The Hidden Queen by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic fantasy.

Sure, it absolutely builds on the great Warded Man series, but directly follows the events of The Desert Spear, which continues with their kids. It's not only a worthy sequel-series, it's absolutely rich in great characters and even more rich in magic, worldbuilding, and action.

The action isn't immediately obvious until much later, but frankly, I don't care. These kids have to deal with so damn much. Rich arabic-type culture and also a fresh medieval culture trying to work together, duels, very interesting intersex normalization subtext, power dynamics, and so much more. Like musical harmony. Or super-sensitivity masquerading as introversion. Or just plain oldschool perception-dynamics.

There's a glut of things to love in this novel, and the cliffhanger at the end is fantastic.



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