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    The Queen's Bastard
    The Queen's Bastard
    The Queen's Bastard
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Queen's Bastard

    Written by C.E. Murphy

    Narrated by Beverley A. Crick

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a world where religion has ripped apart the old order, Belinda Primrose is the queen's secret weapon. The unacknowledged daughter of Lorraine, the first queen to sit on the Aulunian throne, Belinda has been trained as a spy since the age of twelve by her father, Lorraine's lover and spymaster.

    Cunning and alluring, fluent in languages and able to take on any persona, Belinda can infiltrate the glittering courts of Echon, where her mother's enemies conspire. She can seduce at will and kill if she must. But Belinda's spying takes a new twist when her witchlight appears.

    Now Belinda's powers are unlike anything Lorraine could have imagined. They can turn an obedient daughter into a rival who understands that anything can be hers, including the wickedly sensual Javier, whose throne Lorraine both covets and fears. But Javier is also witchbreed, a man whose ability rivals Belinda's own . . . and who can be just as dangerous.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 3, 2015
    ISBN9781494580155
    The Queen's Bastard
    Author

    C.E. Murphy

    According to her friends, CE Murphy makes such amazing fudge that it should be mentioned first in any biography. It's true that she makes extraordinarily good fudge, but she's somewhat surprised that it features so highly in biographical relevance. Other people said she began her writing career when she ran away from home at age five to write copy for the circus that had come to town. Some claimed she's a crowdsourcing pioneer, which she rather likes the sound of, but nobody actually got around to pointing out she's written a best-selling urban fantasy series (The Walker Papers), or that she dabbles in writing graphic novels (Take A Chance) and periodically dips her toes into writing short stories (the Old Races collections). Still, it's clear to her that she should let her friends write all of her biographies, because they’re much more interesting that way. More prosaically, she was born and raised in Alaska, and now lives with her family in her ancestral homeland of Ireland, which is a magical place where it rains a lot but nothing one could seriously regard as winter ever actually arrives. She can be found online at mizkit.com, @ce_murphy, fb.com/cemurphywriter, and at her newsletter, tinyletter.com/ce_murphy/, which is by far the best way to hear what's out next!

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    Reviews for The Queen's Bastard

    3/5

    9 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      It was a quick, easy read. But definitely one of those historical fantasy romance novels that you don't really want to admit to reading. Not that it wasn't enjoyable. It was. Just not the kind of book I feel I should indulge in... all the time.
    • 3/5
      Adults only. Thought it was your standard SF&F. A bit steamier then pretty much any book I've read! The heroine is every guy's dream. I'm guessing this was written by a man. Not for the prudish!
    • 3/5
      This book reminds me a little of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series. Like Carey, Murphy creates an alternate Europe with different names. Murphy's lands are fixed firmly in the Elizabethan era. She also focuses heavily on court intrigue and has a highly sexual heroine. However, I think Carey does all of that much better. Still, the book is enjoyable.Belinda is the bastard daughter of the queen of Aulun. She is trained from birth to be a spy and an assassin. Eventually, she is sent to find or create a pretext for war with another country and possibly murder the queen.It's her first time trying to blend in as a noble rather than someone from the lower classes. She finds friends, and the line between her true identity and her cover identity begin to blur.She also discovers that she has forbidden magic power, a trait she shares with the prince, the son of the queen she was sent to kill. The discovery binds them together. The power is also shared by Belinda's father and other bastard heirs, and she begins to see plots within plots.Using the witchpower also makes Belinda feel a need for sexual dominance. This results in some pretty explicit sex scenes, including one rape and at least one scene with dubious consent. Societal rules about sex are a little different, too. There doesn't appear to be any social stigma for two women having sex, but possibly at least one of the partners needs to be of a lower class and noble women are certainly still expected to marry and produce heirs. There's no indication either way whether sex between men is socially acceptable.There are at least a couple of hints that the series is going to contain some scifi elements.
    • 1/5
      Plot: The plotholes in this story are large enough to swallow up whole galaxies. There's a lack of balance between slow-paced sections and time jumps, and the overall plot is incredibly contrieved. Too many side plots don't get resolved by the end - this isn't a multi-volume series, it's the first half of a book. Characters: There's a lot of inconsistency in character portrayal, and very little growth. Reactions tend to be unconvincing, and interactions are just off at times. Style: If there's any character or object in this story that doesn't serve a purpose later, I haven't seen it. The story becomes very predictable because of this. The prose is flowery and nothing special, but could have been worse. The worldbuilding is shoddily done, or at least badly depicted - making the reader rely in Elizabethan imagery is one thing, but please do take the time to at least sketch out the differences in your world. And if you involve magic, you might want to give it some background so it's not merely boring.Plus: Some interesting twists.Minus: The immediate deconstruction of said twists. Also, the story doesn't know what goals it wants to achieve by the last page of the book, and therefore doesn't go anywhere. There's no proper ending, not even a temporary ending as it would be suitable for a book in a series. In addition, the sex scenes were incredibly badly written. Boring, mechanical, and about as erotic as potato peeling.Summary: No reason to bother with this book unless you're seriously desperate for reading material.
    • 1/5
      Started but not finished. I simply couldn't understand why the girl was so willing to kill for these people--starting at age 12! So the queen is her mother. So what? It's not like they had ever met; where does the fierce loyalty come from? I'm sure the story probably went somewhere interesting, I just couldn't get into the world. I put the book down as soon as the main character got belted across the face for looking at a man the wrong way.
    • 2/5
      This is a very well-written fantasy, set in alternate Elizabethan times. I was somewhat confused trying to map the alternate Europe and history to the real one. The main/viewpoint character is increasingly unattractive; about halfway through, she did something so repellant I stopped reading.