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    The Queen of Blood: Book One of The Queens of Renthia
    The Queen of Blood: Book One of The Queens of Renthia
    The Queen of Blood: Book One of The Queens of Renthia
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Queen of Blood: Book One of The Queens of Renthia

    Written by Sarah Beth Durst

    Narrated by Khristine Hvam

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    An idealistic young student and a banished warrior become allies in a battle to save their realm in this first book of a mesmerizing epic fantasy series, filled with political intrigue, violent magic, malevolent spirits, and thrilling adventure.

    Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow . . .

    But the spirits that reside within this land want to rid it of all humans. One woman stands between these malevolent spirits and the end of humankind: the queen. She alone has the magical power to prevent the spirits from destroying every man, woman, and child. But queens are still just human, and no matter how strong or good, the threat of danger always looms.

    With the position so precarious, young women are chosen to train as heirs. Daleina, a seemingly quiet academy student, is under no illusions as to her claim to the throne, but simply wants to right the wrongs that have befallen the land. Ven, a disgraced champion, has spent his exile secretly fighting against the growing number of spirit attacks. Joining forces, these daring partners embark on a treacherous quest to find the source of the spirits’ restlessness—a journey that will test their courage and trust, and force them to stand against both enemies and friends to save their land . . . before it’s bathed in blood.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9780062563941
    Author

    Sarah Beth Durst

    Sarah Beth Durst is the author of fantasy novels for children, teens, and adults. Winner of the Mythopoeic Award and an ALA Alex Award and thrice nominated for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, she lives in New York. Visit her at sarahbethdurst.com or on Twitter: @sarahbethdurst.

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    Reviews for The Queen of Blood

    4/5

    324 ratings24 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An absolute pleasure, with everything I was in search of!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Daliena never thought she would be chosen but an attack by spirits brings out her power. The spirits are everywhere and only the power of the Queen keeps them from destroying the queendom. There is always conflict betwen spirits and humans. She is chosen to study to be an Heir, but only her Champion Ven believes in her.
    • 5/5
      Such a fun and enthralling story! Creative ideas and well crafted descriptions. First fantasy novel I’ve enjoyed in a while, recommend if you’re looking for an enjoyable and easy listen with likable characters and a strong female lead.
    • 4/5
      An imaginative bit of world building and the launch of an epic fantasy with an underdog hero you can't help but cheer for.
    • 5/5
      BEAUTIFUL story. Not trite at all, really loved it and looking forward to listening to the second one.
    • 1/5
      Utterly boring, repetetive, underbaked characters. Wish I could unread this.
    • 5/5
      Best put together book I've read in a while. Keeps your interest, not super complicated, doesn't lose you in character switches. Looking forward to book 2!
    • 3/5

      The first book in a series that is about a young girl who shows power over the spirits that plague her world and is sent to a school to train and possibly be chosen to become an heir to the throne, or just be a hedgewitch in a village, or stay at the school training other girls.

      This is kind of a slow book. The first half jumps around this girl's teenage years, dragging through the first half of her first year at the school to introduce the reader to the school, other characters, and the spirits, along with what it takes to become an heir.

      It jumps to another year for more action, then to her last when other of her friends are being chosen by a champion to train away from the school for the possibility to compete to be an heir. And then jumps around here and there to get to the next important part of the story.

      It also jumps between three main characters, the girl, the champion, and the current Queen. (Maybe there's another.? All of the different points of view jumble up in the memory.)

      A lot could be taken out of this book to make it flow a lot better. There's a lot of blah, and blah blah, that the MCs talk/think about.

      But overall it's a pretty good story. It did pick up and get a lot better after the halfway point! And during the last ¼ of the story, the action picked way up, to push the star count up to 3!

      Readers over the age of 16 would like this book, but because of the blood and violence, it's not very suitable for younger readers. And it's not a romance. While there is 'love', sex is left behind closed doors.

