The Steel Queen [Paperback]

I first heard about Karen Azinger's The Steel Queen in 2010, when it was supposed to have been published by Harper Voyager. Unfortunately, the deal fell through and the author decided to self-publish the novel. Intrigued by the book, I contacted the author who gladly arranged for a review copy...

The Steel Queen is set amongst the various kingdoms of Erdhe. Eons ago, the war of the wizards occurred and magic was stripped from the land, although meager remnants are still present in parts of the world, like the Castlegard fortification whose walls have survived unscathed for more than thirty generations and the Isle of Souls. The current kingdoms are mostly at peace with each other, but the Mordant from the north seeks to rule all. As a result, a group of knights took sworn oaths to protect the southern kingdoms, forming the Octagon Knights' brotherhood with Castlegard serving as their base.

After a Prologue set in the kingdom of the Mordant thirty years earlier, The Steel Queen introduces the novel's principle characters and POVs:
Katherine is the only princess of Castlegard and one of the major POVs. She has four older brothers who share her enthusiasm for swordcraft. Unfortunately, Katherine herself is forbidden from learning the way of the sword and has never understood her role as a princess. She is fondly called the `Imp' and yearns to learn from the Octagon Knights who are famed throughout the lands of Erdhe for their valiance, honor and strength. She wishes to pick up the sword and defend her kingdom from its enemies.

Blaine is a new knight-in-training who aspires to gain the maroon cloak and become an Octagon Knight. He thinks he deserves the cloak and will do just about everything to make it so. However, he will have to face more than just men in his struggle to rise above his stature.

Queen Liandra is the long-ruling queen of Lanverness, one of the richest kingdom in the lands of Erdhe. She faces problems from traitors as well as persecution from the neighboring kingdom who despises Lanverness' prosperity.

Steffan is a poor nobleman's son who is striving to become more than his title allows for. His willingness to do about anything to gain what he what he desires lures him to the dark side and makes him a major player of chaos.

Princess Jordan, one of the `J' siblings of the kingdom of Navarre, is to be apprenticed to a secret order of monks, but finds herself lost in a number of ways in a different land.

Samson the baker's son is a refugee from the land of Coronth, which has been overrun by the Flame religion. Samson is faced with a big traumatic event where he will have to relearn his objectives in life, while also trying to save his country from ruin.

Danly is the second prince of the kingdom of Lanverness. Danly feels undervalued and constrained by his status, but he trys his best to achieve what he believes is his right. This includes reclaiming something that was lost years ago.

Lastly, Duncan is a master archer who lost his eye to a feud in the past--a past that not many know. Duncan looks upon the "J" siblings of Navarre as his children and tries his best to mould them into fine human beings. His past will come to control his future in more ways than he can imagine.

Thus is the table set for The Steel Queen, the opening volume in Karen Azinger's epic fantasy series, The Silk & Steel Saga. Even though the book features many characters, the author has taken pains to make sure each individual is unique with their own motives and aspirations. Of them all, Liandra was my favorite. Her machinations, lateral thinking and the way she often referred to herself as "we" while speaking to other characters, made her chapters intriguing and I look forward to reading more of her story. I was also impressed with the number of female characters in the book, which resulted in many refreshing role-reversals. On the flipside, because there are so many different POVs, readers might find the book confusing at times, although the appendices do help.

Story-wise, The Steel Queen is a very fun, action-packed read in the vein of Stephen Deas and Jennifer Fallon, highlighted by fast pacing, the right amount of background information & exposition, and plot twists galore. Granted, the author has not really created anything new as far as epic fantasy goes, and the story can be a bit predictable because of the inclusion of certain common tropes, but Karen Azinger showcases potential and deft plotting skills in The Steel Queen--which will prove valuable if she is to orchestrate a five book series--while doing her best to keep the reader engrossed in the novel despite its familiar trappings.

CONCLUSION: Fantasy readers may not be able to find anything new in The Steel Queen, but Karen Azinger's first novel is nevertheless an impressive debut thanks to fascinating characters, skilled writing, and an engaging story. Fans of traditional epic fantasy will definitely want to take note of The Steel Queen, while its author is a worthy new addition to the genre...

The first few chapters of this had me thinking "hoo boy, another load of fantasy stereotypes" -- there was the plucky princess who wants to break out of her feminine cultural chains, the stalwart warrior who wants to fight the unspecified evil over the border, etc. And the book really does have quite a lot of stereotypes populating it, those were only the beginning. But the interesting and entertaining part is how Azinger throws ALL of these stereotypes into the same story, bumps them all up against each other, and lets the outcome unroll itself as the characters learn from each other, manipulate each other, team up with each other, etc. While no individual character is a big surprise, they are written delightfully true-to-self, and watching them each affect the story in their own way makes the outcome unpredictable and intriguing.

I'm looking forward to the next book, though I hope the author gets a little more editing done; this one suffered from some distracting cases of using the wrong word in places, usually homonyms or substitutions that a spell-checker wouldn't pick up but a human editor should (like "chaffed" instead of "chafed", a common mistake).

Karen Azinger's The Steel Queen is the first book of The Silk & Steel Saga. It's also the author's debut book (and it's a surprisingly good debut book). I'm usually a bit skeptic about the quality of self-published fantasy books, because I've read some horrible books, but The Steel Queen was a pleasant and welcome surprise. It was excellent entertainment and there weren't any dull moments.

Here's a bit of information about the world and some of the characters (I'll try to avoid too many spoilers):

The events of The Steel Queen take place in a medieval fantasy world. The book follows the lives and adventures of different characters in the kingdoms of Erdhe. The Kingdoms of Erdhe are about to be plunged into darkness by the forces of darkness.

