Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

I have tried to read this one several times since I was approved and unfortunately can't get into it, so am officially DNFing it.

The True Queen by Zen Cho is a charming, magical sequel to Sorcerer to the Crown, blending Regency-era England with vibrant Southeast Asian folklore. The novel follows Muna, a young woman on a quest to restore her sister's memory, navigating both faerie and British magic societies. With sharp humour, diverse characters, and a focus on sisterhood, Cho delivers an enchanting and witty tale that deftly balances adventure, social commentary, and heart. A delightful read for fans of fantasy and historical fiction alike.

Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

I suspected I was going to fins The True Queen challenging; I didn't like the first book despite its popularity, but in my quest to finish as many series as I can this year I decided to try again. Unfortunately, no luck.

It's been a while since I decided not to finish a book - but three sittings and 20% through was enough for me on this one. While the narrative is happy doing its own thing, it's the tone that is all over the place. Are these supposed to be children's books? They have the token 'charm' and confusingly dramatic but unthreatening stakes that I'm familiar with in stories with that audience - but there are lots of things that make me think it's probably intended for an older audience. I can see a lot of similarities with the writing of Diana Wynne Jones, but this just doesn't have that sparkle for me.

With all that being said, these vein of stories show we're clearly fascinated with updating and imaginatively evolving this setting. From Carnival Row to Bridgerton to The Paper Magician, regency (ish) England has become a popular backdrop to introduce diversity and a worldview beyond Europe into old fashioned modes of storytelling. It's an exciting opportunity to see through new eyes that I'm enjoying in some other forms, but this one just feels childish to me.

Cho always writes a lively, engaging tale and The True Queen is no exception but although I enjoyed it, I didn't love it the way I did with Sorcerer to the Crown. The key characters are Muna and Shakti who wash up on the shores of Janda Baik with no memory of how they arrived there. All they know is that Shakti has been cursed and the girls must travel to England to seek the aid of the Sorcereress Royal. Muna is well-developed, tenacious and empathetic, but her sister Shakti is sketchier. Muna's friendship with Henrietta is a lovely element [but to characterise the novel as an f/f romance is a reach] and I loved those, sadly minimal, scenes when Prunella and Zacharias from the first book make an appearance. But the plot seemed to drag and didn't offer many surprises, things that were intended to be central plot twists were surprisingly easy to spot.

I would also suggest that, although this is advertised as a stand-alone you will get much more of it if you read it after Sorcerer to the Crown. The worldbuilding and characters isn't explicated much in the second offering and is easier to understand when read in sequence. You will also learn things about Prunella and Zacharias and other characters from the English Court that will spoil the plot of the first book.

Zen Cho is able to evoke a particular historical period with aplomb and THE TRUE QUEEN is no exception. This is a standalone but I'd highly recommend reading the first book due to its brilliance.

I'm afraid I was unable to read this book in time but I hope it finds the right readers. This is due to my prioritising physical advanced copies but I hope that I will be able to work better with Netgalley copies in the future.

Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

Absolutely delightful Regency fantasy! I was a huge fan of the first book in this series, Sorcerer to the Crown, which offered a British Regency-with-magic setting with far more diversity than you usually find in the genre, and The True Queen lives up to the brilliance of the first. You don't need to have read Sorcerer to read this; there is some character overlap but it's a wholly self-contained story - the world-building of the first book is perhaps nice to have, but all you really need to know is that the British patriarchy disapproves of female magicians, which is perfectly well-expressed here.

Our heroine, Muna, is a Malaysian woman who travels to England, and the book deals to some extent with colonialism, racism, and the fetishization of the exotic, but in a way that lightly pokes fun at it rather than examines it harshly. It perfectly suits the Regency style, being arch rather than combative. In fact, the style and tone are spot on in every aspect.

I would have liked the romance to be a little more prominent, since everyone is talking about this being f/f - it really only occurs right at the end of the book, and in very little detail - but again, it suits the tone of the book, and it is nice to have even a glimpse of an f/f relationship in a historical setting (and there are m/m side characters too).

