The Shadow Queen by C. J. Redwine: Otherwise known as I didn't like/forgot about the Top Ten Tuesday oops

The Shadow Queen 

by

 C. J. Redwine

It’s a retelling of Snow White. Except you know with more stabbing and death and Dragons.

Hello yes I did

 I am very pleased with that last one actually. Hearts being ripped out though, not so sure about that one. Still it was a fabulous retelling.

But I’m not really following the magic system. It kept talking about dominating the ‘hearts’ or will of whatever the magic user was trying to control. Apparently you could do so by asking nicely or sort of just bulldozing over them.

 But it was still vaguely confusing. Cool but not always very straightforward. At least that gave credence to why the resident Evil Queen wanted ‘Snow Whites’s’ heart.

Speaking of Snow White

Lorelai

 thank goodness she wasn’t called Snow White. She was pretty cool, rather analytical, but very clever with the use of her magic. She was also fiercely protective of her positively adorable little brother which made me love her even more. I liked Lorelai mostly because I didn’t have to yell at her for being completely idiotic half the time.

Leo: A complete and utter sass-master with many puns. He’s Lorelai’s little bother and he was my favorite.  His job was to remind Lorelai that displaced royalty need to take back their throne with flair.

Like Katara she knows how to do flair

Kol: Hello love interest. I’m mostly okay with this one because he was a DRAGON! 

I totally 'did not' imagine him as a giant angry Toothless

I mean more like a guy who can turn into a dragon but . . . semantics. When he first showed up I didn’t like him very much because he was basically a party prince, Ew. But then death happened and woops now he’s king. 

And he grew up wonderfully. It helped that he was a dry but romantic little overgrown lizard.

Gabriel: Oh look a mentor character. He wasn’t the most interesting of the mentor archetypes but he was grumpy and sweet and very sarcastic so I had a little grin whenever he came on.

Things I liked

It was mostly a retelling: I know that there can be good books that are bad retellings, like perfectly good stories but it feels like the whole thing was kind of loosely based on the original fairytale but it doesn’t actually retell it. I don’t know how else to explain it but it is a thing I promise. I mean the whole Evil Queen wanting Snow White’s heart was a thing but that was kind of it. There was zero dwarves and Lorelai never even touched the apple. Still I’ve read plenty of ‘accurate’ snow white retellings so I’m okay with Shadow Queen wandering off.

Irina was totally terrifying: I mean she was fabulous and gorgeous but she made tress grow into people while they were still alive. Said people were then forced to cough up apples which she then fed to other people. 

Yeah Irina was terrifying.  A+ villain, 5 out of 5 stars, would be creeped out again.

DRAGONS! enough said guys.

Things I didn’t like so much

Honestly there wasn’t a lot: Sure the ‘friend’ characters were a bit useless and Gabriel’s job half the time was to sit around and wait for Lorelai. And I’ll admit I rolled my eyes a few times during the romance but it really wasn’t that bad.

So yeah in the end the Shadow Queen was pretty good. It never bored me that’s for sure and I’d recommend it to anybody who likes retellings. As long as they don’t mind it deviating from the original