The second book of Erika Johansen's The Queen of the Tearling series goes more into the history of the Tear and the family history of Queen Kelsea. With the Red Queen getting ready to invade the Tear for Kelsea's refusal to honor an agreement to ship people to Mort, she is trying to understand the history of Tear during visions in which she is living the life of Lily, a woman before the passing into the Tear. She tries to understand the link between herself and the woman of her visions and whether this would help in any way to find a weakness of the Red Queen. The situation looks hopeless with the Mort army getting closer every day, but she has no choice but to try.

The second book gets more interesting, since it starts filling the background with the pre-Tear era history. We find out that William Tear was a Brit who was not happy with the autocratic U.S. government at the time and organised a People's movement into an insurgency. However, finding out they would have no chance to counter the forces of this high-tech dictatorship, they decide to go elsewhere, but where would this be in the overcrowded world of their time?

The last book in the series is supposed to be published in November 2016 and I'm looking forward to it.