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WORK TITLE: The Queen Underneath
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.staceyfilak.com/
CITY: Kalamazoo
STATE: MI
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2018062242
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Filak, Stacey
Located: Michigan
Field of activity: Young adult fiction Fantasy fiction
Profession or occupation:
Authors
Found in: Filak, Stacey. The Queen underneath, 2018: title page
(Stacey Filak) author bio. (lives in Michigan)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
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Library of Congress
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Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born in MI; married; children: four.
EDUCATION:Attended college.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Has worked various running an in-home daycare, working as a veterinary clinic receptionist, and as a bookkeeper.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Stacey Filak is a writer. Born in Michigan, she was the first in her family to attend college, where she studied English education. Filak has held a number of jobs, including running an in-home daycare, working as a veterinary clinic receptionist, and as a bookkeeper.
Filak published The Queen Underneath in 2018. The world of Yigris is divided into the Above and the Under. While Above is populated by nobility, Under is overrun by thieves and assassins. When the rulers of both realms are assassinated, their heirs, Gemma and Tollan, agree to cooperate to safeguard the stability of Yigris from those looking to cause trouble.
In an article in the Terrible Minds website, Filak discussed the challenges of finding the inspiration to write her debut novel. She recalled: “When I first started writing The Queen Underneath, I was a stay-at-home mom, with three of my four kids in school full-time. I had oodles of hours to write. Sometimes whole days, spread out before me like a picnic blanket, waiting for me to dig in. And I was one of those writers who believed, down to my bones, that I would only be able to do the publishing thing if I forced myself to write. Every. Single. Day.” She continued: “By the time I had finished a first draft and a couple rounds of revisions, my youngest was in school. I had sent it out into the interwebs to hopefully snag an agent, and it was time for me to get back into the world of the employed. So I went back to work. At first, I worked part-time, and I signed with my agent about six months after going back at work. I hadn’t written a useable word in six months.” Filak further explained: “Then we revised and sent it out on submission and waited, as you do. For me, it was about a year before the whisper of an offer came through. Then another several months doing an R&R, and finally, after nearly eighteen months, an offer. I still hadn’t written a damn thing.” Filak clarified, though, that while editing and revising her debut novel, she managed to pen another novel in the process.
Booklist contributor Stacey Comfort called The Queen Underneath “a fast-paced and fun first novel that gives readers an exciting new world to explore.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated: “While a glorious celebration of female power, this novel doesn’t quite fulfill its immense potential.” A contributor to the All Things Urban Fantasy website noticed that “there is some explanation of motives and such but it was generally one character monologuing to another character.” The same reviewer concluded that “all in all, The Queen Underneath is a solid standalone fantasy that’s entertaining as long as you don’t mind that it’s a bit superficial.” In a review in the Falling Down the Book Hole website, a reviewer reasoned that “there was so much that could have been done and Filak set the stage for a world that had so much potential. The book was just too short and didn’t achieve what I felt like it could have.”
A contributor to the Book Princess Reviews blog opined that the novel’s initial forty “pages were really good. I was invested. I thought it was a cool premise, and I thought Gemma was a great heroine. I was intrigued by the world…. However, after about the glorious forty pages, literally everything went downhill.” The reviewer also discussed issues with the plot, noting that “it seemed like the author had a plan that she wanted to stick to but she kept getting distracted by other good sounding plots and couldn’t figure out how to keep the pacing intact.” Still, the Book Princess Reviews blog reviewer conceded that “the writing style was good. I liked the feel that the novel had, and it really was quite easy to read. I mean, I was constantly bug eyed by the absurd things that were happening, but it was just so easy to read. And I mean, I never got bored.” The same reviewer concluded that the numerous elements in the story “were quite interesting. There were quite too many for me, but I do have to give props to Filak for trying to create something new and different in a fantasy world that is kind of stuck sometimes with trying to create something new.”
A contributor to the Sassy Book Geek blog lamented that “there was zero character growth or depth,” appending that “Gemma is your typical strong heroine that we seem to find an endless supply of in YA these days. She brought nothing new to the table though.” A contributor to the Little Red Reviewer blog summarized that “The Queen Underneath ends up being a blast, but it did take me longer than I expected to get invested in the characters and their goals and motivations. Introductions and worldbuilding came off as rushed and overly busy in the first few chapters – not quite infodumping, but perhaps the opposite yet still feeling busy, where I came out of those chapters feeling like I didn’t have a grasp of what I was supposed to understand about this world. The good news is that Filak’s storycraft gets noticeably stronger as the novel progresses.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2018, Stacey Comfort, review of The Queen Underneath, p. 71.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of The Queen Underneath.
ONLINE
All Things Urban Fantasy, http://allthingsuf.com/ (May 7, 2018), review of The Queen Underneath.
Book Princess Reviews, https://bookprincessreviews.wordpress.com/ (May 6, 2018), review of Queen Underneath.
Deborah Harris Agency website, http://www.thedeborahharrisagency.com/ (July 10, 2018), author profile.
