wow. I'm simply speechless. Erika Johansen never disappoint! 

This is a difficult book to review without spoilers.  It's much better than the 2nd book in the series, but there are still problems with it.  However, in the end, it was probably the book that most felt like it hung together as a cohesive story better than the original trilogy.  

The first half reads like a fanfic redemption of Elyssa, where I kept getting taken out of the story by thinking "but that's not how it was in books 1-3, is this some kind of alt-history or did the author just not re-read the books before writing this one?"  Then after a while I started to settle into the idea of it being an alt history because I realized how did all those little "historical quotes" used at the start of each chapter get written?  In book three just about everyone dies while Kelsea does her jaunt into the past, so presumably even if that timeline continues, how was Father Tyler alive to write them?  And when did he get those quotes from her?  They barely talked in the trilogy.  Kelsea "comes back" to the modern day future and the other people she cares about are all about the same age as she remembers them so my assumption is that this is supposed to have been the same "moment in time" just with everything all happy hunky dory now.   

But no, about 2/3rds of the way in you realize what the author is planning to do and while the author carefully murders off all the other named characters who would remember Elyssa being different, she conveniently forgets EVERYONE ELSE.  Fetch doesn't mention knowing Elyssa.  The people on the street don't talk about Elyssa and her whiplash proclamations.  The horrible slaughter of the Altmont field-slaves is somehow mostly forgotten despite only being 19 years previous.  How did they even clean up after such a charnel house grave?

Anyhow I was really bummed about how they made the witch wipe out Elyssa's mind because up until that point I was really enjoying it.  Elyssa was a far more interesting and balanced Kelsea, Niya was a great support character to her arc, and the Mace backstory allowed for showing more of the Tearling's festering blight.  I wish that it had just been some other characters, perhaps some early queen in history, a brief bright blip of hope, it would have been my favorite of all four books if it had stayed that way.

Of course, I was once again disappointed at the overreliance on rapes and child rape & abuse to indicate depravity.  I was hopeful that there was going to be one scene of a man being raped to balance out all the explicit rapes of women, but no.  There's a single scene where it almost happens but he's saved before anything explicit happens, and it frames the victim as rather cowardly and weak which is awful.  True, a male child is sexually abused, but that's not exactly the kind of egalitarianism I mean.  The notes of all the rapes in war "oh and of course some men were raped too" always seem tacked on by someone who reminded the author that men can get raped too.  There's a lot of "if you're beautiful you get raped, if you're ugly enough maybe you can avoid it" which is a fundamental misunderstanding of rape, it's not lust for attractive people, it's toxic abuse of power.  Pairing this attitude with the blanket disapproval of sex work, and it means that sex can only ever be used to make people feel shitty.  The guy's wife in Book 3 couldn't possibly actually be happy being a prostitute, despite her saying that she has her own business, her own friends, is treated well and better than she ever was in the Tearling.  Ugh.

Readers who haven't yet read the other books in Johansen's epic series will quickly be reaching for them after finishing this strong, stand-alone return to the world of the Tearling. The status of Princess Elyssa’s kingdom is dire: Absolute monarchy quickly approaching an autocracy, a widening wealth gap, drought, and a rebel group gaining traction. Elyssa has to quickly decide if she'll continue the ruthless rule of her mother, or have the audacity to become the prophecized True Queen, destined to bring about a more just world for all. What I love most about the Tearling novels is the intricacies; how the wide cast of characters’ actions are intertwined in each other’s. You watch the chain of events start to click into place, traps laid down, and you know there’s no way to warn them about what is coming. Once again this world blurs the lines between fantasy and dystopia. It puts to question if all societies, including our own, are destined to fall into the same patterns of dystopic nature ?and ruin. Perhaps there is hope on the blue horizon, but it is veiled in blood.