Book Review - Joss Walker's Tomb of the Queen
Tomb of the Queen by Joss Walker
Published by: Two Tales Press
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 468 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Jayne Thorne has spent a life on the run. She didn't know that's why her sister Sofia moved them at least three times a year until Jayne was in high school. She never understood the reason for the depths of Sofia's paranoia until recently. This was just a part of her everyday life. So when your surroundings are liable to change you hold onto the constants in your life. And for Jayne, books have always been a constant. As well as pie. Which is why she's a librarian who loves to eat pie. What's the point of dinner without dessert is a mantra she lives by. A month ago she started a dream job at Vanderbilt Library's Public Services and Reference Department where she works with everything from rare books about the history of Vanderbilt itself to fascinating Afro-Cuban manuscripts. She loves Nashville. Sure, it's not Dublin. And she's not in charge of the Book of Leinster at Trinity College which Jayne wrote her thesis on, but Vandy is a close second. Perhaps settling for a dream job versus the dream job is enough for now. Plus Sofia probably couldn't handle Jayne going overseas. As it is their not living together for the first time in their entire lives seems to have Sofia on edge. As do the news reports of people combusting into flame. Which is why Jayne doesn't tell her about a weird experience. She thinks it's just another ocular migraine but the green stars were a bit out of the ordinary. She could sure use that drink with her sister. But that wasn't any ocular migraine. That was magic. When Jayne touched a book that just happened to be a spell book she sent a shock wave through the magical community. Luckily the CIA gets to her first. The Torrent Control Organization, TCO for short, is a small, quiet, and little-known branch of that monster organization. And they want to recruit Jayne in their fight against the terrorist organization known as the Kingdom. The Kingdom wants to return the world to the way it was, with magic flowing freely and no technology. Anyone not adept in magic would basically be a serf. As for those who rely on technology to survive? Well, of course, in any great upheaval there will be casualties. To do this the Kingdom needs necromantic grimoires and the TCO is pretty sure that the Book of Leinster is one of them. The way the torrent reacted to Jayne combined with her thesis indicates that not only is she the only person for this job, but that she might be the first Master in a very long time. So she's off to Dublin. Sofia has no idea. But Jayne's about to find out what they've been running from their entire lives.
I have rarely read a book where I couldn't care less what happened. The characters were flat and the story felt lifeless. Yes, I was glad that for once an author in creating a bookish heroine had said character like books other than Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. But that doesn't mean Jayne doesn't like Harry Potter and all the Harry Potter references for a book released in 2021 was too unfeeling. The only thing I really appreciated is that I honestly thought they were setting up the Kingdom to be a cult like group that had decent goals and could legitimately divide Jayne's loyalties. Oh no. They were a cult. An evil cult. They were evil as fuck and I applaud that. There was no ambiguity in this book that could be seen as slightly Copaganda adjacent. They killed people. They stole. They cut Jayne open and told her to heal herself. You go evil Kingdom, you take down the island! And that's where all my problems in this book stem from, the way the Kingdom's goals are presented shows a weird lack of sensitivity to Ireland, Irish Car Bomb cocktail aside. There was all this cool Irish history that could be explored with the Book of Leinster being Queen Medb's and yet, I'm not sure that Joss Walker understands how important Ireland's national identity is. Back to the "island" comment. So, the Kingdom's plan to return the world to the way it was is to destroy the power grid. By blowing up a substation near Medb's tomb in Knocknarea, Ireland, it dominoes to take out Northern Ireland and then England. Yet aside from two places in the book when referencing this plan they include Ireland as part of the UK. As someone who is proudly of Irish heritage while also being an Anglophile, and yes, I know, that can be complicated, I say what da fuk!?! Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom! Northern Ireland is, Ireland isn't. Dublin is in Ireland. Got that? NOT Northern Ireland. Knocknarea? Again, NOT Northern Ireland. IRELAND IS IT'S OWN COUNTRY! It has been since the partition in the nineteen twenties. I mean, you think setting a book in Ireland you'd know a bit about the history of the country when the protagonist is a self-described history nerd! Likewise, it could be just a lack of clarity and Joss Walker does know the difference. Or knew the difference for those two times it was stated correctly. But this glaring and offensive an error put me off the entire book. I almost want to read the next book to see if she insults the French. Almost.
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