Overall, this is sweet, fun, and witty - a perfect addition to my shelves. Five stars.

This book was SO good. I am a total Zen Cho fangirl now, her first book really impressed me and this was just as brilliant.

I think I would have enjoyed this book a good deal more at another time. Like its sister novel, it is full of dry if pointed humour and its plot bounds along peopled with exuberant characters and a sense of largely light hearted fun. I liked Muna a great deal. And yet. I wasn’t quite in the right mood, and the core plot is so telegraphed it left me irritable. This is perhaps more an over the top Regency romance than anything else, and while it was a ship I could board I was left dissatisfied overall. On the plus side, charming f/f magical shenanigans with sisterly attachments and a Malay Muslim heroine.

Sisters Sakti and Muna wake up on the shore of Janda Baik under a curse and with missing memories. Determined to discover who cursed them and how to break it, the girls had to England to the Sorceress Royal’s academy for female magicians. But, on the way, Sakti vanishes, leaving Muna alone and terrified of what may have become of her sister. Finally arriving in England and enlisting the help of the magiciennes of the academy, Muna embarks on a mission to enter the Unseen Realm and rescue her sister from the Fairy Court and the powerful Fairy Queen.

First things first, I haven’t read the first book in this series, Sorcerer to the Crown, and you absolutely don’t need to. I understand that some of the characters appear in the first book, so it might be helpful for background information, but the main characters are different and The True Queen reads perfectly well as a standalone novel.

The narrative voice is quite ‘posh’ and old fashioned, which made it feel quite stilted and not particularly smooth to read. I didn’t really like this at first, but it really grew on me because it fit with the time of the story and the fact that the main characters were not native to England.

The story is fun, with some very sweet relationships and charming characters. Henrietta was an absolute delight, while the rest of the cast were also very likeable. The only real flaw was that the none of the characters seemed to feel any particular urgency to get on with important things, like rescue Sakti and prevent a war between England and Fairy – which really seemed like it should have been a priority. Instead they were quite content to be having balls and generally faffing about, before getting on with anything actually productive.

The True Queen took a few chapters to get into, but I enjoyed it overall.

DNF @ 40%

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this novel.

Rep: Malay MC, possible WLW MC, but nothing mentioned so far.


Personally, I found the world-building confusing, the plot directionless and the characters bland. While I wanted to love this, as I enjoyed the first book, Sorcerer to the Crown, this one didn't work for me, unfortunately.

I'll be honest, I mainly requested this because I heard it was F/F and it had dragons. But I've read 40% now and dragons have been mention at most, twice and there is no mention or hints at an F/F romance, or, to be honest, any LGBTQ+ rep at all.

Overall, I'm super happy I had the opportunity to read this one and I would still recommend it to people who love historical fantasy with diverse characters!

This was a great sequel to The Sorceror to the Crown, and I loved that we got a new perspective from new characters whilst still maintaining a connection to our favourites from the first book. The plot and the writing, for me is as good as the first book and apart from the plot being easy to see where it was leading I still thoroughly enjoyed this.

Excellent read. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

The True Queen is a not-quite-direct follow-up to Sorcerer to the Crown. It’s set in the same world, and some of the same characters play a part, but for the most part the main character is Muna. Muna doesn’t remember her past before she and her sister were found on the shore of Janda Baik, and she doesn’t seem to have any magic (while her sister Sakti possesses a surfeit of it), but she nonetheless finds herself entangled when Sakti is abducted into Fairyland, a rescue must be made to get Damerell back after something goes rather wrong for Rollo, and all the while she’s staying in England at Prunella Wythe’s school for female practitioners of thaumaturgy.

Thinking about it now, I think it wasn’t as strong as the first book, particularly because Muna isn’t nearly as strong a character as Prunella. It was certainly entertaining while I read it, but even just a couple of weeks later some of the details have gone all thin for me. I did enjoy the f/f romance aspect, though I confess it felt a little out of nowhere, but really my strongest feelings were about the relationship between Rollo and Damerell! Also, the whole section that involved Georgiana Without Ruth, because she’s awesome.

