The Queen of Vorn (Unpublished) (Part 6 - Chapter 23 through 33)
Hello, all. Welcome to the conclusion of the chapter-by-chapter breakdown of The Queen of Vorn. Just a reminder that this breakdown will focus specifically on the balance - or rather, imbalance - if Showing versus Telling within the book on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Please see the previous parts for the overview and the breakdowns of Chapters 1 through 22.
With that reestablished, let’s dive in.
STATS
Title: The Queen of Vorn
Series: The Homecoming Triology (Book 1)
Author(s): Charlotte Goodwin
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: May 2025
Publisher: Self-published to Amazon
Rating: 2 / 10
SPOILER WARNING
Because this is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, each section of this post will feature heavy, unmarked spoilers for the entire book through the end of the chapter covered in that section. There may also be mild, unmarked spoilers for events in later chapters, but there will be no heavy spoilers.
EDITIONS
This review will specifically focus upon the original release of The Queen of Vorn. It was drafted prior to the unpublishing of the book and only updated to the extent necessary to provide a record of said events, and thus, it applies specifically to the original release.
I do intend to do a comparative review if and when this book is re-released, which will serve as both a critique of the re-release version and an analysis of the changes made.
CHAPTER 23 - “Fire and Blood”
Story
This chapter ricochets between two parallel plots, one for Emma’s POV and one for Tom’s.
Emma discovers that she is now a hostage of the goblins. However, she is almost immediately rescued when soldiers of the local human nation sweep in to exterminate the goblins. The soldiers then take her prisoner, finding it incredibly suspicious for a woman to be traveling alone in this area. Emma tries to bluff them by revealing that she is the true Queen of Vorn, leading to them deciding to imprison her until they can send a message to Queen Lila (since their nation is an ally of Vorn and is part of the genocide alliance). Emma waits until nightfall and then begins to work on freeing herself.
Tom and Garrad try to track first the goblins, then the human soldiers. Garrad eventually collapses from his injury, at which point Tom tries again to treat him.
Show versus Tell
We are Shown that goblins are indeed vile, monstrous raiders who backstab each other at a moment’s notice.
Emma’s decision to reveal that she is the “true Queen of Vorn” Shows us that she and / or the soldiers who are keeping her prisoner are enormous idiots. It is absurd that Emma seriously thinks that staking her claim as a foreign monarch would sway soldiers who didn’t believe her original story (a version of the truth, that being that she was separated from her husband whole traveling to visit the elves). It is even more absurd that these soldiers of a foreign nation that is allied with Vorn would buy Emma's story, especially since it has not been established yet that people are expecting a “true Queen of Vorn” to pop out of the woodwork.
Tom helping Garrad Shows his integrity through his unwillingness to let Garrd die, despite the antagonism between them.
Impact
The continued demonization of genocide victims continues to undermine this story where the axis of morality balances of genocide being bad.
With that issue aside, this chapter mostly works. Goodwin has not done a hard reset to erase the events of Chapter 22; she hasn’t even done a hard reset to jump from the Point A at the start of this chapter to the Point B at the end. One event flows into the next as a result of the consequences of various actions.
One thing that isn’t necessarily an issue, but does bother me a bit, is that Emma immediately goes from being a prisoner of goblins to being a prisoner of human soldiers. It’s not unrealistic. It just feels like the involvement of the goblins was narratively pointless (or, worse, done only to reinforce how monstrous they are). We could have ended up in this same position just by having Emma get separated from Tom and Garrad during a wild animal attack.
CHAPTER 24 - “Lifeline”
Story
Tom and Garrad have a heart-to-heart and resolve their differences while Tom is tending to Garrad. An elf rides up to them. It turns out that this is Eskalith, the elf they’ve been traveling to meeting since Garrad joined the party. Eskalith heals Garrad with magic, and the new party continues their pursuit of Emma.
We get another scene of Zark providing commentary in events with another alien. It is confirmed that Zark somehow prompted Arndal to end Tom and Emma to the elves.
