2.5 stars.

What I liked
I liked the revolution element in this book. The author really connects the horrible things that happen today (fascism, draught etc.) with the story she is telling. I also liked the ending because it is not a happy ending. That is usually what happens in real life too. And lastly, I liked seeing the world Johansen build again.

What I did not like
This is a prequel to the queen of the Tearling series but there were too many inconsistencies. Like the Mace supposedly being 15 years old when recruited and in this prequel more in his twenties. Also there were a lot of things that were too big to not let it re-appear in the trilogy. Like in this book it is a lot about the Blue horizon movement. In the trilogy, it is only seen as something of the very long past. Not something that happened 20 years ago. Some key figures that were a member of the movement but that did not come to light in the trilogy at all. So I feel like there is a big disconnect between the prequel and the trilogy. I also felt like putting this story down a lot of times, it just didn't grip me. The story contained also a lot of VERY vile things. While I am not one to shy away from such things (I have to stomach a lot as a criminal law student) it felt abundant. And lastly, if you read the trilogy you already know that all of this world will be 'wiped out'. So why would it matter what they do? The characters and world will not exist this way in about twenty years.
So yeah I did have some trouble with this book.

Beneath the Keep is the prequel to the Queen of the Tearling series where we follow a few characters for the year before Princess Kelsea is born. I just recently finished all of the books from the series for the first time and loved them all so much, I knew I needed to get my hands on this prequel when I saw that it was not a short story. We mainly follow Princess Elyssa , Lazarus, Thorn, The Fetch, The Rebellion, and a little of Prince Thomas.

We are going to start with complaints because I only have one real one. I did not like the narrator. I picked up the audiobook on my own as this is how I had read all of the previous books, and once again we got a narrator change. She felt unemotional and lifeless. I still ended up really enjoying the book (as you can tell from my rating) but that was with me struggling to ignore how the narrator was telling the story.

My not real complaint is this story wasn't what I was expecting/wanted. You find the reason that a lot of the characters in the three original books are the way they are or make the choices them make, but I felt like they were already perfect characters that changing their motivation didn't help me enjoy this world any more. My main thought on this is Kelsea's mother, Queen Elyssa. We get to see a lot of how she because this person the people hate, but I didn't want to like Elyssa, or have her be anything more than a vampent queen only caring about herself and her looks. This world allowed for so many types of people and I felt like it was great to have both the good and the bad in power, but now with this addition of the prequel, your made to view some of the bad as more good. But this was me fulling putting my expectations onto a story that I did not write, so I view it as not a real thing to complain about.

Now let's discuss the good.
The Writing
The Cruelty
The Characters
The Hopelessness
THAT ENDING
Answers to questions the original series left us
Having more of this world

I'm going to have to bullet these because once again I fell in love with this book and would sit here forever writing about why it is amazing, when I really just want to tell you to go read it!

This book would be appropriate to read after finishing any of the previous ones, you don't need to have finished the series. It does have lots of trigger warnings and is an ADULT fantasy. I highly recommend if you like anything by Erika Johansen.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Netgalley, Erika Johansen and Dutton Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Several years ago I stumbled upon The Queen of the Tearling and proceeded to devour Erika Johansen’s trilogy. I was thrilled to see that she had written a prequel featuring the Mace and Princess Elyssa in their youth.

Beneath the Keep introduces us to the backstories of the players and the kingdom's dark history that shape the Tearling into the land that Princess Kelsea inherits in The Queen of the Tearling. How does a rebellious Princess Elyssa wind up as the hated Shipper Queen? How did a poor Creche boy grow up to become a feared member of the Guard? How does a pimp and a thief gain power in the Keep? Will a young farm girl be strong enough to lead a rebellion?

The Mace is a character that I’d always been fascinated by as he is such an enigma in the original trilogy. I loved getting to know him as a man and what drives him. And while Elyssa’s story is heartbreaking, I loved finally getting to know her too.

Beneath the Keep is out February 2, 2021!

I definitley loved it and i knew it was going to focus on Mace and the creche, but i would have liked a few more flashbacks to the row fin era mixed in.