The ending sort of didn’t surprise me, and everything tied up neatly; I was less invested in the final get-togethers than I was in Sorcerer to the Crown… All in all, it just doesn’t seem to have worked quite as well for me, though it’s still an entertaining read.

Fabulous follow-up to 'Sorcerer to the Crown' mostly set in Regency England and Fairyland. I appreciated the differences to the first book, it was refreshing to have it focus on new characters whilst still featuring our favourites, although I felt on occasion it lacked the vivaciousness of having Prunella centre stage. It may have been intended that way but some tension was missed by it being rather easy to guess who the True Queen was and where the story was heading. I still enjoyed it (especially the dragons) and would love to read further adventures set in this world.

(ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley)

Unfortunately at the moment I am having to mark this as a DNF, the writing is interesting and the world building is strong, but it's just not gripping my attention right now.
I think I definitely need to read the first book before trying this one again.
Hopefully in the future I will pick this up again and love it.

DNF@25

This is a weird one for me, because I didn't really dislike it. The main characters, Muna and her sister Sakti were quite compelling main characters and the overall worldbuilding, the combination of Malaysian and English cultures, was quite interesting. There's a lot to like in this book. However, for some reason, I kept finding myself straying whenever I tried to read it, and after the fifth time trying to pick it up, I had to call it quits. I think a large part of it had to do with the writing style, namely the Regency-style prose. I adore Regency-era settings, but I've learned through high school English classes that I can't stand that era's writing style, and there was just a little too much of that in here. Perhaps in the future, I'll try to give this another go.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book.*

If you liked the first book by Zen Cho, you might like this one. I really enjoyed the wonderfully fresh take on mythology and the entire Poco setting with Indonesia, nagas and witches messing with the English magicians.

However, I didn't really like the characters in this Regency Era fantasy novel and the writing style made it hard for me to immerse myself. I wasn't a huge fan of #1 and I'm not a fan of #2. It was a nice story, a bit obvious in many regards, but somewhat entertaining. Especially the idea with the naga was nice. However the pacing was odd and I skim read many pages. I cannot really put my finger on what exactly didn't work for me, but it just didn't. Maybe because I was annoyed by almost all the characters...

2,5 Stars.

https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2019/5/6/the-true-queen-by-zen-cho

I believe it was the noted philosopher Obi-Wan Kenobi who first pointed out that truth depends upon our point of view. From a privileged vantage point deep within a society you may see yourselves as the highest of the high while the other classes and countries all are clearly inferior. In Zen Cho’s debut novel The Sorcerer Royal (and yes you should also be picking that one up if you haven’t but don’t worry you can read these two books in any order) we saw Regency England under a magical lens and its reaction both a black man in one of its most privileged positions; and, an even more magically powerful woman threatening that society’s sense of order. In this fantastic follow up we take a slightly different position to look at English society not just from within but also the outside. Throw in fae politics and dragons and it’s a sumptuously intelligent novel that makes you laugh and think at the same time.

The story initially centres on two sisters; Muna and Sakti arriving with no memory of their lives in the Malay Archipelago and falling happily under the wing of the extremely powerful witch Mak Genggang. She discovers that Sakti has powerful magic while Muna has none, but both are suffering from a curse that has been used on the two sisters; which is starting to make them slowly vanish from reality. The girls investigate and discover a link to an English magician named Midsomer and so with Mak’s help they are sent through the realm of the Fairy Queen to meet Mak’s ally the Sorceress Royal to hopefully find some answers before it’s too late. Unfortunately, Muna gets separated and she arrives in the home of the most powerful magician in England who is expecting a powerful witch of her own.

