Book Review: Queen B by Juno Dawson

I rather enjoyed HMRC (Her Majesty's Royal Coven) and The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson. This is a sort-of prequel to the series. What if Anne Boleyn was a witch?!?!

It's a fun enough book, but doesn't really go anywhere. Part of the problem is that the stories chapters flip back and forth in time. It is a tired literary trick and robs us of the gradual build-up of the characters. There's no real dramatic tension and no chance to guess which witch is wickedest.

It also suffers from a lack of… realism? Witches who have command of the elements and who exploit extra-sensory perception just shouldn't be able to be defeated so easily. It feels a bit like Superman being taken down by a garden-variety bank robber.

The feminist punch of the previous two books also feels lacking. Perhaps because there's no social pretence that women in the 1500s were equal to men?

It's a short novella, and reasonably priced as an eBook, but it doesn't feel like it adds much to the HMRC lore. It feels like a slightly insubstantial appetiser before the grand finale of the trilogy.