Falling Down the Book Hole, https://fallingdownthebookhole.com/ (May 8, 2018), review of The Queen Underneath.
Little Red Reviewer, https://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/ (April 21, 2018), review of Queen Underneath.
Sassy Book Geek, https://thesassygeek.wordpress.com/ (May 8, 2018), review of The Queen Underneath.
Stacey Filak website, https://www.staceyfilak.com (July 10, 2018).
Terrible Minds, http://terribleminds.com/ (May 10, 2018), “Stacey Filak: Five Things I Learned Writing the Queen Underneath.”
Stacey Filak was born in a small town in Michigan, where she dreamed of hero's quests, epic battles, and publishing a book. At least a couple of things have come true. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and four children, and a menagerie of pop-culture named pets. She manages a veterinary clinic as her day job and aspires to someday write something that means as much to someone else as her childhood favorites mean to her.
Stacey Filak was born in a rural town in Michigan (population 400) where she grew up with an obsessive imagination and a hunger for stories of all kinds. She was the first of her family to attend college, where she studied to be an English teacher (mostly so she could spend time reading.) She has run an in-home daycare, worked in book-keeping, and as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband, four children, and a menagerie of pets with nerdy names. THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH is her first novel.
Stacey Filak: Five Things I Learned Writing The Queen Underneath
Yigris is a city divided by more than just ideals. Above, ruled by a patriarchal and controlling society has long relied on the matriarchal Under, home of thieves, whores, and assassins for more than just financial gain. When the rulers of Above and Under are both murdered on the same day, their heirs apparent must work together to save their country and themselves.
Gemma, the new Queen of Under, faces loss, betrayal, grief and a transformation into the queen she must be. Tollan, the young King of Above has an even more personal crisis. He’s fallen in love with Elam, a young man trained as a sex-priest in Under, while his city burns and a war threatens to consume them all. And if that wasn’t enough, his mother, a pirate queen who abandoned him years before, has just sailed into port.
My instincts are crap.
The first two manuscripts that I wrote when I finally got “serious” about writing, I went with my gut. Every character, every interaction, every setting, every bit of those books was created entirely by instinct. And then, I did the thing and sent the book out to agents and crossed my fingers and prayed to every god that would have me. And invariably, the response I got was “The writing is great, but the story is pretty basic. I’ve read this before, and it’s not what I’m looking for on my list.” So when I started writing TQU, I made a conscious effort to go against my gut. I pushed aside my ingrained tendencies and inserted a hefty helping of the exact opposite of my gut instinct. It wasn’t just my heroine that got a makeover. The heroes became men who had feelings, who learned to express them, and weren’t afraid to appear soft. They even cry, on occasion. If I was leaning towards using a trope, I turned it on its head. My whore-with-a-heart-of-gold is a man and a priest. My sexy heroine is a plus-sized woman who isn’t ashamed of her body or speaking her mind. And the prince is neither equipped to become King, nor is he a man seeking a damsel in distress. I chose to embrace the opposite of my instincts, and in doing so, I created something different. Something new. In choosing to approach the book in this manner, I was forced to face my own ingrained culpability in the systemic -isms that perpetuate in our society. I was forced to examine why I felt compelled to write a certain scene or a certain character, and what life would be like in a society where things don’t look the same as they do in our world. And though the exercise sometimes chaffed against my usual mindset, it opened my eyes to limitless possibilities, and I hope that Yigris is better for it.
Backup, Backup, Backup!
When I was 65,000 words or so into the first draft of TQU, my laptop crashed. I was writing in Scrivener at the time and I was unaware of the incompatibility of Scrivener to with Google Drive. So, while I thought I’d been backing up effectively, when I logged back onto my traitorous laptop, I learned different. The manuscript was gone. 100% erased from my hard drive, garbled nonsense in my Google Drive. And suddenly, like the revelations of a hundred prophets, I knew that if I’d finished that book, it’d be published, and all my dreams would come true.
I wasn’t a very pleasant person, that day. I was basically a one-woman soap opera, running through the entire range of human emotion all at once. If I’d had super-powers that day, I expect it would be my Super Villain origin story. So obviously, I panicked. I contacted every person I knew that had ever touched a computer and finally, a friend of mine said that I should call Google directly. After about 12 hours, several shots of liquor to calm my nerves, and the assistance of an incredibly understanding guy who worked at Google named Hutch, he was able to help me access a plain text, unformatted version of the manuscript. He emailed the file to me and told me to print right away, because he couldn’t guarantee that the manuscript wouldn’t disappear entirely. I printed out the 200+ pages and sobbed like a baby. Hutch had saved my future bestseller.
I spent a month retyping and reformatting the manuscript, and for obvious reasons, I started using Dropbox. (I also stopped using Scrivener because I had nightmares about it for a while. One day, I’ll be brave enough to give it another try.) In the end, those prophetic panicked thoughts were right. This was the book I would sell and debut with. It was the book of my dreams. And I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that had I truly lost that manuscript, I don’t know if I could have done it again. It might be that Hutch saved my writing career.
