The Fire Queen (The Hundredth Queen #2) by Emily R. King

🌟🌟🌟🌟 out of 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Synopsis:
In the second book in The Hundredth Queen Series, Emily R. King once again follows a young warrior queen’s rise to meet her destiny in a richly imagined world of sorcery and forbidden powers.

Though the tyrant rajah she was forced to marry is dead, Kalinda’s troubles are far from over. A warlord has invaded the imperial city, and now she’s in exile. But she isn’t alone. Kalinda has the allegiance of Captain Deven Naik, her guard and beloved, imprisoned for treason and stripped of command. With the empire at war, their best hope is to find Prince Ashwin, the rajah’s son, who has promised Deven’s freedom on one condition: that Kalinda will fight and defeat three formidable opponents.

But as Kalinda’s tournament strengths are once again challenged, so too is her relationship with Deven. While Deven fears her powers, Ashwin reveres them—as well as the courageous woman who wields them. Kalinda comes to regard Ashwin as the only man who can repair a warring world and finds herself torn between her allegiance to Deven and a newly found respect for the young prince.

With both the responsibility to protect her people and the fate of those she loves weighing heavily upon her, Kalinda is forced again to compete. She must test the limits of her fire powers and her hard-won wisdom. But will that be enough to unite the empire without sacrificing all she holds dear? 


While I thought that this book was good, I liked the first one better. I think that the story was well put together with pacing that was appropriate to pronounce the tension. The Fire Queen was still good but felt somewhat contrived. The new characters that were introduced didn't really add anything to the story. They felt pretty bland but the characters from the first book show more growth. I loved seeing Deven and Kalinda grow and change as characters together and separate from each other. Kali grows more into her powers and her role as kindred. I respected her decisions because I felt she made the right ones even if they were hard for her and we're things that she want to do. 
It was difficult to differentiate between who was on who's side in the book because it seemed like everyone was against Kali and her friends. The author added more villains to the mix in this book although I feel as if many of them will have been eliminated by the third installment. I'm hoping that the author won't add any more bad guys in the third installment of the series because it would be too much.
There were things that happened that were a little too convenient so I think that Kali has some traitors among her group. I'm not exactly sure what will happen going forward in the series but I'm hoping that Kali and Ash win will be able to restore their kingdom to what it should have been all along. A peaceful place where people work together in harmony respecting each other despite differences.