THE QUEEN WILL BETRAY YOU

The Princess Bride meets Game of Thrones in this follow-up to 2020’s The Princess Will Save You.

Tucking in a red wedding to clue in the clueless and occasional summaries to help everyone else keep up, Henning picks up the action from the end of the last volume and pushes her gender-swapped homage to William Goldman’s fantasy classic to a gore-splashed happy ending. Alas, fun as it may be to work through a tale rich in thinly disguised references (“My name is Ulara Vidal. You killed my mother”), panting romance, and so much royal back- and front-stabbing that readers will surely be moved to wonder, along with a secondary character, “what in the stars is wrong with you people?” the action seems incidental to ruminations, ramifications, and analyses, mostly about incidents from years past—with more than enough sudden, gap-filling flashbacks, lines like “the body fell with a moist thud,” and outright fudging (quicksand with tunnels underneath? Really?) to impart a distinct sense of authorial I’m-just-making-this-up-as-I-go. There’s also a certain disconnect in the agenda to end the oppressive, albeit peace-maintaining, patriarchy that drives the three bloody-minded queens and around which the story revolves. The cast presents as White except for the residents of one nation who are described as having burnished brown skin.

No dragons but plenty of fierce women hacking their ways to power and true love.