"Daughter of the Empire" review
Overview
Title: Daughter of the Empire
Author: Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts
Subgenre: High fantasy, political fantasy
2021 Bingo squares: Backlist (hm)
Recommended if: You want to read Mara competence porn in a heavily-political environment where honor is important
Not recommended if: You want actual character development or reciprocal friendships with easy dialogue
Stars: 4.5/5
Review
Daughter of the Empire begins with Mara, seventeen-year-old heir to the Acoma family, inheriting the title of “Ruling Lady” after her father and brother are tricked to their deaths by the rival Minwanabi house (boo, hiss, we hate them). Mara spends the rest of the book plotting both the survival of her own house and her revenge against the Minwanabi. From needra dung estimates to soldier recruitment to Mara’s own marriage for political gain, Daughter of the Empire considers problems of rule both small and big, and follows Mara’s triumphs and mistakes, but mostly triumphs.
The Tsurani society is heavily honor-based, and Mara’s aides and servants obey her will without question. The result is a novel severely lacking in reciprocal relationships for our protagonist, although the honor-based relationships do themselves result in interesting dynamics that are explored several times throughout the novel. In keeping with both this lack of close friendship and a very formal society, the prose also tends to be relatively descriptive, with long paragraphs and little dialogue - however, after the first chapter, the overall plot moves relatively quickly, as Mara is decidedly busy getting her house in order.
Daughter of the Empire, therefore, sets up little for us to care about other than enjoyment at watching Mara win at things, or in other words, Mara competence porn. This is great for one book, and I thoroughly enjoyed Daughter of the Empire. But upon starting book 2, we got things other than Mara competence porn, including a large number of non-Mara POVs and non-political-machination subplots, and I lost interest extremely quickly and decided not to continue with the series. The first book of the trilogy stands on its own quite well, so I highly recommend reading it and then feeling no obligation to read anything beyond it.
