Author: Mette Ivie Harrison
Publisher: Egmont
Rating: WARTY!
The Rose Throne is really a misleading title for this novel because it's not relevant to what happens except in a kind of vague metaphorical sense.
This is a third person PoV (thank goodness! Kudos to the author for showing that a YA novel can indeed be written 3PoV!) story about two princesses and their trials and fates. It's set in an alternate world which is just as well because the story alternates between the two princesses. In this world, one land mass is separated into two rival land masses, prevented from being independent islands by the small land bridge between them. In the one land, Rurik, rules King Haikor, whose daughter is Ailsbet. In the other, Weiland, rules King Jaap, whose daughter is Marlissa.
Haikor is an oaf and a baffoon: he's vulgar, uncultured, bigoted, a mean and paranoid braggart who thinks only of 'manliness', of domination and victory, of brutality and war. His daughter shrinks from this crudity and fears for her young brother (the only one in line for the throne) raised in a society such as this. How she even survives in this horrid world is a mystery, but it appears that the king values her for her potential to be married off in a strategic alliance.
King Jaap, meanwhile, is much more cultured and gentle, valuing men and women equally, and offering protection to all. The problem is that Weiland is the weaker of the two nations, and there is fear that Haikor will come literally charging in with his army and take over this nation, too as he did with the minor nation of Aristonne relatively recently.
But things are not as 'simple' in this world as they might seem. There is magical power in the land, known as weyr. Males have teweyr, which is about might and militarism. Females have a version known as newyr, which is tied to the land, to fertility of crops and the bounty of nature (yeah, trite, innit?), but even this isn't that simple, since there are those called unweyr, who have no power, and worse, those who have the 'wrong power for their gender', who are known as ekhonno.
Ailsbet is one of the latter variety. She does not realize it to begin with, thinking she's merely unweyr, but soon she realizes that she's very much teweyr, and even that isn't simple: King Haikor detests those with inappropriate weyr to the point where they're summarily executed in public, so Ailsbet must keep her power secret from everyone, even her own family. Soon, Ailsbet is betrothed to Lord Umber, a traitor from Weiland, who has come over to the dark side as it were, but after seeming to go quite well, affairs between the two of them take a downturn. King Haikor has a habit of poisoning those who displease him, or for whom he no longer sees a use, and this habit doesn't stop at his own doorstep
Meanwhile, back in Weiland, Marlissa and her father play host to Duke Kellin - a visitor from Rurik who comes on behalf of its king to suggest a union: Marlissa and the young Edik, heir to Rurik's throne. Marlissa realizes that this is somewhat of a sham offer since Haikor could storm into their land any time he wanted, but she knows there is hope here for the future.
The royal heir is very young, (only twelve - sadly, we're not told how old Marlissa is, but she's older), and though he takes too much after his father, perhaps he might be malleable in the right hands. If Marlissa married him, could she not turn the kingdoms around and bring peace to the land, and freedom from oppression for all people in the conjoined nations as a prophecy suggests? She considers that it's worth a try.
After seeing several examples of cluelessness in other novels on this topic, it was refreshing to find an author who gets that hue and color are two different things. The cluelessness I am sure, didn't begin with Leigh Bardugo, but I first really noticed it there, in Shadow and Bone with her sad attempt to describe something as 'so blue that it was almost black'! Harrison has the smarts to say that a purple was so dark it was almost black, and I salute her for it. There's a big difference between the two, and writers don't help readers by using English badly, or by talking down to them. A writer's readers are not the lowest common denominator, not if authors care about their writing and their readership.
Once again I'm forced to highlight how cover designers never read the novel they make a cover for. The model on the cover has a very short nose. Princess Ailsbet has a very long nose, but this is the price you pay when you go with Big Publishing™: you lose all control over your work!
I have to say here that I don't get why the nation is 'Rurik', but the reference to the language and to that which belongs to Rurik is 'Rurese'. If the nation was Rura, or Ruri, or something like that, it would make sense, but I don't see how you get 'Rurese' from 'Rurik'! Why is it not something like Rurikan or Rurikish? The same problem applies to Weirland, which doesn't get Weirish or Weilandish, but Weirese. I think it shows a lack of thought in planning this novel, which unfortunately began to impact upon me more and more the further I read.What started out interesting and engaging, before long became tedious to read. The princesses two were lackluster and unappealing, the political machinations were so obscure as to be ridiculous. The bad king was a caricature, and the story became so self-obsessed and incestuous that I could barely follow it. It wasn't long before I asked myself why I even was following it, and I quit and moved on to something much more entertaining. This novel is the first in a series, so be prepared to be flabbergasted when it ends without anything being wrapped up. I find myself wishing more and more that YA trilogy writers will at some point to give some thought to our trees, and quit spreading a novel over 1500 pages which could well and satisfactorily be told in 500.