Show versus Tell
We are Shown Tom and Garrad’s reconciliation. While this involves them telling each other how they feel about one another, this is a natural extension of their characters. I feel the flaws here have more to do with their conflict being fumbled prior to this point than with the reconciliation itself.
We are Shown elvish magic in action when Eskalith heals Tom.
We are Told that Zark did indeed interfere to get Arndal to send Tom and Emma to the elves.
Impact
The portion of the chapter involving Tom continues to preserve narrative momentum. If one accepts the starting point of Tom and Garrad butting heads, I think the reconciliation is a decent enough payoff. A plot has finally taken shape here.
The scene with Zark is once again utterly pointless. Nothing is added to the story by it. In fact, by confirming that Arndal sending Tom and Emma to the elves was not his own idea, it actually damages Arndal retroactively without adding anything to Zark’s character to compensate.
CHAPTER 25 - “Escape”
Story
We are Shown Emma’s escape from the human soldiers, starting after she already cut her bonds and started sneaking across camp. She crosses the perimeter of the camo and then is tracked by dogs as far as a stream. When her route along the steam forces herself to jump off a waterfall, she is ambushed by goblins at the bottom. Emma kills the goblins and takes shelter in a cave behind the waterfall that serves as their lair.
Show versus Tell
We are Shown the play-by-play of Emma's escape. While we are not Shown her transition from being tied up in a supply tent to creeping along on her belly with a bunch of stolen supplies, that is not actually an issue in this case. The end of Chapter 23 Showed up that her guard fell asleep and that she was starting to cut her bonds; the rest can be assumed.
We are once more Shown that goblins have the moral compass the average bandit NPC in Skyrim, attempting to murder anyone who wanders into their detection radius. We are also Shown Emma killing one of those goblins by slitting his throat after he was already incapacitated, an action that elicits zero remorse (versus her trauma at killing bandits or shooting a goblin whom she realized was female).
Impact
The plot continues to roll smoothly along, maintaining momentum all the way. This is a massive improvement. I wish we could have gotten this from the very start of the book.
And … yeah, the victims of genocide continue to be demonized, on top of the potential self-insert murdering one in cold blood with zero remorse or reflection. Why are we supposed to feel sympathy for goblins, exactly?
CHAPTER 26 - “Live to Kill Another Day”
Story
We begin with Grinthy’s POV, starting in medias res as she murders one of her fellow goblins to claim leadership of the survivors from the raid in Chapter 23. (Goodwin tries to frame this as a reluctant acceptance of violence, except her challenger casually murders someone who isn’t even challenging him moments earlier, and Grinthy has already murdered other goblins to avoid helping others.) She them murders another goblin for talking back. The chapter resolves with Grinthy planning to gather more goblins so she can finally start murdering humans instead.
Show versus Tell
We are Shown that goblins are evil, violent savages. Bonus points for this being Grinthy's POV, so it’s not even getting a biased perception from an outsider. This is who the goblins are when humans aren't watching.
Impact
I should not have to keep saying this …
Ms. Goodwin, why are you demonizing the very same people you want to frame as victims of genocide?
CHAPTER 27 - “Intelligence”
Story
Tom, Garrad, and Eskalith walk into the camp of human soldiers and try to bluff their way into getting information on Emma’s whereabouts. They are found out and imprisoned. The chapter ends on Tom asking Garrad and Eskalith how they will escape.
Show versus Tell
In the process of being imprisoned, Tom gets his nose broken. Eskalith then heals him with magic. We are Shown that Esklaith is disturbed by something. This will be explained down the line; the important thing is the establishment.
Impact
While this chapter takes far too long on the party bluffing the soldiers before they get imprisoned, at least the narrative is still moving forward. They came to the camp to confirm if the soldiers had seen Emma at some point, and now they are aware of both her capture and escape.
CHAPTER 28 - “Canyon of Death”
Story
The chapter begins in Emma’s POV, with Emma fleeing the waterfall cave when she hears dogs approaching and working her way down the canyon she’s stuck in.