      I listened to the audiobook through Scribd.
    • 3/5
      This was an interesting book that I listened to quietly in the background while working. It has a reasonable storyline.
    • 3/5
      Extremely violent and bloody, many drawn out or dramatic deaths, and the author loses her readers at times because of the span of years and the difficulty in communicating "change" within the main character. It is hard to become attached to any character in the first place because of all the death, and harder still to feel connected to the world when it is always being destroyed in some way. The audio performance was wonderful though, with great control of voice and clear character representations.
    • 4/5
      Tree fantasies make me really happy, thoughtful and intelligent and tough heroines are even better, and the originality of this world really puts this book into another level of fantasy. I have no idea how the massive problems in spirit-human relations can be overcome, but I am very interested to see where Durst takes this story. Fantastic!

      Advanced Readers Copy provided by Edelweiss.
    • 4/5
      Well developed world, especially the different spirits and how each students handle them as their training progresses. Not for the faint of heart, but a dandy fantasy read.
    • 5/5
      Lately I've had a hankering for a classic, quest-style adventure. Go over the bridge, speak to the wizard, and fight the ultimate evil. That being said, the Queen of Blood does not follow this formula (plot-wise it goes the academy / training montage route). The front flap of the hardcover does promise that Daleina embarks on "a treacherous quest." I agree that the epic, legendary feel of great quests is present in this story. It is a sort of intangible quality. I dislike comparing books, but the feeling is similar to that in Finnikin of the Rock. As a reader, I am invested in Delaina as the heroine, but on her journey we learn together that the story is about so much more than one person.
    • 4/5
      The Queen of Blood is the first book in a High Fantasy series. The world has spirits, who exist solely to create and destroy things, and one of the things they want to destroy is Humans. Some humans are born with the affinity to spirits, which gives them the ability to bend the spirits to their will. Only women have the affinity, and so queens are chosen to keep the people (and the spirits, as well) safe. A new queen is chosen from a pool of “heirs” who have been trained extensively and hand-picked by the queen herself.Despite there being a queen in power there, attacks on outer forest villages have been happening more and more frequently. The Champion Ven and his candidate to become heir (and our main character) Daleina try their best to help these villages, while not breaking the “Do No Harm” command between the spirits and humans.I don’t want to give away too much, but a lot of politics and magic ensues.Some people have this shelved as YA on Goodreads, enough that it’s only second to Fantasy, but it actually is not marketed as a YA series and was shelved with adult books at my library. However, I do see the crossover appeal. Our main character is a young woman who for a good part of the book is training at a magical school and then under a mentor. There are trials that then take place before the girls are selected as heirs. There’s background romances, strong female friendships, and a big part of this book is grappling with the idea of growing up and leaving home and coming to terms that home isn’t going to stay the same forever. Also there’s not any vulgarity, gratuitous violence, and there’s only mild sexual situations, so it’d definitely be appropriate for teens.As far as writing style goes I can’t say I noticed it at all while I was reading it, which generally for me means it was pretty good. There were no distracting attempts at abusing a thesaurus nor were there any glaring flaws. It’s a straightforward style, which I tend to like.The plot had a decent amount going on. Our main perspective is from Daleina, but we also get chapters from Ven, and occasionally from Queen Fara.I really enjoyed the world here. The spirits are more a part of the world than they are anything else (except for one, but I won’t say more than that) even as a large part of the plot revolves around them. Aratay is a forest kingdom complete with houses and entire villages in the trees. It was such a fun setting to read and it was easy to become immersed in throughout the story.There’s enough going on to keep things moving and intriguing, but not so much that I think it would confuse anyone. As far as fantasy goes this one is fairly accessible, and you know, I like that. Not every fantasy has to go out of its way to make the world and plot as complicated as possible (though I do love intricate world-building and plots with a lot of different folds, too, when done well.)The stakes are high, and I won’t spoil anything, but the ending had all the payoff I was looking for.The characters felt decently fleshed out to me.There were points where I didn’t feel super connected to Daleina or where her choices and frustrations didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. But that wasn’t a problem throughout, and the times I felt that way didn’t ruin the overall story for me. Overall