skygiants

I am on a really enjoyable streak of books that are extremely good and also extremely gay! The difference with Zen Cho's The True Queen is that I was quite sure before I began it that at least the first part would be true based on how much I consistently love everything Zen has ever written, and my expectations were very much lived up to.

The True Queen is set in the same magical-Regency world as Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen's first novel -- although I feel a bit strange now describing it as magical-Regency because The True Queen has a scope much broader than Britain. In fact the book begins in Janda Baik, Malaysia, where amnesiac probably-sisters Muna and Sakti have washed ashore and been taken under the wing of everybody's favorite strong-minded elderly witch Mak Genggang. Sakti has a vast amount of magic and self-confidence and also a curse; Muna has none of those things but she does have a deal of good sense that Sakti is in sore need of, which is enough to land her the role of primary protagonist!

However, Muna's good sense is not quite enough to prevent Muna and Sakti from getting themselves into such a Serious Scrape such that the only course is for them to be sent far away to England, where Sakti can participate in a magical exchange program at a school for young ladies set up by Prunella Gentleman, the British Sorcerer Royal (formerly seen as one of the primary protagonists in Sorcerer to the Crown).

Unfortunately, various intersecting plots interfere with this plan, including:

- mysterious disappearances
- stolen magical artifacts
- an irritable polong who just wants to steal
- complex internecine Fairy politics
- a distressed dragon's efforts to rescue his moderately less distressed (but still imperiled) boyfriend
- An Extremely Powerful Aunt
- and, as is inevitable in any plot about amnesiac sisters, Muna and Sakti's own secret identities, and how that impacts their relationship with each other

Like Sorcerer to the Crown, The True Queen is a delightful Regency romp that steadfastly refuses to ignore the imperialism that Regency romps most often prefer to skate quickly over. However, for all that much of the book takes place in England, Muna's world and concerns generally lie well outside of it and so the impact on her and the book as a whole is quite different -- there's some very good stuff about this in a recent interview, but overall it makes for a book that is both very satisfying and very satisfyingly different than the first. Strongly recommend both!