Muna is thrust into a society that struggles to recognise women as equal in any way let alone that those from foreign countries should be treated as equals. She must tread the path carefully as clearly someone in this magical community understands this curse and wishes her family ill. Add into this one of the Fairy Queen’s traditional culling of suspected traitors from her court and an ultimatum on England the stakes get incredibly high and Muna must work out who she can trust before it’s too late.

If you’ve not read a Zen Cho story before you’re in for a treat. The story is always moving and never goes in the direction you expect. This is a story with a fine eye for pointing a finger at all types of societies failing and in particular the English magical community is shown to be less a beacon of civilisation and more a warring set of factions (often unsurprisingly white and male) who seem to disregard the needs of anyone but their own families and even then not adverse to marrying daughters off to pay the bills. Muna being a complete outsider though actually been shows even those we would expect to be sympathetic i.e. the Sorceress Royal’s group in a less than positive light. Muna is seen as exotic; they don’t understand her faith or traditions and its hard for may to assume she can talk and think for her own. Prunella the Sorceress Royal was a charismatic and sympathetic lead in the first novel but this time she’s more adjacent rather than central to the plot and she can be seen by those looking on seen as unsympathetic or too focused on her own internal drive to understand magic rather than simple help someone because it’s the right thing to do.

Muna discovers that just by virtue of being polite to the various spirits of magic she can get much more done than most magicians. While this can make the reader feel torn in their loyalties its perhaps useful to remind ourselves that our country and ways of life may not make sense to anyone else visiting for the first time and that we can be unbearably smug about how great and progressive we think ourselves. Cho interestingly later shows us life in the Fairy Queen’s court and while there does seem to be a greater focus on killing (and eating) your rivals there is also a little bit of me that struggled to see exactly why these feuding fae powers were worse than most of the magicians we had just met…

Two other pluses for me shone through. Firstly the humour be it through people’s misunderstandings of one another or the narrator making light of the traditions of the UK all help make this a novel that is nimble and fast moving between characters and locations; this in addition helps the reader tense up when the story gets more action focused and the risks to the main characters we’ve grown to care about get more pronounced. Another thing I loved was the way that relationships were depicted. We return to the fae/human relationship of Rollo and Damerell and its interesting to see the fairy realm doesn’t seem too concerned that these two males are in love with one another. Another plotline has a growing relationship between two women that when they finally admit their feelings for one another was soooo worth the wait. While clearly loving its setting, this is definitely a 21st century novel with things to say about our own world. The story is packed with little side plots and relationships that I think all support the wider novel. To those wanting just action and adventure the pace may seem sedate but for me this is a world to savour and investigate slowly.

An author who this tale reminded me of in a strange way of Diana Wynn Jones who created magical societies and often used them to highlight our own weaknesses. This is clearly a novel for adults, but I think intelligent and funny fantasy is one of the hardest things to get right and Zen Cho matches Jones for that ear for people and classes talking to one another but not initially understanding one another. A thoughtful, intelligent and heart-warming novel that I think lovers of intelligent fantasy should be picking up straightaway.

And my tradition of requesting ARCs for books that turn out to be sequels or even worse, later books in series, continues! To be fair to the book, it did state in the NetGalley description that it was a sequel that you could read as a standalone, but I had forgotten about that by the time I started reading. Now at the start you don’t realize that it is a sequel, as we follow two sisters who wash up on an island in what I guess is the region of Indonesia from the description and are cared for by a local witch of immense power. The girls appear to be under a curse, and get sent to London to get the help from the British Sorceress to the Crown – which is where the sequel aspect jumps in. Apparently the British characters are known from the first book. I’m slightly disappointed that I didn’t read the books in order, as I very much enjoyed the writing style and world-building, from different types of magic in different parts of the world to the Unseen World full of fae and magical creatures. There is some wonderful queer representation as well, which is refreshing. I wish I had read the first book before this, as it describes how the Sorceress came to be – the first female one, I think – and I now already know some things that are obvious spoilers for the first book! I am still very keen to pick it up, as I liked her character and general disregard for the hurt males of her profession.