I enjoyed her a lot as the main character.It was extremely refreshing to have a fantasy story revolve around a character that actually had to work hard to achieve their goals. I’m so sick of these perfect men (and women, though that’s more in YA) that are great at absolutely everything without even trying. Oh, and if they’re a man they also get all the ladies with just the bat of an eyelash. Those characters are hard to connect with, annoying to read about, and I don’t even want to root for them because I know they’re going to succeed no matter what. In this story, there was a real chance of Daleina not succeeding; there was a lot of emphasis on how much harder she had to work than all of her peers- not even to excel at the magical school she was at, but only to passably get through her training- and that makes her one of the more admirable main characters I’ve read about. I really cannot stress enough how much I appreciated this.That said, Champion Ven was absolutely my favorite character of the whole thing. He’s disgraced toward the beginning of the book, and spends the rest of it adventuring among the outer forest and trying his best to save villages from spirit attacks. He tries his best to do the right thing and to be noble, but he has one major thing holding him back, a past affair with the Queen.On that note, Ven and Queen Fara’s romance didn’t really translate well, in my opinion. The chemistry felt fabricated. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, and I didn’t feel any romantic or sexual tension in the scenes I think I was supposed to. It was in the background enough that it didn’t bother me too much, but I did sort of find myself rolling my eyes whenever they were together or whenever Ven thought about how beautiful she is.Daleina and Hamon on the other hand were a couple I really liked. Their chemistry felt real, at one point they have an argument and that tension feels real and relatable as well, and I just really appreciated what we got of their romance, and I’m also glad it stayed mostly in the background.Overall I really enjoyed this book, and I am planning on continuing this series. This series deserves way more attention than it’s got- if this first book is indicative of anything- and I’m so glad I gave it a shot. I literally only decided to see if it was at my library because I had nothing else to read and sorted my goodreads shelf by random to pick the first three books that came up. And I’m glad I did.
    • 3/5
      Fantasy world with various kingdoms, rulers, a version of a medieval type society: (bakers, seamstresses, carvers, etc.) and then the magic world: "spirits" who manifest themselves as earth, fire, water, air, etc. Main character is Daleina, a young girl from outside the capital of Aratay, but travels there to go into training to be one of the "heirs", specially chosen young women who manifest a strong ability to "speak" to the spirits and control them. The entire world of this novel centers on the tension between the spirits -who are everywhere- and their need to both create and destroy. What they long to destroy most are humans. But the reigning Queen (the one heir who rises above all others) can suppress/control/direct them to provide ever growing tree canopies for the human dwellers, productive earth, water, etc. This book one centers on the emerging corruption - as always, she thinks she doing it for the good of her people- of the current Queen Fara, who's made a devil's bargain with the "owl woman", a spirit who negotiates limited acts of destruction in order to provide the queen with more power. Our heroine's mentor, a skilled champion named Ven, eventually discovers this. By the novel's end, Daleina becomes the new queen, "the Queen of Blood" - because of a climactic spirits v.s. heirs ceremony. Meh. Definitely a LOT of "telling" by the author (Queen Fara's musings, Ven's thoughts, Daleina's worries and thoughts,etc) lots of skirmishes, visits to family back home, heir academy training interactions with Daleina & other aspiring queens, etc etc.... as a result, lots of slooow parts. Spirits were strange and interesting? It also weighs in at over 350 pages, but teen readers who adore stories of fairies, warriors, queens and fanciful creatures/worlds will probably cheer on Daleina and her companions.
    • 4/5
      Her control of the ubiquitous and dangerous spirits manifested when Dalaina's village was attacked, but at 10 she was only able to save her immediate family, and was discouraged from trying to become a candidate for Queen and settle as a village hedge-witch. But her younger sister Arin insisted she was more and she is enrolled in the Northeast academy - as its least talented student.This book follows the less common of the girl with talents goes far story-line in that Dalania's talents are of application, cooperation, adaptation, and leadership rather than being the 'technical' standout.The writing is decent if not perfect, though perhaps it is my aged self that expects older conventions, the plot works well though there seem to small skips were I would expect development, and telling rather than showing occurs even if it is not overwhelming.A solid fantasy world that is interesting and well shown is really the highlight for me, and I will continue this series.
    • 4/5
      4.5/5!

