The Red Queen’s Daughter

by Jacqueline Kolosov

Mary is the daughter of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr, but her farther was Katherine’s second husband, the treasonous Thomas Seymour. With both her parents executed and her guardian now also dead, nine-year-old Mary is taken into the custody of Lady Strange, a woman with an air of mystery about her. Mary learns that Lady Strange will be her teacher, but not in stitching and mending. No, Mary is to become a white magician—and a white magician with a destiny at that. Her future is to protect Queen Elizabeth from “romantic intoxication” and prevent her downfall. As the years pass Mary’s skills grow until, at sixteen, she is ready to move to Whitehall palace and become one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Here Mary must at once learn the schemes of Court life and discover the deepest part of her magic. Fortunately her ability to see auras allows her to learn something of a person’s intentions, but there is one she cannot see: Her cousin, Edmund Seymour, a powerful and possibly dangerous young man who is also a magician...but a dark one. The plots for power increase a notch with magic to an exciting and unique novel of a little-known historical girl, The Red Queen’s Daughter.

Jacqueline Kolosov does a fantastic job of portraying Elizabethan England with an element of magic without overdoing it; no abracadabra spells, but believable ones of seeing, knowing, and understanding. I will admit that the end was kind of rushed, with some plotlines left hanging, and the romance was a little unsatisfactory, but mayhap a sequel would take care of those small things.

****Also posted on YA Books Central.****