Thorn Queen by Richelle Mead

To my precious readers:

I will reiterate that Richelle Mead is still my favorite urban fantasy writer to date. It does make me biased, I have come to realize this and am not ashamed to admit it. I will give a true opinion on what I thought of the novel. Thorn Queen is the second installment of the Dark Swan series with the first novel called Storm Born. The first was magnificent, which is nothing new with Mead, and I highly recommend it.

Author: Richelle Mead
Title: Thorn Queen
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Zebra Books published by Kensington Publishing Corp., New York, NY 2009
Page Count, List Price: Paperback 383pp, $6.99
ISBN-10: 1420100971
ISBN-13: 978-1420100976

Thorn Queen is the second installment of the Dark Swan series.

Book jacket excerpt:

Eugenie Markham is a shaman for hire, paid to bind and banish creatures from the Otherworld. But after her last battle, she's also become queen of the Thorn Land. It's hardly an enviable life, not with her kingdom in tatters, her love life in chaos, and Eugenie eager to avoid the prophecy about her firstborn destroying mankind. And now young girls are disappearing from the Otherworld, and no one-except Eugenie-seems willing to find out why.

Reluctant queen or not, Eugenie has sworn to do her duty-even if it means facing the darkest-and deadliest- side of her nature...

Richelle Mead... where do I begin? I've reviewed later books in her Succubus series and now a second in her Dark Swan series. This woman knows how to make a sequel that doesn't lose steam (lets take out of consideration her YA series Vampire Academy, which I also love but it can't be put in the same category as her adult series). Not only is it a sequel, but it's a sequel that can stand alone and *that* my friends is hard to do.

I was scared of fantasy before Mead, I really was, but she is flawless with urban fantasy. It eased me into the fantasy world and opened my eyes to a new genre that I was afraid to try. Thorn Queen picks up where the last book ended, adding new and interesting ways of revealing a world that can only come from the depths of Mead's imagination. The story is awesome, the sex scenes steamy, the battle scenes nail-biting, and you really get a feel for what the main character is going through having to live in two different worlds. I felt what Eugenie felt, her anger, her love, her heartache, her conflict with her human side and her Otherworldly side. Just marvelous and fantastic, Mead didn't skip a beat.

Again, flawless. I have even had the pleasure of meeting Richelle Mead. On the outside, she's just like you and me, with an imagination that rivals anything in her genre. If you haven't tried any of Richelle Mead's work I highly recommend them all.

You can learn more about the author here [and pic via...]: Richelle Mead Buy any of her books here and here.

Hoppy Reading!