To accompany the book blog tour which is stopping at mine tomorrow, I have written a review for ‘The Queen Must Die’. Now since writing the post for the blog tour, I have felt a bit uneasy about writing The Queen Must Die. It doesn’t sound very patriotic does it? But all became clear after reading the book.
Katie, an assuming teenager who loves nothing more than reading books under her bed. (Who doesn’t) Books are the one thing that keep her company. Her Mum isn’t around much, the housekeeper ignores her and she has none to zero friends at school.
But Katie’s boring life changes pretty swiftly in the book when after falling asleep whilst reading, she wakes up in a very different place to where she began…Buckingham Palace to be exact. And it’s no longer present day – Katie soon finds out she has time travelled back to 1851, a time when Queen Victoria was at the throne and there were many threats to her and the Royal Family.
Katie is forced to make friends and finds help in the form of Princess Alice and James who promise to find out how to get her home. But that’s not the worst of Katie’s problems, she soon discovers a secret plot to kill the Queen and must do everything she can to stop it and whilst doing so…discovers she’s not the only person who can time travel.
This comes at a time when Katie’s time travelling is explained in further detail. I usually get lost with time travel..Back to the Future was too complicated for me but the author deals with it very well and keeps it in-keeping with the story. The book reminds me of a similarly themed book I read a few years ago ‘Beswitched’ by Kate Saunders and it’s great that books which explore similar themes and subject lines can be so different and original.
She ran the risk of historical fiction not working with sci-fi/fantasy themes but it does and the result is a fantastic action story suitable for girls and boys aged 9-12. The pace is fast, the characters likeable and I can’t wait for the next book The Queen at War in this trilogy; The Chronicles of the Tempus, due to be published in 2012.
The author clearly did her research. 1851 was the year of the Great Exhibition and I was very interested to read about it in the book because I studied it, along with that era’s literature in great detail.
Check back tomorrow for K.A.S Quinn’s guest post and an exclusive extract from The Queen Must Die.
The Queen Must Die by K.A.S. Quinn
Atlantic Books
9781848870529
£6.99
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