Uptown Oracle Reads… The Hundredth Queen

Kalinda has been with the sisterhood her entire life. Being sick with fevers since a child, she’s struggled to keep up with training. Despite this, she is chosen to be the hundredth wife to Rajah Tarek. She will become the Hundredth Queen.

I kept seeing this book on Goodreads – a lot of my friends seemed to be reading it. It has many mixed reviews as well, I saw one stars and five stars, which intrigued me. I also saw ads on my kindle. I decided to choose The Hundredth Queen* as my Kindle Lending Library book of the month.

King has created the myth, legend and religion within The Hundredth Queen. Character’s everyday actions are heavily influenced by their faith. There’s a clear point about the ‘winner’ of wars being able to shape the stories we tell afterwards. The king has altered the perceptions of bhutas in relation to their religion. Both this point and the overall background history was done well. The thing that bothered me was that it had been forgotten over 18 years. This feels like a very short time, and the older people should probably remember what it was like before.

I disliked the romance aspect. It was and insta-love moment. Even more annoyingly Kali fell in love with the first man she had ever seen. The way women are treated in general within the book is also extremely irritating. The ‘Benefactors’ can choose up to 100 wives plus courtesans who have to be completely obedient. Although it was touched on as wrong a little bit, it wasn’t particularly resolved. Kalinda never seems to steer away from her faith where obedience is one of the virtues. But, maybe King is leaving this for later books.

I felt the characters also lacked a lot of depth. I didn’t really feel anything for them, even in the emotional moments. Most of the wives and courtesans were indistinguishable. Admittedly, there’s 100+ and you can’t write detailed description of each, but the main ones should have been individualised a bit more.

I did read the majority of this in one day because I was on a train. It is a fairly easy book to read. But when I went to finish it the next day I kept just putting it down. The Hundredth Queen just didn’t capture my attention. I’m probably not going to continue with the series as I have many other books I’d rather read.