The story then flips to Tom and the rest of the party, who are … just … free now. They use magic to find Emma. Tom and Garrad climb down into the canyon and slay the soldiers who are closest to her. Tom and Emma are happily ruenited.
Show versus Tell
We are Shown Emma’s continued struggle.
We are Told about how Tom and the party escaped the camp of soldiers, then Told why that same magic can’t instantly solve their problems here.
Impact
Not showing us how Tom’s party escaped the camp was a disastrous decision. This is absolutely a hard reset. At least when Emma freed herself, we were given enough information to understand how she would get free, and the tension of her situation wasn’t resolved just because she escaped her bonds. Here, we are given a dilemma, set up for a scene that would Show their incredible escape, and then are simply Told that they were freed with magic (while also being Told that we shouldn’t expect that same problem-erasing magic to erase other problems). The narrative potential of their imprisonment was squandered, and any future predicaments they find themselves in will feel arbitrary.
On top of that, the fact that Eskalith finds Emma with magic makes the entire scene with the soldiers at the camp narratively pointless. Nothing would change about this story if the party simply went straight from adding Eskalith to tracking Emma down. The only element that might need to be repositioned is Eskalith’s brooding moment after he heals Tom, and that could be easily covered by Tom getting injured and needing to be healed while defending Emma in the canyon.
The one bright spot here is that, because Emma’s struggle is ongoing, some narrative momentum is preserved. A thread of plot has been preserved and keeps driving the story forward.
CHAPTER 29 - “Race to the Woods”
Story
After their reunion, the party discusses their option. Deciding that the human soldiers will never stop hunting them, they decide to ride at a forced pace to the elven realm. We then see several days of them riding, with Eskalith using magic to observe their pursuers and report how the human soldiers are steadily getting closer.
Show versus Tell
We are Told magic can’t resolve this problem.
This is also the chapter where we get the wonderful line where the protagonist of this story, the potential self-insert for Goodwin, compares the victims of the genocide she’s using for the story’s axis of morality to rats.
She had no love for goblins, what little she’d seen of them made her despise them. But she hated rats back on Earth, and she’d never have wished to wipe them out. All creatures had their place and a right to exist.
Impact
While narrative momentum is preserved here, this is where the plot started to wear thin for me.
From this point forward, the narrative tension is going to be fueled by these random soldiers pursing the party … but why are they pursuing? The soldiers are here on a mission to hunt and kill goblins. Pursuing some travelers does not serve that agenda. Yes, said travelers have now killed multiple soldiers, but all those deaths only happened because the soldiers were going out of their way to bother the travelers. Why, then, are they committing soldiers to a prolonged pursuit out of their territory, one that will likely get more of their men killed?
They’re not doing this because they believe that Emma is indeed the Queen of Vorn and are hunting Emma down for Queen Lila. They could not have contacted Vorn in the few days that have passed since Chapter 23, and all the evidence in the text suggests they don’t actually believe Emma’s claim, merely playing along on the off chance that she’s not lying. This is not enough to explain why they are sacrificing more and more soldiers to bring the party down.
Reading through the passages of the group fleeing to the elven forest, I was strongly reminded of the chapters in Eragon where Eragon and Murtaugh have to flee Gil’ead with Arya in tow (an association that will only get stronger in the coming chapters). It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a case of a derivative element by an author who doesn’t understand the original. The reason Eragon and Murtagh forced themselves to ride across the entire Empire in only a few days was not because the Empire was pursuing them relentlessly (though, given how valuable both Eragon and Arya were, that would have been justified) but because they needed to get Arya to the Varden’s healers before she succumbed to poison. It made complete sense that they’d be pushed to such an extreme. Here, it feels like the soldiers are only keeping up the pursuit because Goodwin wants to copy the long-distance chase for her climax.