Writing isn’t about how you write, it’s about what you write.
When I first started writing TQU, I was a stay-at-home mom, with three of my four kids in school full-time. I had oodles of hours to write. Sometimes whole days, spread out before me like a picnic blanket, waiting for me to dig in. And I was one of those writers who believed, down to my bones, that I would only be able to do the publishing thing if I forced myself to write. Every. Single. Day.
By the time I had finished a first draft and a couple rounds of revisions, my youngest was in school. I had sent it out into the interwebs to hopefully snag an agent, and it was time for me to get back into the world of the employed. So I went back to work. At first, I worked part-time, and I signed with my agent about 6 months after going back at work.
I hadn’t written a useable word in six months.
Then we revised and sent it out on submission and waited, as you do. For me, it was about a year before the whisper of an offer came through. Then another several months doing an R&R, and finally, after nearly 18 months, an offer. I still hadn’t written a damn thing.
And there I was, having just accepted a full-time promotion and having sold my debut novel (yay!) and I started to think, ‘Maybe I’ve only got this one book in me.’
After innumerable rounds of revisions, when the stress of ‘will it sell or will it die?’ had disappeared, I finally began to chip away at a new idea. And you know what?
I wrote another book. Sometimes I wrote for eighteen hours on both Saturday and Sunday, every weekend for a month. And sometimes I didn’t even open the document for four weeks. But eventually, it became a book shaped thing, and I realized that I didn’t have to write every single day to be a writer. I have to write when the ideas won’t simmer anymore and come to a boil. I have to write when I’m able to devote my thought processes to the project at hand, and not the one that hasn’t sold, or the one that I need to revise. I have to write when my job or my kids or my yard work or any of the other responsibilities I have aren’t dragging at my thoughts. Sometimes that happens every day, and sometimes it doesn’t happen for a month, but the fact is, just because my life gets in the way sometimes does not mean that I’m not a writer. If book shaped things eventually come out of my brain, then I am, by definition, a writer.
Pick well the hills you choose to die on.
Just like any baby writer, I had no idea the level of revisions that would need to be tackled before my book would ever see the light of day. Despite being told, time and time again, that I’d have to revise until I couldn’t stand the sight of my own manuscript, I just wasn’t quite prepared for professional revisions. And just like all writers, there were plots, scenes and characters that ended up laying on the revision floor – plots scenes and characters that I loved — elements of the story that I thought were load bearing walls. But there was one thing that, for me, wasn’t up for discussion. It was a minor part of the story. Not even a support wall. But it was an element that I had included for the girl I once was, who had never read that type of scene when she was young. A scene that I needed to exist but had never encountered. And my editor didn’t think it belonged. It wasn’t necessarily a YA theme, and I understood that. But I stood on top of that hill, sword (or pen) in hand, and chose not to budge. It was a risk, since I had no reputation or backlist to support my demands. I argued my case, and explained my reasons, and in the end, my editor came to understand my reasoning. When readers hit that scene, they might shrug and wonder what it’s doing in a YA book, or they might read it and know someone that it has happened to, and understand, just a little. And someday, those young women may be older women who experience something similar, and I want them to know that it can happen to anyone – even heroines – and that it can be overcome. It would have been easy to prune that storyline from the novel, but for me, it was a hill worth dying on. It wasn’t a story I wanted to tell without it.
This isn’t your mother’s YA.
Which leads me to my final point. We live in a world where teen activists are leading the charge for common sense gun control. We live in an America where TEEN VOGUE is doing some of the most subversive and hard-hitting journalism in the nation. We live in a society where young people aren’t protected from the outside world – it’s projected straight into their brain, twenty-four hours a day — via the internet, social media, and traditional media. There has never been a more difficult time to be a teenager, in my opinion.
And like most people my age, my first instinct was to call TQU an adult novel. Despite the fact that many of the characters were just figuring out their place in the world – a clear element in YA – my gut argued otherwise. My instincts said that the nature of the story — the sexual content, the violence, the societal messages – were too dark, and too mature for a YA novel. But as I’ve already stated above, my instincts are garbage. My agent said it was YA. My editor said it was YA. Even my kids said it was YA.
And then I thought back to the books I was reading when I was a “young adult.” Books like ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET and THE OUTSIDERS. Books that my mom had thought were a little too mature for me. And then, when I got sneakier, I was reading THE THORN BIRDS and FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, books that probably were to mature for me. So, here’s the thing. Young adults have always read the controversial, the dark, and the stories that push the envelope. From TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to THE KITE RUNNER, SPEAK to THE HANDMAID’S TALE, YA has always been on the edge of what’s “allowed.” Today, we are seeing some of the most progressive leaps in media happening in Young Adult publishing – books like DEAR MARTIN and THE HATE YOU GIVE, THE ART OF STARVING and THE BELLES. Add to that the fact that today’s young people are vastly more informed, vastly more active in the world, and vastly more affected by the world at large, and you begin to see that the teenagers of today can handle things that I couldn’t have dreamed of at their age. Unfortunately, they’ve already been forced to.
