the last. This book grabs you and won’t let you go.*I was given a review copy of this book by NetGalley and thanks to the publisher and author. The views in this post are my own.*