November 3rd, 2023
My primary interest in books is, and has been from a young age, fantasy literature. In recent years, I have become painfully aware that this field is overwhelmingly dominated by cis, straight, white men. There are precious few queer people and people of color garnering high profile, mainstream success as authors in this genre. As such, I’ve tried to make an effort to seek out and include more marginalized voices in my reading lists, especially writers of fantasy. This selection, Queen of the Conquered, is one of the results of that effort. Kacen Callender is a queer person of color and primarily an author of children’s books. This novel is their adult debut, and is the first in a duology set in a Caribbean-inspired collection of islands.
I’d like to start by saying that I think the themes and the setting of this story are extremely strong. Callender explores the generational trauma and deep cruelty of a slavery-based ecosystem through the complicated eyes of a woman borne of the enslaved islanders, yet free and in a position of power. The conflicts she experiences—balancing personal gain and the communal good, the lure of power for the powerless, the lack of a sense of belonging when caught between two worlds, two peoples—are complex, and make for a deeply nuanced protagonist.
Where Callender starts to falter is in their actual writing. The prose is clunky at times, the wording inelegant, and the author has a tendency to repeat themself, rehash the same concepts (typically expository) over and over. This trend continues through the whole of the book, with the main character’s inner monologue restating the way she feels about the people and situations she engages with (understandable), but also re-describing past events, and restating learned information (less understandable). This practice breaks up the flow of the narrative, and does damage to the book’s forward momentum. It also contributes to the length of the book, which could probably be about 50 pages or so shorter.
The over-explaining present in this book is compounded by the magic system created for this world. The system, called Kraft, is interesting, and as a broader structure has great potential to be a vehicle for fascinating and compelling stories. The nature of an inherent power claimed by, but not exclusive to, a ruling class is an excellent way to show very clearly the nature of oppression and greed between an enslaved people and their slavers. Unfortunately, the specific powers granted to the main character feel more like a storytelling crutch, an easy excuse to provide for her and/or the reader a great deal of plot-relevant information in order to move the story forward and negate the limitations of first person narrative. It feels like Callender wanted to access both the deeply personal and immersive nature of first person, but was unwilling to give up the omniscient nature of third person. Then, late in the book when this omniscience would be inconvenient, it is revealed that some people are able to resist the power, either through skills of their own, or through sheer strength of will. This inconsistency hurts the strength of the system at large, especially given that it seems to follow only those rules that make the author’s job easiest.
I also feel that Callender’s character work suffers. The protagonist is very unlikeable—something that Callender themself has talked about in interviews. This isn’t inherently bad on it’s own, but it becomes a problem in the context of the other characters involved. Many (or most) of the secondary and tertiary characters are underdeveloped, and while there are a number of different goals in play, the supporting cast largely share two or three main motivations, which makes the world feel smaller than it needs to, and draws the reader’s attention back to a fairly unsympathetic lead. It’s difficult to remain emotionally invested as a reader with no major players that you’re rooting for. I acknowledge that there are important and engaging stories with no sympathetic characters, but typically those examples have other factors drawing the reader in (e.g. beautiful prose), and are not genre fiction, which relies on world-building and character investment for success. There is one major exception to this aspect of Callender’s writing, in the form of one secondary character that is deeply interesting, complicated, and easy to root for. It is therefore very promising that this character is, in fact, the protagonist of the second book in this duology. Perhaps this was intentional, to show that while the titular queen of the conquered is the perspective-holder in this first entry, she is not, in reality, the center of the larger story.
Up to this point, my reviews have all been rather positive. I realize this one is significantly more critical, and I wanted to add a disclaimer. I was disappointed in this book, not because it’s terrible, or even the worst book I’ve read recently, but because I think it has a great deal of potential. The bones here are excellent, and there are a lot of interesting and exciting pieces of this world to explore. I’ll most likely end up reading the second book, because I’m hopeful that the issues present in this book (the author’s first foray into adult fantasy) will be improved upon, given more time and more writing. Fingers crossed!
5.5/10
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