When I first finished writing TQU, my gut reaction was, “I don’t want this to just be a YA novel.” But like I said, my instincts are crap, and the more I learn about the teens of today, the more I want to shout, “Hell, yes. This is a YA novel.” I can only hope that I’ve written something to inspire, encourage, or entertain the teenaged superheroes in our midst, because we’ve left them to do the heavy lifting.
* * *
Stacey Filak was born in a small town in Michigan, where she dreamed of hero’s quests, epic battles, and publishing a book. At least a couple of things have come true. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and four children, and a menagerie of pop-culture named pets. She manages a veterinary clinic as her day job and aspires to someday write something that means as much to someone else as her childhood favorites mean to her. THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH is her first book.
The Queen Underneath
Stacey Comfort
Booklist. 114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p71.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Queen Underneath.
By Stacey Filak.
May 2018. 288p. Page Street, $16.99 (9781624145605). Gr. 10-12.
The world of Yigris is split in half: the aristocratic Above is full of luxury and manners, while the darker Under shelters thieves, criminals, and sex workers. When the respective monarchs of the two halves of the world die in the same mysterious manner, their chosen successors must find the truth. Gemma, a thief and the new Queen of Under, takes Tollan, who would be King of Above if he wasn't accused of murder, under her wing in this exciting fantasy adventure. Seeing both sides of Yigris confuses and disturbs the noble Tollan, while Gemma shines as she grows more powerful. What they discover about their different worlds will throw them for a loop and push them toward each other. Readers will root for Gemma in her new role as a powerful woman at the head of a powerful group that others see as criminal. This is a fast-paced and fun first novel that gives readers an exciting new world to explore. An easy, gripping read for older readers.--Stacey Comfort
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Comfort, Stacey. "The Queen Underneath." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 71. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533094596/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=506d3b93. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094596
Filak, Stacey: THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Filak, Stacey THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH Page Street (Young Adult Fiction) $16.99 5, 8 ISBN: 978-1-62414-560-5
In this debut novel, the fate of a land rests on two young rulers with little in common.
In Yigris, there is Above and there is Under. Above are the nobles, ruled by a king. Under is home to thieves, assassins, and the queen who leads them. But the balance shifts when both rulers are assassinated and their heirs, Gemma and Tollan, must work together to save their people and Yigris. Gemma has spent most of her life preparing to be queen of Under, but nothing could have truly prepared her for this monumental task. Now she must rely on her training, a trusted band of friends, and a sheltered prince to stop a devastating war. Filak plays with interesting concepts of female empowerment: While Above is inherently patriarchal and misogynistic, Under is liberated and led by women. Although Gemma and the world of Under come vividly to life, other aspects of the novel fall flat. Readers will appreciate Gemma's strength and wit, but Tollan is frustratingly ineffectual and ends up feeling more like a plot device than a central character. Gemma is white, and Tollan is dark-skinned as well as being gay and exploring his sexuality.
While a glorious celebration of female power, this novel doesn't quite fulfill its immense potential. (Fantasy. 16-adult)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Filak, Stacey: THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959820/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=26619817. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959820
The Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak
Posted by: Redhead on: April 21, 2018
In: Stacey Filak 4 Comments
The Queen Underneath, by Stacey Filak
Release Date: May 8th 2018
Where I got it: Received review copy from the author (Thanks!)
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You know, I never expected to laugh that much at a brothel scene. Quite the happy surprise!
When Gemma’s adoptive mother and mentor Melnora dies, Gemma will become Queen of the Under. When Prince Tollan’s father dies, Tollan will become King of Above. Neither Gemma nor Tollan are ready to lose their parents, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?
A sort-of retelling of Sleeping Beauty, The Queen Underneath showcases fully developed characters who leap off the page, snarky dialog, vibrant world building, tons of show don’t tell, and inspiring adult relationships. Some really great sex scenes, too!
In author Stacey Filak’s debut novel, Gemma is the heir apparent of the Underworld, the world of thieves and prostitutes, of daytime drinking, picking locks, and freedom. Gemma has everything she could ever want – the earned respect of her followers, best friends in the right places, and she’s just waiting for the right time to tell her lover Devery that she’s pregnant. Until Melnora took sick, Gemma was on her way to having it all.
Tollan is the crown prince of Above. He thinks he understands what “doing the right thing” means, and he prefers to stay blissfully ignorant of his family’s history and the true powers of the mage women who live at the castle. Things were going halfway decent for him until his father took ill and Tollan was accused of murder by his own brother.