CHAPTER 30 - “Hunters”
Story
We follow Grinthy as she and her fellow goblins somehow keep up with the chase despite not having horses. When they reach the forests, they decide to recruit forest goblins to form a temporary warband to overwhelm and eat all the soldiers pursuing Emma’s party.
Show versus Tell
We are Told via dialogue that goblins out on the plains would indeed all be there regardless of whether there was a genocide to create a refugee crisis, with them all being outcasts from the forests. Perhaps that might have redeemed the goblins as a whole, but that same dialogue confirms that goblins freely backstab each other and see no issue with goblins and humans killing one another. We also see how bloodthirsty and ready to eat humans the goblins in the forest are.
We are once against Shown two goblins killing each other in a petty squabble, with Grinthy’s companion trying to kill her after she threatens to kill him and Grinthy then brutally killing him in return. This same scene reaffirms that she’s really eager to kill humans before she dies.
We are Shown that goblins have the speed and endurance to organize this warband while still chasing all these riders on horseback, which begs the question of how they haven’t simply been able to outrun the genocide from the start.
Impact
Every single scene and chapter where Grinthy is the POV makes this book worse. The narrative isn’t advancing. We’re just being reminded how loathsome the “rats” are.
CHAPTER 31 - “The Chase”
Story
Emma, Tom, and the party continue to flee the human soldiers. Tom talks to Emma about his magic. The party hears distant battle behind them as the goblins overtake and slaughter the human soldiers.
The party’s horse collapse from exhaustion when they are about a mile from elf territory, forcing the party to abandon them.
At the edge of elf territory, the goblins catch up, forcing the party to turn and fight. A chaotic “and then they fight” battle ensues. Eskalith uses Tom as a magical tactical nuke to kill many of the goblins.
We get a scene of the battle from Grinthy’s POV. She moves in to kill Emma personally.
Emma sees some nameless goblin coming at her. She discovers she has run out of arrows to kill this “horrid green creature” that “wanted all humans dead”. After a brutal scuffle, she stabs this nameless goblin to death. The elves then arrive to rescue everyone.
Show versus Tell
We are Told that the reason Eskalith was acting odd in Chapter 27 was that he sensed that his healing spell unlocked Tom’s magic. We are also told that he can use Tom as a magical tactical nuke. This means that him having Tom explode to kill many goblins is technically a payoff, rather than a Deus ex Machina.
We are Shown, through Grinthy’s POV, that she deliberately hung back in the fight so that other goblins could die first, as well as seeing how eager she is to seize control of the entire warhand when her competition is killed in the explosion. She recognizes Emma from the abduction in Chapter 22 and is pleased that she can make use of Emma’s life a second time.
Impact
While the plot is sill in motion, this was an utter mess of a conclusion. It feels like Goodwin included this entire final battle out of a sense of obligation. The fight itself is meaningless noise, and the magic nuke thing comes basically out of nowhere (to the point that I’m fairly certain that the mention of it earlier in this chapter and Eskalith’s brooding in Chapter 27 were both aftershadowing). Likewise, Grinthy’s death is so empty that is feels like she was only ever given POV chapters to trick the audience into thinking she was some important obstacle for Emma to overcome.
As for Tom’s magic being triggered by a basic healing spell, it makes the whole narrative since parting ways with Arndal (back in Chapter 13) pointless. Yes, Tom and Emma would still need to travel all the way to the elves regardless, but why didn’t Arndal (or Zark, since she’s apparently pulling Arndal’s strings) think of this possibility of jump-starting Tom’s magic with a small zap of elf magic? Portals are a part of this setting’s magic system - why not portal Eskalith to his island, or to a place near his island, and have him jolt Tom’s magic awake? They could have started training Tom in magic several chapters ago and ensured he had magic this whole time.
CHAPTER 32 - “Sanctuary”
Story
Resting and refreshed in the elf realm, Tom and Emma are brought to a meeting with the elf Council about whether Tom is to be trained. The Council agrees when Emma threatens that, if she and Tom succeed in overthrowing Queen Lila without the elves, they will hold a grudge against the elves for not helping them.