      I've had my eye on this novel for a while. I really liked the premise of it, which reminded me a lot of the Queen of the Tearling series. I really like fantasy stories with strong female leads and this one showed a lot of promise.

      Everything has a spirit, be it the wind or the stream or even a beautiful willow tree. But these spirits are malicious and they have only one desire: ridding the land of all humans. There is only one woman who can control these malevolent spirits, and it is the Queen. She alone has the power to bind the spirits and prevent them from harming or killing all of mankind. But even the queen is only human, and the threat of danger is ever-present. To protect the queen and safeguard the future of humanity, young women are chosen to train as heirs to the throne. These are women who are powerful, confident, and have an affinity for controlling the spirits. Daleina, is a quiet academy student, who simply wants to protect the weak - even as she knows she has no real claim to the throne. Ven is a disgraced Champion who has spent his time in exile fighting against the growing spirit attacks on villages in the outskirts. When these two join forces, they embark on a dangerous quest to find the source of the attacks. It is a journey that will test their courage and loyalty, as they make difficult decisions to protect their home... before it's bathed in blood.

      I really enjoyed this book. No, seriously, I really loved it. I sat down in a really uncomfortable part of my bed, thinking I would only read a chapter or two and when I next looked up, the whole day had gone and I was pretty much done the novel. That's how good it was. I don't think I've had a reaction like this since Queen of the Tearling! If you liked that series, then this is definitely a novel for you!

      I thought the magic system with these spirits and powers was really well developed and quite cool! It was out of the ordinary realm of fantasy novels, which made me pay more attention to it. The author gave the right amount of detail in every instance; I never felt the need to skim because it was too much information, and I also never felt like it was lacking! I loved the richness of the world this author created because it truly was unique!

      Daleina is an awesome character. She isn't amazing at anything; she works hard to achieve her goals, and I really admire that. I've started to get bored of the stereotypical badass heroine - Daleina is definitely not stereotypical. She has her doubts and anxieties and she isn't the best at anything. What makes her special is her determination and drive, that she is inherently good and doesn't let difficulties get her down. In short, she is a character you can root for!

      There were some instances where the plot sped up to cover a number of years. We cover pretty much all of Daleina's schooling through a series of time jumps. I wasn't a big fan of this as I felt that the transitions were a little choppy, but I can understand why the author decided to get through that in order to get to the really juicy parts of the story. I didn't mind too much, especially as the rest of the plot were worth it!

      I liked how this story was not just about magic, but also survival and the fear of losing power and authority. I liked that the main character was someone who didn't really have ambition, and was someone you truly felt had her heart in the right place. I liked the supporting characters, even though they didn't really figure into the story too much. There were times when I wish the other characters had had more of a presence in the story instead of just going away but I'm hoping that the author will bring them back in some form in the second novel.

      Overall, this book really impressed me with its intricate details and unique plot! I loved the main character, the action, and the overall power struggle. I cannot wait for the second book in this series! If you liked Queen of the Tearling, then definitely give this one a go!
    • 4/5
      This was a really good book. It was written well, the character development was great, the book showcased great female friendships and our main character felt real.

      I LOVED the setting of this novel, a society that lives in the trees? SO COOL! I really enjoyed the world building, and how the author set up this world. It was so interesting to read about. I really liked that Daleina was not "the chosen one" who overcomes all her flaws and is the perfect person by the end. She accepts who she is and that she is not the best, yet still tries hard and has a goal just to protect her family and others from the tragedy that has befallen her. I loved how romance took a back burner - it was there, but it was quiet and female friendships really took root. I found that the skipping of years separated me from really understanding these friendships and how close the girls were, but I still understood that feeling that Daleina has for her friends - trust, and fierce need to protect them.

