Blog Tour: The Caged Queen by Kristen Ciccarelli

One of my favourite easy, quick and entertaining book genres has to be YA fantasy. I love fantasy in general but I find YA fantasy to be very consumable, very quick to read and the book equivalent of candy! I was kindly sent the second book in the Iskari series by Kristen Ciccerelli from the wonderful people over at Orion Books (thank you!).

*The Caged Queen by Kristen Ciccarelli (367 pages) ★★★ (3.75)

I read the first book in this series, The Last Namsara, last year and loved it for how quick, entertaining and dragon filled it was so I was excited to give the next book a go. As far as I know, the books can be read independently and you don't need to read the first but they're both set in the same magical fantasy world.

We follow Roa as she's dealing with the ramifications of being apart from the boy she loves, her new life as the wife and queen and being away from her family as well as politics and court rules. Her new husband and childhood friend turns out to be an apparently weak and untrustworthy king but all is not what it seems.

I adored the relationship and bond between Roa and her sister, Essie (I love the corrupted spirit idea) as well as her relationship with Dax, especially in the latter half of the book. I also liked the very quick, easy and fuss free writing that managed to create a vivid world and characters you'll care about without being overly descriptive or too repetitive (although it was the latter a little).

I liked the politics of the world and I liked the dragon, magical and action elements within this read. The only negatives I have for this book was that the hate to love romance was a little tropey and nothing new for the YA genre and as with the previous book, I think it was a teeny bit too long. However, I throughly enjoyed this political and magic filled YA read with such a fantastic ending that definitely pushed up this read to be very close to a solid four star read! I'm quite stingy and harsh with my ratings so I think for a lot of people this would an easy four star read.

Do you like YA or fantasy books? What are you currently reading? Will you be picking up this read?