Show versus Tell
We are Told that training a sorcerer usually takes many years, yet Tom’s power means he will only need a few months. We are also Told that the elves are as mistrustful of other races as the humans are of them, making it seem like all the races are racist against one another in this setting.
Impact
This is a weak ending. While it’s a natural stopping point for the story, nothing feels earned. This final meeting feels like something Goodwin threw in at the last minute to pretend that the resolution of Book 1 wasn’t as simple as Tom and Emma simply showing up in a place, much like how the final battle in Chapter 31 feels like it was only included out of obligation.
CHAPTER 33 - “Meddling”
Story
We get a scene of Zark commenting on the end of the story.
Show versus Tell
We are Told that the Zargons are planning to give up their Prime Directive thanks to Tom and Emma, including an explicit reference that would be “perhaps preferable” if Tom and Emma failed and the goblin genocide were allowed to run its course.
Impact
The moral of this story is that stopping genocide is bad.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I feel like there are two main angles to consider here: Plot and Theme.
Plot
Goodwin’s baffling choices of what scenes to Show and what to Tell makes a complete mess out of things. She keeps hard resetting the status quo rather than letting events naturally progress. As a result, there’s only a continuous plot in the last third of the book, and even that is kneecapped by a hard reset midway through.
Add to this all the unnecessary POVs. So many scenes are handed to Queen Lila, Grinthy, and Zark. At their best, these scenes contribute nothing essential to the story; at their worst, their mere inclusion damages the story being told. Both cases mess up the pacing by taking attention away from the events the main characters are actually involved in.
And then there is the fact that, at the end of the day, this plot I’ve praised throughout this part for meeting the bare minimum of being a plot isn’t narratively relevant to the story as a whole. The problem of events existing as isolated bubbles in the narrative timeline isn’t actually fixed here; it’s just a much bigger bubble than the previous ones. Things also aren’t perfect inside that bubble. Whole chapters could be cut without detracting from the narrative, and the ending feels tacked on.
The story being told here is not fundamentally broken. By just ripping out the unnecessary POVs, adding a few scenes and generally polishing the narrative, the exact chain of events presented in this text could be used to tell a very satisfying story. The problem lies in the misplaced focus. Goodwin Tells when she should Show and Shows us things that are pointless, at best.
Theme
In the 2007 historical drama Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, there is a scene where Colonel Miles of the United States Army and Sitting Bull of the Teton Sioux have a diplomatic meeting before a battle. Colonel Miles respects the Sioux traditions (as presented in the film, at least) and speaks respectfully to Sitting Bull … even as he proceeds to takes Sitting Bull’s moral outage about the encroaching white men and ram said outrage right back down Sitting Bull’s throat, calling out the hypocrisy of blaming the United States for evils that indigenous tribes were engaged with well before any colonists showed up. As I understand it, this scene’s purpose is to prepare the audience for how the film will not be a straightforward, black-and-white portrayal of the United States as genocidal oppressors and the Sioux as pious innocents. History is messy and filled with moral compromises.
Now, imagine if every single Sioux in that film was replaced by an orc from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, with the exception of Sitting Bull, who would be played by the Mouth of Sauron.
Back in Part 1, I stated that Goodwin botched the very basic message of Genocide Bad. While I do maintain that, when one really digs into what she put onto the page, it’s actually a lot worse than that. With how Goodwin presents the goblins (both through the POV of her potential self-insert and the POV of a goblin), this book reads like an apologetic piece defending a genocide.
I’m going to dust off an old point of comparison here (apologies to anyone who may be sick of it): Shadow of the Conqueror. While asking the audience to root for Daylen after all the evils he’d committed as Dayless was a huge ask, at least the story acknowledged that the evils he committed were evils. To use the most applicable example, Dayless’s decision to slaughter anyone with aristocratic blood was presented as a heinous act. We aren’t meant to think that the moment he started this purge, by beheading a nine-year-old girl who threatened him after he killed her parents, was morally justified; we’re meant to see this as a tipping point where he stopped being a hero. What’s more, the morality of the story was not propelled by the question of whether slaughtering the family members political opponents was a bad thing. That matter was settled when it was lumped in with all the other bad things Dayless did, not to mention him being confronted by survivors of his purge when he was put on trial.
