Muna and Sakti both awoke on a beach one morning, side by side with no memories of their lives before that day. Possibly for this reason, Muna and Sakti are as close as sisters can be. Muna finds herself being whisked to England through a strange and confusing course of events, losing her sister in the process. Due to the extreme culture shock involved, Muna doesn't understand some of the things that go on around her in England and misreads social situations. I don't know if Zen Cho expects the readers to take Muna's thoughts as the correct view of things, but any time Muna would make one of these incorrect assumptions, I would just think, "Wow. Muna just doesn't get it."
But, let's not pick on Muna too harshly; she's got quite a difficult task before her. In order to get her sister back, she'll first have to determine where she is and what happened to her. Muna's sister, Sakti, simply disappeared as they were taking a shortcut through the fae realm as they were making the trip from their tropical island home of Janda Baik to England to the school for practical magic for women, which is owned and operated by Prunella, the Sorceress to the Crown. ...Something they would never have had to do if they hadn't gotten in trouble for popping over to England to research English magic to see if they could determine the nature of a curse that had been cast on Sakti. Why, they were researching the curse because Muna was afraid of losing Sakti over time and now she's lost her all at once!
Sakti's disappearance is not only heart-wrenching to Muna, but is quite inconvenient, as well, since Sakti is the sister with magic; Muna can't manage even the simplest of spells. This leaves her seemingly ill-equipped to locate or rescue her sister. She'll have to rely on her cunning, her charisma, and perhaps, a few friends along the way.
Luckily, she finds a fast friend in Henrietta Stapleton, a young teacher in Prunella's school (unbeknownst to Henrietta's parents, as it turns out). Henrietta is much more proper and sophisticated than Muna, who is mostly oblivious to social etiquette, but despite their differences, Henrietta tries to assist Muna however she can in her quest to rescue her sister from the realm of the fae.
The journey is, of course, fraught with danger, from the fierce, vicious and tyrannical Fairy Queen to dragons and from the dangers of being discovered by family members to the backstabbing politics of the English Theurgy... all the while under threat of war against England by the French, requiring careful political positioning.
I greatly enjoyed The True Queen and look forward to upcoming books in the series. If you haven't read Sorcerer to the Crown, however, by all means, start there.