The world is divided into different kingdoms and areas (Castlegard, Lanverness, Navarre etc) and each area has its own problems. The Castlegard domain fights against the evil of the Mordant while other areas fight against different kind of enemies, but the Mordant is a big threat to all areas. Castlegard is ruled by a king and is known for the Octagon Knights, who stand against the threat of the Mordant. Lanverness is a wealthy kingdom and is ruled by a queen.

Important characters include Kath, Blaine, Liandra and Steffan (I'll concentrate on these four characters in this review, because I don't want to write too many spoilers), but there are also several other characters, which help the story move along nicely and add depth to the story. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the amount of characters, because I didn't expect to read about so many different characters. All the characters are well balanced and the author gives them room to grow, which is nice, and I'm sure that the characters will continue to grow in the sequels.

Kath is a young woman, who wants to be a fighter. Although his father wants her to be a normal young woman, she rebels against her father and learns to fight with weapons.

Blaine is a young man, who has trouble accepting that he's been given a rare blue sword, which is usually given only to heroes. He doesn't understand why he's been given the sword, because he hasn't done anything special (he feels that he isn't worthy of the sword). He's a knight of the Octagon.

Liandra is an interesting character, because she's a strong and intelligent woman, who knows what she wants. Because she's a ruler in a male-dominated court, she must be strong and she must use all her skills to stay in power (she uses her good looks, intelligence and spies in order to stay in power).

Steffan is a man, who's interested in the power of the Dark Lord. He wants to become a powerful man and he's willing to sacrifice anything to get what he wants. He even offers his soul to the Dark Lord. What he gets in exchange for his soul is good luck, which he uses to further the Dark Lord's reign in the kingdoms.

The Steel Queen is more complex than several other new fantasy books, because Karen Azinger has created an interesting world and a thrilling story. The complex and interwoven plot is handled excellently and it develops nicely over the course of the book. I've read several debut fantasy books and I've often been annoyed by the lack of effort from the author, but not in this case, because Karen Azinger has written an effortlessly flowing story, which leaves the reader wanting more. This is a book, which can cause its reader a temporary "just one more page syndrome".

Karen Azinger handles politics, mysticism and religious things fluently and doesn't preach about things (she explores different themes in an interesting way and lets the readers make their own opinions about certain things). The religious, mystical and political events added depth to the story and made the world a believable place.

The Steel Queen contains several adult scenes (sex, sexual references and violence), which will fascinate hardcore fantasy readers. I enjoyed reading about the human sacrifices and other similar things (it was interesting to read about the religion of the Flame God and how heretics were sacrificed to the flames). These violent scenes were thrilling and added harshness to the story. I also enjoyed reading about the stunningly beautiful priestess who used and enjoyed her sexuality shamelessly. It was also interesting to read about Steffan's attempt to lure Liandra's son under his influence.

One of the themes in this book is a woman's place in a man's world. Each of the female characters is different, and in order to achieve success, each of them uses her powers differently (for example, Liandra is a brilliant strategist and Kath is a good fighter). This feels fresh, because it's interesting to read about strong and intelligent female characters instead of typical male characters who fight against evil enemies without any kind of intelligence.

Another important theme is honour, because the Octagon Knights are honourable knights and they're expected to follow the old ways. Some of these knights want to abandon the old ways, because times are changing, but not all of them. Honour and valour are important things to knights and they're also important to Blaine, because he ponders what it means to be a knight.

Religion is also an important theme, because the author explores how dangerous and destructive religious zealotry can be. The religion of the Flame God is shown as a threat: the author lets her readers see how heretics are treated and how much fear the worshippers and cult members can cause among normal people.

The story contained a couple of rough spots and certain clichés, but in my opinion the author managed to use these things to her advantage. For example, Kath's character could've easily been a female version of a typical male hero, but in the hands of Karen Azinger she turned out to be a strong and likeable character.

I think I'll have to mention that writing medieval fantasy without rough spots and clichés is extremely difficult due to a huge amount of medieval fantasy books, so certain rough spots and clichés are to be expected in this kind of fantasy. Fortunately these things didn't bother me at all, because Karen Azinger's story was good and her characters were interesting.

I think that The Steel Queen is a fine example how well entertaining fantasy can be written and published without the help of big publishing companies. The Steel Queen proves that you don't always need a big publishing - if you have a good story, writing skills and enough time and energy to start your own publishing company, you can publish your own books and have total control over them.

The cover art by Greg Bridges looks nice and creates the right kind of atmosphere for the reader. The map also looks nice and it shows all the important places perfectly.

This may not be a perfect comparison, but in my opinion Karen Azinger's prose reminds me a bit of Carol Berg, Helen Lowe, Lynn Flewelling, Melanie Rawn and Martha Wells. She has the same kind of sense of style and talent for writing entertaining fantasy as these writers have. Writing entertaining fantasy is difficult and it demands a lot of effort, because the author has to know how to keep the reader interested in the story and how to surprise the reader with unexpected plot twists. Karen Azinger knows how to do this (and she also knows how to hook the reader into the story right from the start), so I can say that she's on her way to become a successful fantasy writer. I was positively surprised by this book and I'm looking forward to reading the next book.

The Steel Queen is a thoroughly enjoyable debut fantasy book. It offers excellent entertainment for fantasy readers and it won't disappoint fans of fast-paced fantasy adventures. If you're looking for a new, interesting and entertaining fantasy book, please read this book and treat yourself to a good adventure.