The Queen of Vorn is propelled by the idea that genocide is wrong. That is the only justification presented within the story for the Zargons to intervene and for Emma and Tom to leave their lives behind. As a result, when Goodiwn goes out of her way to show that the supposed victims of genocide are inhuman monsters (and to have her protagonist also think of them as such), it makes the whole story seem pointless. Why are Emma and Tom doing any of this? What is the point of risking political upheaval and the inevitable casualties of overthrowing Queen Lila? Is it just about power?
Maybe Goodwin just wanted to do something similar to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, to show some nuance in the world. Maybe she wanted to set up a sympathetic villain. Maybe she was swinging for the fences and trying to explore the idea that just because people do bad things, that doesn’t justify genocide against them.
If there such a grand plan at play, she horrifically messed up.
ONWARD
Originally, I had drafted this part of the review to say that I will be continuing this series through at least the second book, The Prince of Vorn (which was scheduled for release before this post). However, now that Goodwin has unpublished The Queen of Vorn and put future releases on hold, that isn’t really possible. Instead, we will return to this series when The Queen of Vorn re-releases, doing a comparative analysis of the original and re-published versions.
I am not optimistic about the re-release. I do applaud Goodwin for her willingness to redraft (even if it is after she has already charged people for a completed product). That shows at least an effort to grow as a writer.
At the same time, though, Goodwin has set herself up with she excuse to ignore any necessary changes she doesn’t want to make. Take another look at the Tweet when she announced the book had been unpublished (or, rather, the linked announcement from her website).
As we did back with Goodwin declaring her worldview back in Part 2, let’s set aside what she says and consider how she says it. While Goodwin does concede that edits are necessary, she sets the tone for this announcement by blaming “review-bombing” and (to use terms she’s applied to her critics in other posts), “trolls” and “arseholes”. She prioritizes establishing herself as a victim over admitting to a weak product. This downplays the idea that changes actually need to be made. What’s more, because she’s made this excuse, she has a reason to wave off any changes she doesn’t want to make. She can just say, “Well, those specific criticisms were made in bad faith, so I don’t need to do anything about them.”
I’d like to be wrong. While this book needs a full rewrite, the story isn’t fundamentally broken. It wouldn’t be as hard to fix as other books that have gotten poor ratings on this site. Goodwin just needs to be ready to admit, at least in private, that more than a “few tweaks” are needed.
MORE ON THE HORIZON
On September 19th, we’ll be dipping back into a one-shot review with Kin of the Wolf, the third book in the Magnetic Magic series. Then, on October 3rd we’ll be doing something I hadn’t expected to do anytime soon: kicking off a multi-part review series to praise a book. I read James Islington’s The Will of the Many back in May, and it utterly blew me away. Seeing as how the sequel, The Strength of the Few, is due out on November 11th, we have just enough time to praise this 10/10 book by the release date. I hope you’ll all join me for this refreshing change of pace.
The Onyx Storm series is, of course, also ongoing. The fourth and final power fantasy cycle comes in Chapters 38 through 40. While this is the cycle I should have the least to complain about, Yarros chooses this moment to once again shine a light on the issue of draconic agency in this setting and the implications this agency has for the characters. We’re going to need to once again revisit this issue that we covered more than 18 months ago in Iron Flame Chapter 13.
And, of course, “The Unbottled Idol” is ongoing. Next week, the story enters its final act with Chapter 11. I hope you’ll all join me for a finale of suspense and action.
Whatever you’re here for, thanks for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe for the weekly newsletter if you’d like e-mail updates with the latest posts. Take care, everyone, and have a great weekend.
