Publication Date: January 4, 2015
Source: Netgalley
On the streets of New York, Jane Gray meets an intriguing man who
claims to be the impossible: an imaginary playmate from her childhood: Prince
Starling. Determined to know the truth, Jane tracks him into another realm.
This is the world of the Palazzo, a magical ship which is both a
colossal steam vessel and a Renaissance kingdom. Ruling over its denizens--both
human and otherwise--is an exotic and dangerous queen. Jane must find her way
home, but the path is hopelessly lost.
Promising romance, the enigmatic Prince Starling and big-hearted crime
lord Niccolo vie for Jane's heart. But she has her eye on the pilot house.
Who--or what--guides the Palazzo, and what is the urgent secret of its endless
voyage? As a shocking destination looms into view, Jane must choose both a
lover and a ship's course, one that may avoid the end of all things.
I was drawn to Queen of the Deep because the synopsis reminded me
faintly of Labyrinth, the movie: a young girl whose imagination leads her to
befriend creatures from another world, one more dazzling and dangerous than our
own. Yet, a few chapters in, that
comparison faded away as the world of the Palazzo, a Renaissance Italy-like
magical world, held me in its thrall.
I came in with preconceived ideas of how the plot would unfold but time
and again Kenyon subverted my expectations and wowed me with her inventiveness,
her world building and unpredictable twists.
Most fascinating of all is the Palazzo, a floating ship of immense size,
traveling through the ether to get to the golden sea where it can replenish its
magical fuel. Or so it seems.
But as Jane quickly figures out, nothing and no one is at seems. Used
to nimbly thinking on her feet and quickly inhabiting roles as a theater
actress, Jane completely immerses herself into this new world. Her allegiances
and intentions change with each new revelation, until she finds out the
shocking and deadly truth about the Palazzo and her role in it.
“...But that was only the beginning of the contradictions that, in the
morning’s light, she was starting to list rather than avoid: A man from the
Renaissance had rescued her from a train collision. He had come for her in the
heart of New York City just at the time she needed him the most. Following him,
she had traversed a physically impossible dark room, learning through visions
in iced-over doorways that the world was going to end. Then, evading monsters
of her childhood imagination, she entered a world with a drowned sun and
botched an interview with a queen, learning that she could never go home.
“This wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.”
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