And farmer’s daughter Aislinn Martin struggles to keep her family fed in the wake of a once-in-a-generation drought and increasing demands from the landowning nobility for more work and higher rents. Elsewhere, Princess Elyssa Raleigh dreams of a day when she’ll take her mother’s throne, and become a queen who can help the people suffering in her kingdom. The story follows multiple characters, but predominantly focuses on a man named Christian but known as Lazarus, a bare-knuckle fighter who ekes out a living in the Creche, the seedy underworld of New London, where rebel group Blue Horizon’s dreams of a better world don’t often penetrate. That this book exists is a gift to fans of Johansen’s work, and if there’s any justice, it’ll bring new fans to the original trilogy in the wake of its publication.
There’s a feeling of a lock slipping into place, a fully circular journey that feels like fate. But, oh, if you have, then everything suddenly gets turned up to eleven emotionally, particularly as the story careens to the ending that leads to the events of The Queen of the Tearling. And I would have been deeply wrong.īeneath the Keep is a story that can stand on its own you don’t need to have read any of Johansen’s other novels to fully enjoy this twisty tale of statecraft and rebellion, prophecy, and growth. I read much of the original series with my heart in my throat and cried real tears when it was over.īeneath the Keep is a prequel, set in the same world before Kelsea Raleigh Glynn’s arrival, and had you asked me prior to reading it if I felt that the story of the Tearling was unfinished, that it somehow needed an additional volume, I would have said no. Erika Johansen’s fantasy debut The Queen of the Tearling was published in 2014 and the trilogy that followed was everything that readers could have asked for: A compelling story set in a rich, fully-formed universe with three-dimensional characters and real, life or death stakes.
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