Great fantasy world building with many characters. This is my first book in this trilogy so was a bit left behind in the first part of the book. Really enjoyed the development of some characters and their powers. As relationships change the survival of characters is not guaranteed.
Thank you NetGalley and (publisher) for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

"Upon the Flight of the Queen" by Howard Andrew Jones is a thrilling and immersive fantasy novel that transports readers to a richly imagined world filled with magic, intrigue, and adventure. The novel follows a cast of complex and engaging characters as they navigate a dangerous political landscape and confront both personal and existential threats.

What sets "Upon the Flight of the Queen" apart is its expert pacing and masterful world-building. Jones creates a fully realized world that feels both familiar and unique, and the novel's action-packed plot keeps readers on the edge of their seats. The characters are compelling and well-developed, with nuanced motivations and conflicts that add depth and complexity to the story.

Overall, "Upon the Flight of the Queen" is a must-read for fans of epic fantasy. Jones is a talented writer with a gift for storytelling, and this novel is a testament to his skill and vision. From the vivid descriptions of magic and battle to the intricate political machinations, this book has something for everyone.

My thanks for the eARC of Upon the Flight of the Queen from NetGalley in exchange for this review.

Upon the Flight of the Queen follows the perspectives of Kyrkenall and Elenai as they go in search of allies for the besieged Alantris, as well as Varama and Rylin within Alantris fighting underground against the Naor. We get the perspective of a seeming trans Naor leader Vannek. I hope to see more of him and Ortok in the future as their fates are rather up in the air or besieged by the end.

I much enjoyed the mysteries and how past and future and realms are being changed by the doings of Queen Leonara and her love for a unnamed goddess of the hearthstones.

Thanks so much to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with this E-Arc. All new releases as of February 2021 will be featured on my blog.

Another great book from Mr. Jones, I enjoyed the first book and I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters were great and I loved the world itself.

I disliked the writing of this book. I felt it didn't live up to the first, and I couldn't get used to it.

I'm surprised to say this but there's too much description. Every single thing is described to a ridiculous amount. It was impossible to focus, and was boring very fast. I actually grew bored with the characters, though I only sort of liked them in the first book. I hated how every woman was beautiful with wide hips, small waists, hair like 'manes'. Why is everry woman 'slim'??? Women don't just come in size 'slim' and they don't all come in society's 'beautiful' beauty-standards. Also, every single male character is muscular and handsome? What???

The way the author went about writing Vannek was....wrong. That's the only way I can describe it. The writing in general was bad, and I wish I'd been less optimistic as I'd tried to be in my review of the first book. The plot was okay, but it couldn't make up for this writing style, or the writing itself.

The first book in this series was such a whirlwind of excellence that I dove right into this one! I was thrilled that everything I adored about the first book continued here. There is just something smooth and natural about the world building and the was the characters interact with each other. Like book one, I could not put this down. Well done!

This is the first book that I've read in 2020 and it is a 5 star read. I loved it! It picked up right where the first one ended. The characters are so amazing! I couldn't pick a fave because there are so many that I love. Hopefully the next one comes soon, because of course the ending left us hanging. I love this series.

Upon the Flight of the Queen is the second book in the high fantasy Ring-Sworn trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones. Released 19th Nov 2019 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's imprint, it's 432 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

I love high fantasy epic quest doorstop books like this. The world building is superlative and the characters and plotting are engaging. Reading this book was actually so immersive for me that I lost track of passing time several times. It's taken me a while to actually review this installment because I picked it up without having read the previous book and couldn't keep track of what was going on and had to go back and pick up book one before getting through this one. The good news is that the author is darned gifted at plotting, tension, dialogue, characterization and the other technical details of immersive storytelling. The downside is that this book probably won't work well as a standalone.

Full of action, grand themes, honor, fighting, dragons, more fighting, magic, fighting, battles, impossible odds, and a bit of mystery, it's a ripping yarn in true high octane high fantasy. I really enjoyed this one (just don't try to read it as a standalone).

Five stars.

While with book one I was not sure what I was thinking about the book - I was not i love, nor hate it - thou three stars in the end. Here as it's a surprise I enjoyed Upon the Flight of the Queen more than For the killing of the Kings (which is not a usual occurrence with book series).
Be warned - read book one prior to this one! It will be really helpful! As I was completely confused at the beginning with the number of books I read - as there is no "Remember form book 1" section. And we are thrown into the action right from the very first page.
UtFotQ is modern fantasy sorcery and sword with a lot of twists that come out of nowhere, but... later make sense that I'm out of my mind! It blew it sometimes even. I think if I read book 1 before this one I would be catching even more things like that. Maybe in the future. I hope book three will be as well on the "better" side of the previous one just like this one.
I think I would enjoy this one more if I had reread book one, as remembering what was happening was a little too long process for my liking.

