Greta Johnsen of the Nerdette podcast made me aware of this book by Sarah Kozloff by recommending it on the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. The episode was all about audiobook recommendations, and in addition to raving about the book, Johnsen also had high praise for the audiobook narrator, Imogen Church, who is, in fact, fantastic.
The book did take some effort for me to find because all I could remember was that the series was called “The Nine Realms”, and apparently there’s another series called The Nine Realms, but it’s erotica and I was pretty sure that was not what Johnsen was talking about. When I saw Imogen Church listed as the audiobook narrator, I recognized her name, so that’s what clued me in to the fact that I was on the right track.
This book is phenomenal and I cannot wait to listen to the sequels! It’s high fantasy, and while the series is called “The Nine Realms”, the first book is focused primarily on a kingdom called Weirandale, which has always been ruled by a queen with magic powers. Each queen has a unique “talent” that will supposedly prepare her for whatever challenges she will face during her reign. The current queen, Cressa, has the ability make people tell her the truth, but only when she’s touching them. At the beginning of the book, she’s trying to discover her daughter’s talent, and is frustrated because her daughter is 8 years old and still has shown no sign of a talent. Her daughter, Princella Cerulia, tries to explain that she can talk to animals and hear what they say to her, but because it’s been so long since a queen has had that ability, they’ve forgotten that’s a possibility, and so they brush it off as childish fantasy.
But Cerulia really can hear animals and the talent definitely comes in handy when one of the guard dogs wakes her up in the middle of the night to warn her about intruders on the rooftop. Cerulia manages to make it to her mom’s bedroom and wake her up in time for the two of them to barricade themselves in the queen’s bedchamber while the guards and guard dogs fight off the attackers.
The queen and princella are both fine, but the queen knows the assassins could not have gotten as far as they did without help from the inside. She quickly realizes she can only trust a handful of people, so she tells everyone else she’s sending the princella to the country to recover from the shock of the attack, then she sneaks away in the middle of the night with her daughter and the few men she can trust. The men she has to leave behind she enchants to forget they helped her so they can’t betray her, even by accident or under torture.
Queen Cressa knows she’ll be followed and she’ll have to fight to get her kingdom back. She also knows nothing is more important than making sure Cerulia is safe, both as a mother protecting her daughter and as a queen protecting her only heir to the throne. She asks some peasants to adopt Cerulia and come up with a likely story as to how they suddenly got another kid (they already have one daughter about Cerulia’s age). They come up with a story and then Cressa enchants them to believe the story so they can’t betray her daughter by accident.
There’s one more thing. All the queens of this realm have blue hair, and they’re the only ones who have blue hair, so Cressa gives Cerulia hair dye she is to apply to her hair weekly, and then they cut her hair short to make her look more like a peasant. Then Cressa is off to track down her husband, who happens to be a sailor, so they can rustle up a navy to get her kingdom back.
One of Cressa’s half brothers on her father’s side finds them and joins the fight, but Cressa is killed in one of the attacks on her ship.
Meanwhile, her daughter has grown up and has had to teach herself to use her “talent” in secret, and is growing stronger every day.
Back in Weirandale, one of Cressa’s courtiers, who was, in fact, plotting against her, has taken over the throne as regent. Far from wanting to kill Cerulia, he wants to get her on the throne while she’s young enough to be controlled, so once the death of Queen Cressa becomes known, they redouble their efforts to find Cerulia, who has to abandon the family that has basically raised her and head off on her own.