"Queen High" by C.J. Carey

(WARNING:  This review contains some mild spoilers related to the outcome of the first book in this series, "Widowland.")  

"Queen High" by C.J. Carey is the sequel to "Widowland," which I read (and loved) at this time last year and reviewed here. :)  It was released on Oct. 13th in the U.K. (in hardcover), but it won't be available in North America until next July (2023)(and under a different title too -- "The Last Queen").  (Personally, having now read the book, I think "Queen High" is a much better title -- but, not my decision...!) It will be interesting to see whether the North American version has any significant text changes, when it's published next summer. ("Widowland" did! -- and most of the material in the epilogue that was tacked onto the North American edition does show up in "Queen High.") 

I decided I didn't want to wait nine months -- so I splurged and ordered a copy from Amazon UK. :)  It was delivered the same day I arrived home from visiting my parents, and I started reading it as soon as I finished the book I had already started, "Magpie Murders" (reviewed here).

To recap/set the stage: both "Widowland" and "Queen High" take place in Britain in the 1950s -- a Britain that capitulated to/formed an "alliance" with Nazi Germany in 1940 and has been operating under a "Protectorate" since then. Memories of "the Time Before" are fading (and are, in fact, being deliberately suppressed), spies/informants are everywhere, and (shades of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale") women have been classified according to age, heritage, reproductive status and physical attributes, which determines where they live, the rations they receive, the clothes they wear, the kind of work they do, etc. The lowest of the low are the "Friedas" -- childless women and widows over 50 years of age, who eke out a subsistence living in the walled-off slums known as "Widowlands." (I would certainly recommend reading "Widowland" first -- you will get a much better picture of who the characters are, the world they live in and what's happened so far.)  

"Widowland" ended with the assassination of "the Leader" (i.e., Hitler) -- referred to as "the Event" -- and a bit of a cliffhanger as to the fate of our highly ranked heroine, Rose Ransom, who played a key role in his death. As "Queen High" opens, we learn that (somewhat improbably), Rose survived and returned to her job in the Ministry of Culture. (Of course, there wouldn't be a sequel if she hadn't, right?)  

It's two years later (1955), and Rose is now a Poet Hunter -- poetry being a particularly degenerate art form that has now been completely banned. Additionally, she's been tasked with a special assignment: to go to Buckingham Palace and interview Queen Wallis, the American-born widow of the late King Edward VIII, and prepare a briefing document prior to the upcoming visit of President and Mrs. Eisenhower of the United States -- the first such visit since the Alliance was formed, which will culminate in the signing of a new treaty between the two nations. Overshadowing the upcoming visit: the recent murder of a high-ranking SS officer.    

I won't give away anything more of the plot -- and there's a lot going on in this book -- but suffice to say that, as with "Widowland," this was a fast, absorbing read, with tension mounting as the the date of the Eisenhower visit draws near and the various plot elements converge. We get to find out more about what has happened to many of the characters we first met in "Widowland" -- including the Friedas.  I started reading on Sunday night, zoomed through about 3/4 of it yesterday and finished it off this afternoon.   

As I observed with "Widowland," there have been other dystopian novels based on the premise of the Nazis winning WWII, and others focusing on controlling women and fertility.  And I noticed that certain elements of the plot, plot structure & pacing of both "Widowland" and this book were very similar. 

Nevertheless -- Carey does an amazing job of combining dystopian elements together with feminism, patriotism, and the subversive power of literature. (I loved how Rose procrastinates at her job, knowing that once she's "corrected" a book, the one remaining original copy will be destroyed. She's saving her favourite, Jane Austen's "Persuasion," for last. She sneaks peeks at a copy of "Jane Eyre" that's hidden in the carved-out pages of a Victorian book on birds at the library.)  

It's a pretty heady mixture that deserves an audience in these increasingly authoritarian times. There's a lot here that will sound ominously familiar and relevant. I particularly found "Queen High" interesting in its depiction of an authoritarian society after the omnipresent Leader is gone, and how the world he's created carries on and evolves without him (and, in some ways, gets worse...).  Also what it has to say about history and cultural memory (and forgetting)... who gets to tell our stories, and how... writers versus "Content Providers" (!)... oh, so much...!

I was debating, as I read through the book, whether or not I could give this book 5 stars. Then I got to the last few pages, which had me reaching for kleenex, for multiple reasons. Let's just say it's a very timely book that meant a lot to me personally, in many ways. (I am SO itching to discuss it with someone!)

5 wholehearted stars on Goodreads.

I think that -- properly done -- "Widowland" and "Queen High" would make a great TV series, a la "The Handmaid's Tale." :)  

This was Book #41 read to date in 2022 (and Book #3 finished in October), bringing me to 91% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

*** *** *** 

As a childless woman of a (*cough!*) certain age, I found this passage particularly chilling -- especially when I learned, later in the book, what the (fictional) regime has planned for the country's Widowlands and their residents. (You might be able to hazard a guess, knowing what we know about the real-life Nazis and places like the Warsaw Ghetto...)  

"Speer thinks, though, and I agree with him, that the Widowlands are festering sinks for dissent. Old infertile women are the opposite of everything this country stands for. We have a fertility crisis. The nation's crying out for new children. Londinium needs more citizens, not swarms of aged women who live outside society. They serve no purpose. They exist purely for themselves."  (p.109)

(Of course, the Nazis of the book helped to create the fertility crisis by killing off so many men and shipping off the ones remaining to the continent to work in labour camps, right?  But, I digress...)