The Blacksmith Queen by G. A. Aiken

Adjacent to Aiken's Dragon Kin series (though you don't have to have read any of those books to understand what is going on), this book dumps you into a land where the king has died and his sons have all immediately started killing each other off in order to inherit the throne. However, there is a seer who has proclaimed that the next ruler will actually be a woman.
From there, we are dumped in the middle of a fight where a boy, Samuel, is saved by a blacksmith, Keeley. But then... there's a lot of world-building. We meet Keeley's family, including her sister, Gemma, who left and has returned a rather "chunky" nun. Also introduced is Keeley's sister Beatrix who is reported to be the next queen. But will it be her or is the prophecy somewhat murkier than first thought?
It took me awhile to get into this book. I love the zaniness of Aiken (especially in her romance series writing as Laurenston) but it took a lot of time to get to a point where the world was built enough to really enjoy the craziness that I think this series will get into. Normally Aiken is much better at building the worlds simultaneous to getting characters developed. For me, the book was sort of a bell curve with the best part of the book being the middle but you sort of had to wade in to get to it. Hopefully the second book will be better because all of the back story will be behind.

Three stars

Followed by The Princess Knight
This book came out August 27th, 2019
I borrowed this as an ebook from the library

Note: I borrowed this as an audiobook later and it was even BETTER
Opinions are my own

Reread as Audible audiobook January 2024