Queen's Gambit by Karen Chance

A Spoiler-Free Review

Holy World Building Spree, Batman. There is a lot packed into Queen's Gambit. A. Lot. I'm not even completely sure I understood it all or that it's going to stick in my head, but yeah. So much. We got pre-Mircea vampire stuff. Got a good chunk of the aftermath of Cleopatra and Anthony's battle with their Master (Sokkwi, apparently)... and yes, I will call them (her) that at this point because there's too many "Consuls" to do otherwise and if you didn't realize she was Cleopatra by now... I can't help you. Anyway, we also got Dorina's side of things, which was wonderful an frustrating. We got a good deal of Hong Kong post Dragon's Claw. We got vampire politics. Just so, so much. And largely engaging, too boot.

All of that said and although I really do enjoy the building out of the mythology surrounding this universe, it still really bugs me that we're stirring mythologies together like they all have the same roots. I will give the Greek/Roman stuff specifically a past as they're mostly Romans copy-pasting things, but tying in the Egyptian and Norse pantheons... no. These three mythologies were a hell of a lot more separate than Karen Chance is making them out to seem. Yes, there was a little bit of crossover with the Egyptian mythology and Greek/Roman stuff, but not enough to just copy-paste gods onto each other. Not to mention Norse is so far afield from any of the others... and that's not even bringing in the South American mythologies that Hassani blathers about during his snake/sun-god thing... This sort of thing really, really, really bugs me. It was overall a smaller part of Queen's Gambit than I'm making it out to be, but that's how much it bugs me.

Speaking of Hassani's snake/sun-god thing... the big ol' fight in the "morgue" (I guess it was a morgue, I was confused) was fun. I was not expecting a big fight like that at about the mid-point of the book. It really felt like a finale fight more than a mid-book fight.

Okay, so, I'm a very glad that Dory and Louis-Cesare are more of a unit in Queen's Gambit than they have been. I appreciate Dory literally pulling Louis-Cesare aside to discuss her issues with his treatment of her. Communication is key and they definitely do some work on that here. Makes me happy to see.

I also really enjoyed Dorina and Ray in Faerie. Although most of that was Dorina's memories, the actual running around Faerie the pair did was interesting. I'm very glad we got to see more of Faerie than we have in the past. Ya know, more caves and crazy rivers is fun. Nimue was... there. I like that she's so far divorced from the Arthurian stuff Chance originally pulled her from. Dorina's memories were a nice little respite from the crazy happening with Dory. They did make me even more angry with Mircea than I was at the end of Ride the Storm, but I will refrain from ranting about that now. I like Dorina so far. She's definitely different from Dory, which I suppose should have been obvious, but she's also not a rage-filled as one might expect.

The whole Hong Kong "underworld" section was honestly a blur. I like the come-alive graffiti idea. It was kind of constantly confusing, though. That might have been the amount of random graffiti or the amount of characters in this section, but... yeah. Crazy-pants stuff that I'm having a hard time recalling even five minutes after I read it.

The ending... uh yeah... that was an ending. I won't spoil it, but it did feel really convenient. Especially with certain characters showing up a little earlier and straight-up murdering other ones... and 360 change of heart apparently? Okay then. But Hassani turns out to be a better guy than I had the original impression he was, so that's nice. I'd like Hassani to be the main consul we deal with now, thanks. Cleopatra isn't nearly as fun or interesting.

My last note is about Dory and Cassie apparently actually meeting at some point. I decided after Ride the Storm to stop reading the Cassie books, so I completely missed this meeting. I feel like the execution of the summary of that meeting in Queen's Gambit left much to be desired, especially as it meant so much to Louis-Cesare, who is a more Dory-side character... I assume, anyway. Maybe would have been nice as a prologue or something, although Queen's Gambit is already quite long and stuffed.

Anyway, I did quite enjoy Queen's Gambit. Took me much less time to get through than the last few books, so that's also nice.