It’s ironically fascinating that Upon the Flight of the Queen ends in exactly the same way that the first book in this series, For the Killing of Kings, did. Both stories end with our heroes saving another city from the hands, and hordes, of the marauding Naor. And in both cases that recovery comes within a knife edge of disaster, but neither represent the end of anything larger than the immediate battle. As each entry in the series closes, it is obvious to the reader that the endpoint is merely a pause between battles, and that more bloodshed and heartbreak are yet to come.

For the Killing of Kings felt like it began in medias res – translated as “into the middle of things” -, that the story had already begun at some point in the past and the reader was just dropped into the middle of it. As Elenai and Kyrkenall delve deeper into the secrets and lies that have set them on the run from their former compatriots, that situation becomes the real truth. They are already in the middle of the story – they just didn’t know it at first.

This second book begins in medias of the res that happened in the first book. Which means that you cannot start here. The story in Upon the Flight of the Queen only makes sense if you’ve read For the Killing of Kings. But if you love epic fantasy this is a story well worth diving into.

As this second story opens, Rylin and Varama, the ring-sworn warriors of the Altenerai Corps (and of the series title) have just saved one city of the Allied Realms from an army of savage Naor set on conquest, enslavement and destruction of their enemies – who just so happen to be the heroes of our story.

As this entry in the series progresses, the focus shifts among the Altenerai as this small band of warriors and mages tries to be everywhere at once, to defend as much as they can in as many places as they can from their would-be conquerors, while at the same time attempting to figure out why their order and their country has been betrayed from within – and just how much the Queen has to do with the rot at the heart of the kingdom.

At the end of this volume, the “band” has mostly gotten back together from their separate epic journeys, just in time to defeat the onrushing horde – while losing any hope of stopping the mad queen who has set these terrible events into motion.

The battle is won, but the war is not yet over. Our heroes pause as readers gasp in shock as they wait to see what will happen next.

Escape Rating A: While I had a whole dragonload of mixed feelings about the first book in this series, I have absolutely none about this second entry. I loved Upon the Flight of the Queen, in spite of some issues with the audio narration that I’ll get to in a minute.

I don’t know whether it was because this was just the right time for me to get into a meaty epic fantasy, whether I liked this one more because I had a better grasp of the characters and the world, or whether this second book was just better than the first – this was an awesome story and I loved every minute of it.

Unlike my listen to the first book, this time I felt compelled to see what happened next – what new fire our heroes jumped into after escaping their most recent frying pan. I found myself listening to the story when I had time in the car or on the treadmill and then switching to the ebook when I didn’t – because I couldn’t put this one down.

That being said, there were issues with the narration – and they were the same issues I noted in my review of the previous book. The reader conflated cavalry with Calvary – a common issue in everyday life but jarring in a professional reader. Early in the story the word “loll” was read as “lull” repeatedly, to the point where I was temporarily confused about what was happening. My personal “favorite” malaprop was the reading of “brazier” – a container for fire, as “brassiere” – the older word for a woman’s undergarment now known as a “bra”. Just the thought of mistaking the one for the other is, quite literally, painful to contemplate. Seriously, OUCH!

But the story is definitely not an ouch, although the characters in it certainly experience plenty of painful circumstances that generate a lot more than a mere “ouch”. This is a story with a very large cast of characters and a lot of conflicting motivations – something that got a bit bogged down in the first book as we had to learn who all these people were and what was pushing them forward – or pulling them back. That the characters we were following were in the midst of discovering that they had been betrayed and were themselves uncertain of anyone’s motives made that a bit more difficult.

By this point, however, we’ve got a handle on who is who – and our heroes know who is with them and who is against them. The tension however, is ramped up by the Naor incursions. The Queen’s inattention to the good of her realm has provided these long-time enemies with an opportunity to strike at their heart believing that no one can oppose them. And they are very nearly right.

At the same time, one of the tighter focuses in the story is on the guerrilla warfare being waged in one city that is ostensibly under Naor occupation. The plight of the tiny band of warriors led by Alten Varama, a group that watches as their numbers whittled down while their commander lays the groundwork for a rescue that may not come is heartbreakingly terrible and terribly heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, in other parts of this wide-ranging narrative, we watch a legendary commander literally rise from the dead – as he in turn watches a young man and woman from the Corps he led rise to meet the challenges of this new and terrible day.

The ending of Upon the Flight of the Queen is rife with those epic “Riders of Rohan” moments that are the hallmark of the best of epic fantasy – as this certainly is.

There was only one thing that marred my enjoyment of this epic tale. It ends, just as For the Killing of Kings ended, in the pause after an epic battle, a point where the characters and the reader have a chance to take a breath but know that there is more yet to come. When the first book ended, the publication date for this second book was already announced, and was actually imminent.