      This could have been a tropey mess that wasn't anything new, but the author delivered a fresh, new take and I loved reading it :)
    • 5/5
      Don’t trust the fire, for it will burn you.Don’t trust the ice, for it will freeze you.Don’t trust the water, for it will drown you.Don’t trust the air, for it will choke you.Don’t trust the earth, for it will bury you.Don’t trust the trees, for they will rip you, Rend you, tear you, kill you dead.I started this book thinking that it might be a typical YA fantasy. Where the lead female and male characters love each other and save the world kind of YA. Well, I surely was mistaken, this story is definitely Delaina of Greytree's and no one else. I like how the author inserted scenes that showed that women have the freedom to pursue their sexuality if you're all for woman empowerment this is for you. Renthia's countries are ruled by Queens, chosen by the spirits from a number of heirs and female because they have the affinity to control them. I thought that Deleina would be the typical powerful girl from the woods or some not expect origin who actually has immense power, but no, if anything Deleina's power doesn't fit with what the society of Aratay deem as strong and powerful. To them, she's just so-so, but Delaina's no wimp. This is what I like about the lead character, she's relatable in a way she wasn't born with this huge secret power and that no one thinks she can do it but she struggles, improvises and looks for a way for her to pass and succeed; and in the end that is what saves her.It's a fast read, there's no dragging moments but not much world building but maybe in the next book?
    • 4/5
      What a terrific read "The Queen of Blood" was. Although a bit slow at the start, the pace quickly picked up and the climax was thrilling. I loved the world Durst created. Instead of the medieval type society often found in fantasy stories, Aratay was set in trees and people moved from place to place via bridges, ladders and zip lines. The people of Aratay also share their world with spirits who hate the humans and whose strength come from fire, ice, air, earth, wood or water.I thought Daleina was an interesting protagonist. Despite lacking natural magical power, she was intelligent, compassionate, determined and resourceful. I also liked the strong female friendships she developed at the academy and also the fact that she had a wolf, Bayne, as a loyal companion. It was also nice that her family was so loving and supportive of her decisions.This was the beginning of an excellent fantasy series and I can't wait to see what happens next to Deleina and the people of Aratay.
    • 4/5
      The Queen of Blood is a strong start to a new fantasy series. Humanity exists in a careful balance with the bloodthirsty nature spirits, who compelled by their twin desires to create and destroy. Only a human queen gifted with power is able to hold them in balance. Daliena, a young woman with some ability to control the spirits, is determined to do what she can to protect humanity from the devastation periodically unleashed by capricious spirits. Ven is a disgraced champion who has been roaming the wilderness between villages, fighting an increasing number of spirit attacks. With the queen possibly loosing control over the spirits, Daliena and Ven will have to combine forces.One of The Queen of Blood‘s strongest assets is pacing. The story practically zips along, propelled by a constant and building tension. From an action packed beginning, to slower character moments, The Queen of Blood kept me reading the entire way through.While The Queen of Blood isn’t being marketed as YA, it has elements that could make it any easy cross over. For most of the story, Daliena is a teenager or young girl. While the narrative contains POVs of a number of different characters (mostly Daliena and Ven), I think she’s the clear protagonist of the story. The book also flirts with some common YA tropes – for instance, Daliena goes to a magical school to learn spirit binding – but it ultimately manages to make its own story out of these familiar elements.One of the most notable things about The Queen of Blood is that Daliena is not particularly special. She’s not the strongest or smartest student in the room. She’s not any kind of chosen one. She’s merely an extremely hard worker who will keep pushing herself long after everyone else has given up. I also appreciated that while she had a romance subplot, it wasn’t the focus of attention (and Ven wasn’t her love interest, thank goodness).The Queen of Blood also had friendships between its female characters, and never had Daliena go down the Not Like Other Girls route. Merecot in particular stood out to me. It would have been so easy for her to be Mean Girl stereotype – the backstabbing queen bee concerned about nothing but herself. While Merecot highly driven and sometimes contemptuous of the other students, she had enough ambiguities to prevent her from easily slotting into the character type. I hope to see more of her in the sequels.I had some worries as to how the nature spirit based world building would come across. It seemed like things could easily be ill thought out or perhaps too twee. But as it turned out, the spirits and the world felt entirely fitting and believable. And the architecture of the cities, towns and villages reflects the ability to command nature spirits – most human settlement is suspended or within trees.The Queen of Blood was one of the most enjoyable fantasy books I’ve read in a while, and I fully plan on reading the sequels.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 4/5
