The Queen's Rising

About The Queen's Rising

Brienna trained for years at a Renaissance-inspired arts university to master a passion that would grant her a place in high society, but as her graduation deadline closes in, she still hasn't found the one skill that will define her. When a disgraced lord offers her a place in his household in exchange for secretly serving the exiled true queen of Maevana, Brienna is drawn into a fourteen-house rebellion to overthrow a tyrannical, illegitimate monarchy -- and into a role as spy, diplomat, and eventually a key figure in the fight to restore the rightful queen to her throne.

Rebecca Ross builds this early duology around a France-and-Scotland-inspired dual setting -- Brienna's artistic homeland of Valenia and the queen's embattled homeland of Maevana -- and a slow shift from personal coming-of-age story into full political rebellion. It's an earlier, more traditional epic-fantasy register than her later Letters of Enchantment books, with a heavier emphasis on court intrigue, house loyalties, and the cost of restoring a broken kingdom.

How to read this series

Read The Queen's Rising first, then The Queen's Resistance, which continues directly after the first book's rebellion succeeds -- the second book deals with the harder work of uniting the kingdom afterward, and assumes you've read the first.