Sarah Beth Durst has written several well-received, successful young adult novels. With Queen of the Blood, Book One of The Queens of Renthia, she jumps to the adult market. Or rather, she vaults to the market. Queen of the Blood is a powerful, evocative, gripping fantasy novel that portends much more to come. My thoughts follow the publisher copy below…
Set in the magical world of Renthia, The Queen of Blood is Sarah Beth Durst’s ambitious entry into adult epic fantasy. With the danger of Peter Brett’s The Warded Man, heart of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, and lyricism of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, this is the first chapter in a series destined to be a classic.
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.
After a brief introduction to the novel’s protagonist, Durst pushes the story forward with a tragic event; that of Daleina’s village being overcome and destroyed by faerie spirits. Daleina’s family are the only survivors and she is soon recruited to attend a school where she will train to be one of the Queen’s heirs. She will learn the ways of magic, controlling and communing with the Spirits. In Durst’s world of Renthia, Spirits are powerful entities who are kept in check by the power and influence of the Queen.
Daleina is brought to the school by Ven, one of the Queen’s Champions. Soon thereafter, Ven falls out of favor with Queen Fara as an official Champion. He spends his time trying to keep nature at bay in the hopes of preventing other villages from being overcome and destroyed by nature and the fae spirits. Ven returns when Daleina is set to take her training outside the confines of the school, where the spirits are less restrained and far more dangerous. Ven takes Daleina as his chosen one, he becomes her Champion and the two characters form a wonderful bond, perhaps the most realistic and rational mentor/protégé bond I can recall meeting in fantasy.
Daleina’s flaws measure up to those of her mentor – she is far from the strongest of her fellow heirs, her abilities with magic take more effort than her peers, she does not control the spirits in a conventional manner. What she lacks in natural ability is a powerful, unparalleled drive. Having experienced the devastation spirits and nature can wreak on people, both on an individual and a collective level, she wants to do everything in her power to prevent anybody from experiencing what she did.
As Daleina and Ven come to learn, the increase in spirit attacks have a reason which is far darker and more devious than they could have expected. Durst allows the characters to pull away the layers as dread mounts in their minds.
The bones of the story are relatively straight-forward, but what Durst does with the framework is very powerful, evocative and quite simply, elegant. Queen of the Blood upends gender expectations, with only one male primary character, and a couple of supporting male characters. Much of epic fantasy that focuses on a youthful, “chosen one” protagonist focus on a young man, not so here in Queen of the Blood. While I suspect this was very much intentional on Durst’s part, nothing about it felt forced or shoe-horned. The story felt natural and perfectly told. What I appreciated most about Daleina, and Durst’s wonderful crafting of her heroine, is that she wasn’t annoying or whiny, as many youthful protagonists can be. Daleina was certainly strong-willed and willful, but her drive had a great deal of purpose and honor behind it. Ultimately, Daleina wanted to protect the realm and was smart enough to know her flaws and smart enough to know when she should heed the advice given by her elders. As such, I couldn’t help but mentally cheer her on every step of her journey. Ven was also smart enough to realize what he had with Daleina as his protégé, and was willing to compromise when it made the most sense. In other words, the mentor wasn’t annoyingly withholding information from the protégé as is often the case in such fantasy novels and stories. Ven and Daleina really worked well together based on a foundation of mutual trust.
In addition to Peter Brett’s Demon Cycle and Naomi Novik’s Uprooted called out in the blurb above from the publisher, I was also reminded of Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress novels. I love all those books and as such, I thoroughly enjoyed Queen of the Blood. My only minor issue (and this is probably on me and not the book) is that it felt like the time lines in the early third of the novel weren’t quite synched up completely. What I mean is that when the story focused on Ven it felt like it should have been taking place concurrently with what was going on with Daleina, but I don’t think it was. Nonetheless, once I was able to get past that I was completely pulled along the currents of Durst’s narrative.
Very Highly Recommended
© 2016 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover, September 2016
http://www.sarahbethdurst.com/
Excerpt: http://www.sarahbethdurst.com/QueenofBloodexcerpt.htm
Review copy courtesy of the publisher HarperCollins Voyager
