1 out of 4 stars
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The tale begins with Princess Agatha of Xana as an attractive, intelligent and compassionate young lady who disagrees with many of the policies of her land, which her mother refuses to change. From a young age, Agatha has been passionate about helping the commoners, who are consistently exploited by the wealthy aristocrats.
When a powerful villain named Magi attacks and massacres the citizens of Xana, including the queen, it falls upon Princess Agatha to save her kingdom from its vicious conqueror. She does this with the help of her Fairy Godmother, who tasks her with finding her soulmate and making love to him during their first encounter, which is apparently the only way to destroy Magi’s power. On succeeding in this unusual endeavour, Agatha takes the throne and rules Xana with the support of her soulmate, Prince-consort Olaf, in addition to a band of well selected advisers, and sets about making the changes she had always been passionate about. The Queen of Xana details her life and efforts for the good of her people, and how she utilises strategies that are applicable to our modern society as well.
While Fred Pilcher, through this book, brought forth intelligent ideas on income generation and empowerment of the poor, the execution of it was quite ham-fisted. The world-building involved was rushed and rather basic, making the work seem more like an extended improvised parable than a tale that could draw one in. Moreover, other than the ‘Magi’ situation in the opening chapters of the book, there are no other mentions of magic or fantastical elements in the rest of it. To add to this inconsistency, the explicit sex scenes in the book are a bit clumsily done and add nothing to the narrative. These elements make the reader draw the conclusion that fantasy and erotica were infused into the story simply to make it whimsical, with little success.
Additionally, Pilcher is overly simplistic in his portrayal of human character, and to make it worse, the conversations between characters fail to sound natural. For instance, after speaking with Queen Agatha, a certain six-year-old boy says to her, “Dear queen, I never had so much fun in my life as when I talked with you. Will I ever talk to you again?”
What I enjoyed least about Agatha’s chronicles is that they feature an all-perfect queen surrounded by rather weak characters, beginning with her housewifely prince-consort, whose most notable of very few duties seems to be to “delight the people with his courteous and enthusiastic greetings,” and I find it terribly sad that this is written with no trace of irony at all. On the other hand, the author makes good points about investment, hard work, self-improvement and utilizing opportunities, which in life, as in the book, benefit not only the individual, but also the community as a whole. This is what I liked best.
Unfortunately, for the reasons stated above, I find the objective rating of The Queen of Xana to be 1 out of 4 stars. While I acknowledge that the use of fiction to draw parallels and make points about the society is a remarkable idea, it is only so if well executed. This particular work is often confusing, as it contains rather mature content, yet the writing style seems aimed at a more juvenile audience, what with the author's tendency to spoon-feed the reader and leave nothing to individual interpretation. Pilcher heavily uses his characters as his mouthpieces instead of creating a narration that speaks for itself. This, I feel is the reason why it might fail in sparking the dialogue it was intended to.
I would recommend a much improved, much more researched version of this book to lovers of fantasy and political science. I hate to say this, but as it is, I would not recommend it to anyone, but much less underage readers, due to the mature content.
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The Queen of Xana
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