With the Queen of Under and the King of Above on death’s door, it’s up to Gemma and Tollan to figure out what’s going on, and who wants all the royals dead. Well, mostly up to Gemma, since Tollan doesn’t have much experience outside the palace. With the townspeople under a magic sleeping spell, and thorns erupting out of the ground, Gemma doesn’t even yet know who her enemy is, let alone how to stop the civil war on her doorstep. The plot does start out fairly simple, and with every chapter complexities and subtleties are revealed, drawing the reader in further and further. Tightly plotted, buckets of fun, and sexy as hell, The Queen Underneath is an compelling story of of adventure, family bonds, political intrigue, wit, and revenge. And if you don’t finish this book loving Elam, I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.
This is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty in the same way Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s Winterglass is a retelling of the Snow Queen – the bones of the fairy tale are there if you look for them, but the characters and overarching plot have been rebuilt and reimagined so as to be completely unique.
So often in fantasy adventure novels like this, the main characters are loners, and are pretty much incapable of loving anyone or being in a healthy long term relationship. Maybe they have some tragic history involving their spouse getting slaughtered or some such. I know I’m rudely making light of it, but I’m also sick of that fantasy novel standard recipe of the damaged hero or antihero basically not being allowed to have a healthy relationship. Luckily, it seems like Filak was sick of it too. Just about everyone in The Queen Underneath is involved, or finds their way to a healthy loving relationship. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to read a book where people are having great sex with people they love! Mainstream fantasy needs more of this!
I’m not sure why, but it took me a while to warm up to Gemma. That said, once the laugh out loud brothel scene happened, I was onboard for anywhere she wanted to go. Once that *other* scene (spoilers!) happens at about the halfway point in the story, Gemma became someone I’ll never forget. Maybe *that scene* won’t matter to readers, but to have characters pay attention to that event and what it means to the person it happened to, to have it matter enough that the author put it in, that meant the world to me.
Gemma is empowering, she is confident, she is funny, she is willing to show her vulnerabilities and her doubts, she is imperfect but always yearning to get better. With Gemma, Filak has redefined the term “strong female character”. Not only does Gemma kick ass and run the show, she also speaks to normal (although often stigmatized) female experiences. To see adult relationships, motherhood, and the trials of pregnancy discussed front and center in an adventure fantasy novel is gloriously groundbreaking. The backbone of this story is family, and I just loved that.
You know, Gemma’s life reminds me of the phrase “having it all”. She’s responsible for running the show, she’s about to get involved in a whole bunch of intrigue and history that wasn’t part of the job description, and when it comes down to it she knows she wants to start a family. Can she really have it all? I’d say that sounds like a fantasy, but Serena Williams already did it IRL.
The Queen Underneath ends up being a blast, but it did take me longer than I expected to get invested in the characters and their goals and motivations. Introductions and worldbuilding came off as rushed and overly busy in the first few chapters – not quite infodumping, but perhaps the opposite yet still feeling busy, where I came out of those chapters feeling like I didn’t have a grasp of what I was supposed to understand about this world. The good news is that Filak’s storycraft gets noticeably stronger as the novel progresses, with the best written and most powerful scenes coming in the second half of the book.
Filak’s debut fantasy novel functions perfectly well as a stand alone, but I for one would be thrilled if Filak decided to write more in this world. Regardless, I’ll be on the look out for anything she writes.
Early Review: The Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak
May 7, 2018 Kate Review 0
Early Review: The Queen Underneath by Stacey FilakThe Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak
Published by Page Street on May 8, 2018
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Source: Publisher
Excerpt: Excerpt
Sexual Content: Brief but violent rape scene, somewhat explicit sexual scenes
Reviewed by: Kate
3 Stars
In a city on the brink of war, it isn't a king that the people need to save them—but a thief queen from Under.
Yigris is a world divided—where aristocrats in Above rule from grand palaces, and thieves, sex workers, and assassins reign in the shadowy tunnels of Under. When the leaders of Above and Under are both murdered on the same night, the fissure between the two opposite worlds grows and suspicion threatens to break the tenuous peace.
Gemma, a former orphan-thief and new queen of Under, and Tollan, heir to the Above throne, must salvage a truce to rescue the city. But they soon discover that the conflict is far bigger than two murders, as the city falls into an enchanted sleep and a cage of deadly brambles slowly ensnares the streets, buildings, and tunnels of both districts. With the fate of Yigris at stake, only Gemma and Tollan have the power to prevent another civil war from tearing their world apart forever.
THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH grabbed me from the minute I pulled it out of the envelope from the publisher. I'm not sure what exactly sucked me in (maybe the gorgeous cover?), but I started reading and didn't stop until I was finished a few hours later. Action packed and full of plot twists, THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH sucks the reader into the world of Yigris, making you want to discover all of its secrets.
And secrets abound in THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH! There were a lot of twists that I did not see coming. And once the action starts (and it starts nearly immediately), it does not stop until the end. There are narrow escapes, magical traps, family reunions and lots of fighting and some loving. There's also a Sleeping Beauty retelling vibe (everybody falls asleep and brambles grow up around the buildings). The issue there is that between all that and the huge cast of characters, I felt sometimes the reader was just skimming the surface.
