I heard about this book on LT. I am a big fan of historical fiction, and really wanted to love it. Unfortunately it just didn't work for me on several levels.

It was written very simply, too simply for my taste. Almost like a fairy tale. It is YA, but that doesn't mean it has to be dumb, and thats how it came across. Perhaps the author was trying to channel the ancientness of the tale and thought fewer words did that, but for me it lacked depth.

The other issue for me was the main character, Inanna. She is supposed to be the last warrior queen and she comes across as passive, selfish, and stupid. Again the author may be trying not to project the sensibilities of a modern woman into the text. But lets face it, 5600 years ago, in a matriarchal culture, we don't know what the women were like.

I think she went too far in the 'old fashioned' direction. If I am reading a book where the main character's name becomes associated with the goddess Ishtar, and who is supposed to be a warrior queen, then I expect her to be made of better, sterner stuff. To be fair Inanna cames from a patriarchal culture, but if she is going to lead a great matriarchal city she needs more on the ball than to continually fall into the right place and the right actions (except when she screws up). I think there is a space between passivity and super hero and that would have made the story more interesting.

The final issue is the pacing of the story. The book is titled The Last Warrior Queen. Inanna spends most of the book being ordinary. She doesn't become queen until almost the end of the book, and her battle that makes her a warrior queen is the end of the book more or less. There is some future vision that lets us see the eventual outcome hundreds of years away, but the actual battle is a letdown and not worth naming the book for.

It wasn't terrible, but it was disappointing to me, and it was a bit of a slog to read. ( )