Marie Blacktips is (legally) dead. In order to make way for a younger woman who has borne King Edmund VIII a son, the king created a splinter church which declared Marie so changed as to no longer be the woman he married. Now, as an inconvenient problem, Marie has been cloistered on a remote island within the Convent of Saint Aloicious.
Not content to meekly fade to the shadows, Marie has long been planning her escape from the convent. When her caretaker, Rebekah, reveals that the king has died, Marie accelerates her plan to leave that very same day. But that's not the end of her torment. A mysterious group has attempted to assassinate her daughter, and the only information Marie knows about them comes from a teardrop pendant found at the scene. With Rebekah's help, Marie must cross Appalor and unmask the would-be assassins before they can make another attempt on her daughter's life.
Queen Mother Schemer Mage is a story of motherhood, daughterhood, and where to draw the line in the tug-of-war between protecting a child and allowing them to make their own mistakes. Set in a fictionalized world based on England in the time of Henry VIII and featuring a magic system rife with ironic consequences, it will appeal to fans of female-led epic fantasy like The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin or the Burning Kingdoms trilogy by Tasha Suri.