There are certainly a lot of badass female characters in THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH but I never felt like I really got to know any of them well except Gemma. There is some explanation of motives and such but it was generally one character monologuing to another character. The book did manage to touch on some interesting themes, especially pertaining to how women are viewed, which I wouldn't have minded if it had delved into more.
All in all, THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH is a solid standalone fantasy that's entertaining as long as you don't mind that it's a bit superficial.
Series Titles:
N/A
The Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak | ARC Review
Posted on May 8, 2018
THE QUEEN UNDERNEATH BY STACEY FILAK
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Publication Date: May 8th 2018
Synopsis:
The Above and the Under have a tenuous truce that is shattered after the death of both their respective rulers. Gemma, the new queen of Under, must throw history aside and team up with Tollan, the heir to the Above throne, in order to take down a power that seeks to rule them all.
Their group of rebels is comprised of an assassin, a sex worker, and a palace servant from Above, and we follow their unique perspectives as they are forced to question previously held beliefs. But even with war looming, romance still grows. Challenging gender roles and the expectation that every prince must have a princess, Tollan discovers love with Elam—a young man, a sex worker, and one of Gemma’s closest friends.
Goodreads | Amazon
*I would like to thank Page Street for the chance to read and review this book in return for my honest opinion!*
I am not sure where to start with this review because I wanted to like the book so much. I was super excited when I got sent this book for review and its said to be a spin on Sleeping Beauty. I have to say I was caught off guard while reading because it is marketed as a YA, but I would say it is a little mature to be considered YA. I believe the world building fell short, I was so intrigued by the world concept and loved that the underneath was filled with assassins, thieves and prostitutes and that the above was complete opposite. I needed more. There was so much that could have been done and Filak set the stage for a world that had so much potential. The book was just too short and didn’t achieve what I felt like it could have. I felt like there could have been a ton more character development as well. I really think Filak could have made a whole series off of this concept. That being said I thought their were some great characters and really enjoyed Gemma. There were some references to Sleeping Beauty, but I am not sure I would have marketed it as a spin off. The biggest thing I had an issue with was how often the word “prick/prickling” was used. I have a huge problem with repetition of words, but I also just thought it was excessive.
I know this seems like a bash, but I did enjoy the book and was immediately pulled in within the first chapter and wanted to know what was going to happen the whole time. There were some steamy parts and times I was on the edge of my seat with the twists and turns. I really appreciated that the chapters were headed with the area in the world in which that chapter was taking place, it helped to place myself and develop the world in my head. The Queen Underneath, had some kickass characters and a strong lead female which is always nice to see! I loved the rough edges she had, but also a soft side that was super caring.
Overall I enjoy the story but the main take away is I needed more and wanted more from Filak.
ARC Review: The Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak
review
**** Thank you to Page Street Publishing for the copy in exchange for an honest review****
Trigger Warnings: (Fairly Strong) Sexual Content, Sexual Assault, Miscarriage, Suicide, and Torture/Violence
I always hate when I have to write a negative review for a book especially when a book was sent to me for said review. But I like to give you guys, my readers, my honest opinion and my honest opinion about “The Queen Underneath” is that it is just…..awful. I don’t even know where to start with this one because there wasn’t a single redeeming quality, it’s all just a giant mess.
PLOT
First of all I don’t think this actually qualifies as a YA book, it’s more NA than anything. There’s two pretty strong sexual scenes (although fairly brief) that occur within the first 50 pages of the book and they completely put me off because I was not expecting them at all! Completely came out of nowhere! I’m not a prude by any means but when I go into a book that’s being marketed as YA and there’s no hints of stronger sexual content at all and then BAM! I am attacked with it within 50 pages. Yeah, no thank you. And as mentioned in the Trigger Warnings above there is an instance of sexual assault in the book as well. You have been warned now, I know I sure would have liked to have been!
I feel like I don’t even know what this story is supposed to be about, the Queen of Under is murdered and so is the King of Above. So the characters set out to find the killers basically and then from there it’s a whole mess of like fifty other unrelated things happening. It’s like the author couldn’t make up their mind about what they wanted their book to be about. I was confused 100% of my time reading this book. It also didn’t help that the pacing was too fast, like 10 “important” things just happened in one sentence too fast. Then there were “twists” that made no sense and felt like they were only there for the sake of having some twists! It was one giant mess, a mess I tell you!
And as you can probably imagine the world building was just as much of a mess. I mean the story made zero sense so why would the world building? What and where exactly is the Above and Under? Because from the way it was described at times it made it seem like the Under were tunnels and actually UNDERNEATH something but yet they have pirates that go around ya know….sailing on seas. Explain! Then don’t even get me started on the fact that there were sex worker priests for whatever religion it is they practice, because literally nothing was ever explained! Plus how the hell does all of this magic work? Once again: Explain!