The title and publication date of the final book in the Ring-Sworn Trilogy have yet to be announced. I’m anxiously waiting for that horn call – and I’m certain that I’m far from alone in my impatience to discover which of our heroes will survive to win the day.

In a few weeks, we’ll release our top books of 2019 list! This has been a strong year for fantasy and sci-fi; with a number of powerful debuts, and the countless sequels and new releases made narrowing down our list very difficult. However, one debut that has definitely earned a spot on the list is For the Killing of Kings, by Howard Andrew Jones. A stunning take on a number of classic fantasy tropes, this book burst onto the scene in February of this year and secured a spot on our top 2019 picks (the review can be found here). Interestingly though, Jones has managed to put out the second book in his trilogy, Upon the Flight of the Queen, just last week, and given my love of book one, I jumped right into it. Unfortunately, in this particular instance lightning does not strike twice.

Upon the Flight of the Queen, or Queen for short, is an enjoyable book that fails in a number of the traditional responsibilities of a sequel novel. Kings introduced a fantastic world to explore, a large cast of complex and interesting characters, a political hierarchy that dripped with intrigue, and high stakes that got you invested. The first book did an amazing job of pulling you in and telling a cohesive part of a multi-part story. It was nicely self-contained, and although there is still a looming threat at the end of the book, you got the sense that there was a fully fleshed out start-to-end narrative in the book. Queen, on the other hand, felt more like “DLC” for Kings than an actual fully fleshed out novel.

Queen hit the ground running, picking up in the aftermath of the end of book one and focusing primarily on cleaning up lingering plot points from Kings. However, it doesn’t feel like it really has a cohesive story of its own other than turning the tide in one long three-hundred-page battle. It follows a similar set of POVs from the initial book (Elenai and Rylin for those keeping track), but adds a few new ones as the story progresses. One of Kings’ strongest characteristics to me was its excellent pacing and balance between the POVs, spending the perfect time with each before alternating. In book two, instead of being a strength, the pacing is a weakness with the POVs feeling choppy and unbalanced. I felt like I was riding in an unsecured pickup bed on the highway and being flung about. In addition, the powerful worldbuilding in Kings is expanded upon in Queen, but it feels like a footnote and I found myself eating up huge amounts of pages without actually understanding more about the world. However, it isn’t all bad as the character development in Queen continues to be phenomenal. Although I didn’t enjoy that the book was one long war scene, I did enjoy the complex character arcs that it put all of the cast through. There was powerful and meaningful growth with almost everyone and it kept me invested when I thought other elements of the book were falling short.

In the end, Upon the Flight of the Queen is a fun and captivating book that I enjoyed. However, it fails as a sequel to For the Killing of Kings by not appropriately progressing the story, not standing on its own as a complete narrative, and declining in some areas that were strengths in the first book. I still absolutely recommend that everyone pick up this series and give it a spin, but I am hoping that Jones pulls out the stops for book three and returns the narrative to the high bar he set with the first entry.

Rating: Upon the Flight of the Queen – 7.0/10
-Andrew

I have fun reading this sequel. The world-building gets interesting, the character development was astounding. Great premise. I love the conflict and all that surrounds the story.

You get attached to the characters and to the magic system and the caste system.

Great read!

An excellent fantasy novel that keeps you hooked till the end.
It's an engrossing and entertaining read with an amazing world building and a well thought cast of characters.
I liked the style of writing and can't wait to read other books in this series.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

First off I really want to thank St Martin's Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review

Upon The Flight of the Queen is a really engrossing read, and pulled me in from the start. I really like Jones' writing style, characters, and descriptions, but after maybe page 150 I realized that I was missing something

This is a sequel! I feel so bad, but I absolutely NEED tobread book 1 right the heck now to find out where this started and then pick this back up and I don't know if I can do it before pub date!

Thank you so much for the ARC though and I am 90% sure I would recommend these books based off of what I read so far

Upon the Flight of the Queen, by Howard Andrew Jones. A good sequel that picks up where the previous one leaves off, the horde of invaders has started over-running towns and cities and the queen is doing who knows what instead of defending. The only people looking to help are the band of outcasts and misfits...

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for the advanced copy.

First of all, WOW. That was a fast paced journey with non-stop action. ‘Upon the Flight of the Queen’ is a High Fantasy book that continues off from ‘For the Killing of Kings’ quite immediately. If you liked the first one you will find yourself devouring the second with ease.

Most of the characters were well written, in fact, I would say all of them- but just a select few fall a little short in my opinion. That being said, the characters that matter are established and do some necessary growing.

Don’t miss out on this one! It’s an all-around good fantasy novel, and I have very few complaints
(Also, absolutely gorgeous cover art)