      Review courtesy of Dark Faerie TalesQuick & Dirty: Dark, terrifying world ruled by spirits where one girl through her smarts and ingenuity learns how to control these deadly creatures. I recommend for fans of fantasy and young adult fantasy novels.Opening Sentence: Don’t trust the fire, for it will burn you.The Review:The Queen of Blood is the beginning of a new series by Sarah Beth Durst called The Queens of Renthia. The novel follows the story of Deleina as she learns to control the spirits that control the land around her. The Queen of Blood is billed as an adult story but it really did feel like a young adult novel. There are some themes that make it a bit edgier, especially the level of violence but I honestly feel it is no edgier than Sarah J. Maas’ novels. (I actually think those novels are a bit more edgy than this was.)First off, I feel like I should describe the world that the characters live in. This is a world where humans are not the top of the food chain. They think they are but they are not. There are six main spirits that make up the land. Fire, ice, water, air, earth and trees. In my mind, I see these spirits as looking more like faeries or pixies but in reality these spirits are humanoid to an extent. They vary in size and shape. Each one can look like the different animals found in nature. These spirits have only one driving desire: To kill humans. They hate humans with a passion. The only thing keeping the spirits in check is the Queen. There are five Queens that control the spirits within their lands’ borders. The Queen’s hold the ultimate power to control the spirits and keep them from killing the humans that live there. There are other humans that have power to control the spirits, these people also vary in power level but unfortunately most humans can’t control the spirits at all.There are three characters that the story follows in The Queen of Blood, each one gets their own POV’s as the story plays out. Deleina is the character the story mainly follows as she grows up learning how to control her powers over the spirits that make up the land that the humans live on. As a child, Deleina survived the slaughter of her town only because of the control she wielded to keep the spirits from killing her and her family. Deleina is not all-powerful. (Although we do meet the character who is during the course of this novel.) Deleina often struggles with her control over the spirits. She gets by because of her ingenuity and her smarts. She often doubts herself and her place in the world but then she remembers why she is doing it all for in the first place: To protect her family. Deleina is one character that I really respected. She comes from a good place and her reasons to become a candidate for Queen make her someone that other people should respect. I will say that she does do something pretty terrible but in the end it is a decision that she doesn’t take lightly as lives are at stake. The reasoning why I think this seems like such a young adult book is because the events take place when Deleina is ten years to eighteen years old.Ven is the badass Champion that ends up picking Deleina as his candidate to become Queen. As a Champion, Ven is a warrior that knows how to fight off the spirits. His first duty is to protect the Queen and then his second duty is to find someone who can take her place when she inevitably dies. He trains Deleina in all things practical so she knows how to deal with the spirits. Ven, Deleina and Queen Fara have a history that intertwines as the story goes on.There are two side characters that I want to mention because I really want to know what happens to one and the other was just an awesome side character. Merecot is another girl who goes through training with Deleina in a Harry Potter type school that is used to train the students in the ways of controlling spirits. This school is dangerous and often deadly because spirits are irrational and not easily controlled. There are quite a few people missing limbs. Merecot is extremely powerful and disappears halfway through the novel. One line let me know where she ended up but I really want to know how her story plays out. She was such a wild card. She was mean and terrible but then she’d stick up for others even saving lives while she played up the bitch card. The other character is loved was a wolf named Bayn. He has such a personality that he felt like another human character. He understood everything and was an awesome wolf. He is a great companion to Deleina.The Queen of Blood is a novel for fans of fantasy, young and old. The world is dangerous and crazy. It