Also this was being marketed as a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” and oh boy hahahahahaa NO! How? Someone tell me how exactly this was supposed to be similar to “Sleeping Beauty” in any way! There were some vines at one point, okay, check. And the main character was asleep for a while I guess, check. Townspeople all fell into a magical slumber at some point, check. That’s it. That’s everything I can even remotely compare to the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”. Talk about disappointing.
characters
The characters. The. Characters. THE. FREAKING. CHARACTERS. I could have cared less about all of them, honestly, they had so much potential though. Characters in fantasy books always have so much potential! There was zero character growth or depth. Everyone was about as interesting as a wet mop (unless you happen to find wet mops interesting, in which case just substitute for something you find boring).
Gemma is your typical strong heroine that we seem to find an endless supply of in YA these days. She brought nothing new to the table though. And Tollan, the other MC, was shy and that’s about all I got out of him at all, he really had no personality whatsoever.
There was also a slew of secondary characters that liked to show up out of the blue for the purpose of moving the plot(or you know…not plot) forward and then vanish.
romance
Annnnndddd the romances were just as bad as the plot and characters for me. At this point in the story I just wasn’t even surprised any more. One of the romances was insta-love to the max and had zero lead up, although the ONE good thing I have to say about it and this book in general was that it was a LGTBQ+ romance. Now I will discuss the other main couple but in order to really rant like I want to there will be spoilers:
****************SPOILERS! SPOILERS!******************
The romance between Gemma, a MC, and the assassin character Devery was so, so bad. Devery was the one responsible for literally killing the woman she thought of as her mother and all was forgiven immediately. Like are you serious right now? It was that forgivable, huh? And if he loves you like he says then why in the hell would he do it! I don’t care what excuse he gave, people that love each other don’t go around killing your other loved ones! And yep, it was literally brushed aside like it never happened!
******************END SPOILERS!***********************
in conclusion
What I Loved:
LGTBQ+ Romance
Literally nothing else
What I Didn’t Love:
Um, everything?
Messy, confusing plot that made zero sense
Twists that came out of nowhere
Lack of world building with explanation
Pretty much NOTHING is every explained actually….
Nothing like a “Sleeping Beauty” retelling
Trigger Warnings that were mentioned
More NA than YA
Characters were completely undeveloped and lacked depth
And romances that were either completely unbelievable, full of insta-love, or had zero build up
RECOMMEND
I can’t say I’d recommend this one at all, not even to my worst enemy. I know how much work authors put into their books and I hate to give a book such a negative review but I honestly did not enjoy this one bit.
The Queen Underneath by Stacey Filak (ARC Review)
Be prepared for a long winded review where I completely lose my mind and go on bullet point rants
*Thank you so much to Page Street for sending me over a copy for this!! I super appreciate it, it was a fantastic surprise, and it did not change my opinion of it at all!*
To be honest, I had never heard of this book before the kind and gracious people over at Page Street sent me this book and it ended up in my mailbox. It sounded like such an interesting premise, and when I saw on a little piece of paper that informed me that it was Leigh Bardugo meets Sleeping Beauty, I whipped that book open as fast as I possibly could.
However, the book that I got…I’m not even sure whereeeeeeeeeeeeeee to begin. There was so, so much that I just am at a total and complete loss. I can’t even explain everything to you because me just explaining half of the book to Sha over chat was a straight up hour plus another half an hour of email updates because I had full on convinced her to be so invested in the insanity that was this book.
Let’s start off with something simple: THIS IS NOT YA THIS IS NOT YA THIS IS NOT YA. It’s probably NA? The book straight up says on the back 17+, but it deals with a lot of graphic situations like murder, rape, and there are quite a bit of sexual content in there (um, there is literally sex worker priests, so that’s a thing). So, um, I just didn’t anyone wanted to walk in here thinking it was something it wasn’t. Just a disclaimer.
I have to say that the first…40 pages were really good. I was invested. I thought it was a cool premise, and I thought Gemma was a great heroine. I was intrigued by the world, and it kind of had a Six of Crows feel to it. Like, except grittier? Imagine grittier Six of Crows in high fantasy land. I have to give the author major props because she created a super cool vibe to it.
However, after about the glorious 40 pages, literally everything went downhill. I mean, everything. I started getting super confused. Big revelations lasted two paragraphs. Unimportant characters somehow became narrators. Romances literally happened where one minute a guy is just holding a vase and literally the next second, he’s being kissed by someone that I swore wasn’t even in the room??? The revelations that did happen made no sense, and I can’t even tell you the plot anymore, because I think everything but the fantasy kitchen pot was in this book sink.
This book is only 288 pages. 288 pages for this mess of a team to try and solve the following: the murder of the Queen of the Underneath and the King of the Above (while also explaining the whole world building of this which wasn’t done that well at all since I’m still super confused – where is the above??? where is the under????); stop the sleeping spell that was mentioned a total of like 3 times in the entire story and then promptly forgotten; create 3 romances that I was supposed to feel the angst for; re-create a mage war; babies….lots of babies; insert some feminism; stop the evil mages; and…I DON’T EVEN KNOW. Have some sex on the front lawn because I know that happened?
