In this incomplete book review series, I will review only an Amazon sample portion or the first fifteen pages of a book. The first section will be a completely honest and unbiased review of these introductory pages. In the second section I will wildly speculate about how the plot progresses. Finally, I will state whether I would be enticed to keep reading based on completely nonsensical reasoning.

The Review:

In the opening lines we are told that the narrator became a queen in seven minutes, something that wouldn’t sound all that impressive to the denizens of Soho. The narrator explains, through rather cunning use of newspaper-flat narrative, that the land of Aylia or Ilian or whatever (Let’s just call it Ikea for the ease of remembering) was once beset by a caste system where everyone wore numbers on their backs like NFL stars. However, now that the caste system has been cast off, everyone seems to have gone absolutely nuts rioting for no particular reason and burning down perfectly good store fronts just because of discriminatory hiring practices. Rest assured there is no FEHA in the land of Ikea. The main character Eadlyn seems concerned, if also heavily disinterested, about these affairs and her father is just as ardently apathetic.

Eadlyn’s lavish life of living in a garden-surrounded palace and being massaged by her servant Neena only sounds as hard as it actually is, but learning to be a queen apparently also entails working hard on budget cuts, health care, and picking out jewelry/shoes for her mother in that order. The Neena character is clearly the Jar Jar of this world: an anachronistic, dark-skinned servant who seems to harbor an unpronounced self-loathing and who, despite a minimal role, is also so frequently-annoying that you can only feel the constant hope that she will fall to her death on the next set of spiral stairs that she encounters.

But the real show-stopper comes halfway through our preview on page 5 (or 6 or 7, it’s hard to tell in the Amazon preview where we are at exactly page-wise). We are going through such a tumultuous roller-coaster-ride of feelings RE: Eadlyn that by the time her parents announce that she will be married off to the nearest royalty in an arranged marriage (the “Selection”) we the reader can’t really be held accountable for our emotional outburst (I found myself sighing inaudibly, but mileage will vary depending upon whether you got the Brave reference). The author Keira Cass faithfully captures Eadlyn’s expected vexation and empowering inner-monologue about wanting to choose her own mate, but you can’t help feeling that Eadlyn’s diatribes would have been better steered towards patricidal rage directed, in Shakespearian glory, at her seemingly ambivalent father.

On balance, this preview gives us a glimpse into the horrible and vacuous lives of the Ikea royal family, though I’m not sure that this accurate portrayal of awful people would be enough to sustain me for a full read and I would have to rate this as a pass for myself.

How the Plot should progress:

Fed up with her parents’ attempts to force an arranged marriage, Eadlyn decides to join the riotous mobs and protest the unfair treatment of ex-caste members. But there’s one problem: Her true love Neena is still imprisoned by societal norms, being forced to give endless back rubs to Eadlyn’s brother Ahren to keep her skills intact, and cannot join Eadlyn’s bloody escapades. Eadlyn encounters a troll who is building a cannon out of broken kitchen pots and dynamite, gearing up to aim the weapon at the Ikea palace in the distance.  Only she can tell him where beast to aim the death buckets to inflict the maximum amount of harm against her family.  Thus, Eadlyn is eventually forced to choose between her loyalty for her feckless/emotionless parents and the mob. Let’s make it interesting and say she chooses the mob (are there enough guillotine’s in the land of Ikea for all the necks at its palace?).

Eadlyn’s patricidal/matricidal plotting is thwarted when it is announced that a replacement queen will be married off to Ahren after a heated dancing competition. The mob trades in its pitchforks for dancing shoes and a charming young girl named Birgalia McDoo seems to be the front runner. Birgalia sweeps through the competition, besting a portly gal named Primly Vittle, whose moves were almost enough to catch the eye of the young prince before she succumbs to the tragic side effects of gravity. Primly overcame eating disorder with the power of music, though none of that matters as she is clearly a side character and is not as hot as Birgalia, so she loses in the finals when Birgalia sets her own shoes on fire and dances dirtier than a Mike Tyson fight.

After it becomes clear that Ahren and Birgalia are destined to be together, Eadlyn has no choice but to infect the girl with a deadly, skin-eating disease in a desperate attempt to finalize her overthrow. Eadlyn manages to slip some turbopox into Birgalia’s morning tea. Birgalia, being taste-blind due to a childhood cow pie mix-up, slops that tea back like it’s the last water on earth.

Neena eventually shows up, looking for the lost princess, and convinces Eadlyn to come back to the palace with her under darkness. Eadlyn realizes that the hand servant is her true love. But just when Eadlyn thinks she’ll be able to finally steal a kiss, Neena betrays her and shuts her up in the dungeon, declaring revenge for all of those beatings that Eadlyn previously gave her. Eadlyn has the last laugh, however, when her family and all the servants successively die of the disease imparted by Birgalia. Eadlyn’s last thoughts transform into insanity as she imagines herself becoming queen of the gathering rats that eventually gnaw at her dead carcass.

There are no queens in Ikea—nor kings for that matter. The end.