The Queen's Rising

By: Rebecca Ross

Narrated by: Suzanne Elise Freeman

Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's Summary

In this epic debut fantasy, inspired by Renaissance France, an outcast finds herself bound to a disgraced lord and entangled in his plot to overthrow the king. Perfect for fans of Grave Mercy and Red Queen!

Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron. Growing up in Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions - art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge - Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, Brienna’s greatest fear comes true: she is left without a patron.

Months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage. Suspicious of his intent, she reluctantly accepts. But there is much more to his story, for there is a dangerous plot to overthrow the king of Maevana - the rival kingdom of Valenia - and restore the rightful queen, and her magic, to the throne.

With war brewing, Brienna must choose which side she will remain loyal to: passion or blood.

©2018 Rebecca Ross LLC (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Mary Sue

For the first time ever I will compare this to a popular series. Twilight, every single person is in love with Breanna, wants to be with her, be her. Oh sorry except for one girl jealous of her because their master is in love with Breanna and not her. This story had a lot of potential, but I found myself disliking Breanna more and more every time she opened her mouth. She assumes sooo much of everyone, is normally wrong and yet she HAS to be right & keeps on making assumptions. The other thing that bothers me is this is a sheltered girl who knows only of knowledge, for the last 7 years she’s been at all all girls school learning knowledge and Few other “arts”. She hasn’t been trained in a lot of hand to hand combat, maybe a weeks worth at best, but now she’s going to go into battle sword held high and will probably even kill the king. (I don’t know the ending, I didn’t finish it with an hour left I just can’t anymore) all so she can put a girl in the throne because we should only have queens on the throne, no kings. Kings are evil.

Don’t get me wrong I love girl power. Hunger hames and Katniss YES PLEASE! Among so many many others. But this just didn’t do it for me. There was never any good reason as to why there should only be a queen on the throne. Just that there was, everyone who was smart believed it and it MUST happen again.

I’m sure lots of people will disagree with Me & love it. This one just didn’t work for me.

great then boring

I really enjoyed probably the first half and it had a fun set up but then all that was abandoned and it felt cheesey to me.

Marvelous

I Love this book! The bonds of Sisterhood and loyalty are wonderful! These young women all discovering who they are and finding their paths, their friendships and bonds help each other rise in their own discovery. Iron sharpens Iron!

This story drew me in from the beginning. As Brienna accepts the challenges laid before her and has difficult decisions to make, I found myself totally rallying for her! Cheering for her as she finds her strength and discovers herself!

It's totally Marvelous!!

captivating story with amazing narrator

at first I was a little hesitant in this story. But as the story progressed I found myself wanting to listen more and more. I am excited to see if there will be another book although I'm happy with how it ended.

good story

I enjoyed the performance a lot. the story line was interesting but predictable. The use of extreme description became tiresome and felt like I was lead through the story instead of being allowed to experience it. I would recommend this book to friends because it is enjoyable over all.

An OK Title

Overall, the plot was cliche and quite predictable. There could have been a little more meat character development-wise too, the MC was rather dull and lacked personality. The narrator was awful, just droning. I had to speed her up! So, if you all want to listen to the book, speed her by 1.25x.

Highly Recommend!

An epic adventure featuring a strong female protagonist - I really enjoyed this read. Brienna has never known her father. Her mother died when she was young and her protective grandfather hid her away with in a passion house to keep her safe from the father she never knew.

As Brienna cycles through the different passions, failing at all, she finally settles on knowledge. But as her classmates find patrons and leave her, Brienna is left at the passion house until ... her mistress discovers that Brienna is the key to the return of the ruling Queens to Maevana, a land that has suffered through King's rule for generations. While Brienna does not possess magical royal blood, her role in the return of female rule to her father's land is integral.

This book has everything: a strong protagonist that you can't help loving, a wide array of side characters, adventure, mystery, romance, and danger. And the bonus is that the story ends beautifully with real closure. Highly recommend!

Enjoyable but predictable

I had a hard time with this one. The writing was so over the top and the narration was so emotionless that the combination drove me batty. I almost gave up three or four times. I'm glad I held on to the end though, because the story did get better eventually. There were no big surprises or plot twists, everything was predictable but I enjoyed the world. My biggest fault with this book was the relationships, Ross didn't show any development for the relationships. They were just there. One stranger meets another and then BAM they are worth dying or killing or being fired over out of no where. I pretty much live for character development, and the lack there of almost made me give the whole thing two stars. But I liked the concepts of the world so I decided on 3. I probably would have enjoyed this book more had I read it and not listened to it though.

Amazing story!

I was hooked. I wish it were a series so it would keep on going!

Incredibly Bad

I have to wonder if most of the ratings came from the friends and family members of the author in order to boost the score because this book was astoundingly bad on all levels. First, the characters are flat. The main character has no character traits, no virtues, no flaws, nothing. She simply exists as the reader's eyes and ears in the story. It's the same with the rest of the characters who simply do things so the story will move forward, but there's no sense of them having personalities. Since all the characters are flat, it should go without saying that the relationships are non-existent. The author simply decides that the characters will have a positive or negative relationship, without much feeling or set up for any of it, and so they do. The main character and her love interest have no build-up for their relationship and there's no way of knowing what it is they love or like about each other since there's no characterization for either of them. Also, the narrator... it sounds like this book was put into Natural Reader and that was uploaded instead of hiring an actual narrator.
This book makes it difficult to trust the scores and reviews on this platform.

It started off interesting...

Struggled with the climax of the story. It got sloppy and uninteresting. Somehow the fighting was the most boring part. I wished the Author gave us more meaningful relationships. It could've been a lot more than what it was. Merrgh

Liked this book more than I expected

This story was better than I expected it to be from the description, and it has real potential to be really engaging and interesting. It was a nice change to come across a YA book that isnt rammed full of mythical creatures for once these days.

Felt like the ages of some characters should have been made more clear. I won't name names for those that are yet to read, and once you read it you'll know what I mean anyway, but I felt that some people were just a little bit too young to engage how they did with characters that could be interpreted as a little bit too old, or not their usual 'go to person', when you really think about the timeline of it all.

But I did finish this book feeling disgruntled the next one isn't out yet and I have to wait to find out what comes next, so I would recommend.

Superb and addictive

Totally awesome 😎 I was hooked from start to finish. Bring on some more, wish we could follow authors on audible and get alerted to new books when they come out ?