But, um, ANYWAY, that was a lot to jam pack into 288 pages. The pacing was unbelievably fast. Wayyyyyyyyyyyy too fast. I’m not even joking, I skipped two paragraphs and I missed an entire plot point.
I mean, it seemed like the author had a plan that she wanted to stick to but she kept getting distracted by other good sounding plots and couldn’t figure out how to keep the pacing intact and then everything just was in there and you have got to tell me how one of the main character confesses to murdering important people when he was really being asked about his mystery daughter but we don’t get to hear about the murder after more than two sentences because we have to focus on the mystery daughter???? It felt like we weren’t focusing on what we needed to focus, and any kind of plot just got whipped through to go onto to the next one. What is supposed to be the biggest plot on the back – the sleeping spell – wasn’t even mentionedddddddddddddddd. I didn’t even realize that it was a thing except for the two sentences that were said because we literally had 20 things that had sped through and were going on before it was mentioned again.
Um, let’s just take a quick tally of absurd things that were crammed into this 288 pages:
SPOILERS
Main character’s love interest straight up murders the mc’s surrogate mother/queen and her father figure but is instantly forgiven and then reamed out because he has a secret daughter
…secret daughter is, like, 11 because love interest is ACTUALLY LIKE 75 YEARS OLD but he looks really young because of unexplained mage magic
Evil mage women decide to take over the world and head of evil mage women is love interest’s mother who poisons main character, causing her to have a graphic miscarriage for, like, the next five chapters and then promptly “all good” basically (I mean, they’re sad and all but it gets very brushed to the side along with the terrible thing love interest did)
main character #2 meets love interest #2 and after a day it is in lust at first sight with him, which, you know, happens
HOWEVER, their first kiss happens when mc 2 runs up from hiding in the basement for totally unexplained reasons, crashes into a vase, is holding onto the vase, and then love interest #2 races up the stairs and kisses him – all happening in two seconds flat with no romantic leadup
sleeping spell is just an excuse for mc and love interest #1 to have front lawn sex BECAUSE IT IS BARELY MENTIONED EXCEPT LIKE THREE SENTENCES (not the front lawn part because I think there was more sentences on that instead of the sleeping spell)
the whole ruler of the above kingdom is solved when Momma Pirate literally swoops in out of nowhere
the entire mage problem is legit solved by the secret daughter who just so happens to whip out this hidden mind reading power that so neatly gave us a reason to hear why the evil people were evil (since they were dunzo dead), and then she just flits around and cures everyone and everything is 100 again
these were just a few of the wonderful things that I couldn’t totally wrap my mind around
END OF SPOILERS
Ugh, the characters. I didn’t feel an absolute thing for any one of them. Not a single thing. As I said, I liked Gemma in the beginning, and I do have to say that Filak made some great feminism statements in the book. That being said, in the last 80 pages, Gemma and her love interest were literally crying every other page. Just because I’m not a book crier, I don’t judge people on their crying in books, BUT SHE WAS CONSTANTLY CRYING. JUST MORE AND MORE AND MORE CRYING. I felt like she was trying way too hard to be tough girl fantasy queen, and we didn’t get any more characterization besides that.
With Tollan, I mean, I have nothing. I can’t even give you a description of the man except maybe insecure? Frozen? He was the other lead of the story, but I honestly got nothing to give you. I felt like we spent too much time with pointless characters like a woman I call Momma Pirate and the still wonderfully boring and useless Wince. Dev was there, and he was the cause of many of the most absurd moments of the story.
The romance. You have to be there going, at least the romance was shippable, right? Well, there was a ship in this story, and we got a paragraph describing it and it was more intense than the romances. I think Elam and Tollan had the ability to be a very cute, feely couple, but they got bogged down by instalove and no real development besides the sexual attraction they felt after sleeping on some front lawn together (actual sleeping not like the thing I mentioned earlier – wow, front lawns were a thing in this novel).
The writing style was good. I liked the feel that the novel had, and it really was quite easy to read. I mean, I was constantly bug eyed by the absurd things that were happening, but it was just so easy to read. And I mean, I never got bored? I think if Filak just slowed it down and focused on a few plots, this would have been a whole different rating for me. I mean, things were still a little odd, but I still think Filak had promise with her just easy to read style.
merida
Merida wants to know at what point did you give up writing this longgggg review?
There were a lot of elements to this story, and some of them were quite interesting. There were quite too many for me, but I do have to give props to Filak for trying to create something new and different in a fantasy world that is kind of stuck sometimes iwth trying to create something new.
So, yeah, I think I’m going to stop here. It’s a lot. I’m sorry to Filak, because I feel like I really harshed on this book mellow, but it was so not a pleasant read for me. I had so many side-eyed conversations and then full on eyed conversations because it was TOO MUCH. It was just way too much. I think there was so promise in the book, but it got bogged down by weird plot twists, too many things going on, way too fast pacing, surface level characterization, and meh romance. Filak has a good writing style, though, and she did have some creative ideas. It just wasn’t nearly enough for me. 1 crown, and a Merida rating!