Wooing the Witch Queen

by Stephanie Burgis

Synopsis:

Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.

When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…

Little does Saskia know that the "wizard" she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he's in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

I’ve been meaning to try Stephanie Burgis’ Wooing the Witch Queen since forever, seeing other people’s enthusiasm about the series — and there is indeed a lot to love! The introduction is a little heavy, with Felix fleeing his kingdom due to being essentially a puppet ruler, manipulated and outright abused by the man who actually controls the kingdom… and Saskia’s back story is also a tragic one, with betrayal and the murder of her parents by her uncle behind her before she managed to take her own throne. Despite all that setup, the story has a relatively light touch.

The misunderstanding/mistaken identity thing at the beginning didn’t entirely work for me in that I just wanted Felix to come clean already and avoid the horrible third act breakup I could see coming from a mile off… but ultimately, Burgis subverted my expectations there somewhat. She does have to have Saskia wilfully insist on ignorance on more than one occasion in order to play things out the way she wants to, but it mostly works, and I was relieved that the relationship didn’t have the breakup I’d expected.

I did find the insta-attraction a little bit much, but over time the connection between the two did grow on me, as well, particularly when Felix time after time just supported Saskia and her needs, her right to make decisions and make a different world than her First Minister thinks she should, her right to be a queen.

The warmth felt by Saskia for her staff and they for her is lovely, too. The way that the “evil queen”‘s castle is essentially a big family (or at least a well-run and employee-friendly company) is pretty sweet; I do feel that the fact that they insist on Felix eating and sleeping and having company, things a person needs, isn’t played for as much as it’s worth (though that decision does avoid things getting too heavy). Given his trauma, it’s a hell of a gift to be somewhere that his needs are met in that way.

I’m definitely interested enough to read more, even if I didn’t love Lorelei from what I’ve seen so far; I expect she’ll grow on me when we get to understand her backstory more.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)