is a world I would not want to live in. The humans have gotten too comfortable that the Queen will protect them but what happens when the spirits decide they no longer need controlled. Queen of Blood is very much a novel about a girl learning how to deal with her powers and growing into a woman. As a reviewer, I can only speculate that each novel will be about a different woman in each of the five countries. I could be entirely wrong but I do know that I really want to read the sequel to find out what happens next.Notable Scene:“First Headmistress Hanna tried to convince me that I don’t want you, and now she wants to convince you that you don’t want me,” Ven said. Damn man sounded amused. “The fact is that you do get to decide, Daleina. It’s not only me choosing you; you must choose me as well.”“Is this what happened with all the candidates?” Deleina asked. “When they came to see you. Did you try to talk them out of it?”Her bright eyes were fixed on Hanna, and the headmistress shifted in her chair. She should lie, for the sake of the girl’s feelings, but under her gaze, it didn’t feel right. “This is an unusual case.”“Because I’m a mediocre student, and he’s a disgraced champion?” Deleina turned back to Ven, and Hanna couldn’t help admiring the thread of stubbornness that ran through her voice. That determination, she remembered, was why she’d allowed a barely qualified girl to enter the academy four years ago. “Do you think I can help protect the outer villages?”“Yes,” he said without hesitation.“Then I choose him,” Deleina said.Hanna looked from one to the other, at their identical mulish expressions. She sighed heavily. “Just tell me one thing, Ven: why her?”“Because she knows why she’s here,” he answered. “She knows who the enemy is.”FTC Advisory: Harper Voyager provided me with a copy of The Queen of Blood. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
    • 5/5
      Durst creates an epic fantasy world filled with spirits who are malevolent and treacherous and the people who control them. The main character of this story is Daleina who was raised in a small forest village far from the capitol and the Queen. One day the spirits attack and it is only because Daleina has the power to control them that her family survives. When Daleina gets a little older, she is sent to the Academy to be trained to use her powers to control the spirits in hopes that someday she will be an Heir or even possibly the Queen. Daleina isn't the best student at the Academy. She barely squeaked by in her entrance exams and is consistently in the lower part of her class. She doesn't feel that she will ever be chosen by a Champion for further training. But her heart is in the right place, she is determined to master her powers to keep her family and the people of Renthia safe.She is chosen by Champion Ven who is a former lover of the current queen and in disgrace. Together, the two of them and the healer Hamon travel into the far reaches of Renthia to protect the people and to further Daleina's training. When it is time for students to test to be heirs, Daleina manages to secure the last place - the fiftieth - among the Heirs. The problem in this story is that the Queen has become ambitious and determined to live forever. She has been making deals with the spirits to gain power in exchange for allowing them to destroy and kill. When Daleina and her friends find out, they come up with a plan that will have severe consequences for all of them and for Renthia.This was an excellent story with a well-developed world and an intriguing main character. I can't wait to read the rest of this trilogy.
    • 5/5
      A received an ARC of this book from the publisher.Queen of Blood is one of my favorite reads for the year. It features powerful, diverse women, an innovative new approach to fae spirits, and TREES. Beautiful, massive trees that people live in. Hey, I live near Phoenix, Arizona. I thirst for greenery. If I could set a vacation in Renthia (when things weren't bound to kill me), I'd go in an instant. Plus, characters travel at top speed across long distances by zip-lining.Daleina is a relatable heroine who survives by grit and determination. She is not magically gifted. She is academically mediocre. As she attends a Hogwarts-esque school (that I would prefer to Hogwarts), she is repeatedly and gently told she would be better off settling as a hedge witch in some small village because she is simply not good enough to be a candidate for Queen. Yet she persists, because the Queen is the one who controls the spirits. Spirits like the ones who destroyed Daleina's village and almost killed her family when she was young. Daleina wants to save people, and her relentless drive to do so is beautiful and affirming.This book gripped me from page 1. I found every excuse I could to stop and read, because the tension just drove me crazy. And the ending...! I feel like I want the next book NOW, but it's probably best that I have to wait, because I might need therapy first. Egad.Queen of Blood is out September 20th. It should probably win some awards for one of the best covers of the year, too.