The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst

Title: The Queen of Blood   Author: Sarah Beth Durst   Genre: YA, Fantasy   Rating: Four Stars

Disclaimer : This review has been sponsored by HarperCollins Publishers however I would like you to know that everything I mention in my review is my genuine opinion. This review has been in no way influenced by other sources.

Thank you HarperCollins for your support.

This will be a spoiler free review!

Well this was certainly an original story. We’ve used and abused every fae, fey, vampire, werewolf thing to the point of no return so I was relieved when I read this to find a totally original concept. I really enjoyed reading this book but had a few key issues with it. I’m still debating my rating, should it be a three or a four but I’ll stick to my four and I’ll tell you why at the end. 

This book is so unique. The concepts and world that Sarah Beth Durst has created is unlike anything I’ve read lately and I love that. I’ve read a lot of the Fae books lately and I’m getting a little tired of them. This is something different all together. Spirits verses humans. I love how both parties were in some way submissive or controlled by power or fear by the other, it created an intriguing society that I craved to know more about. 

The world that Durst has created is really mind blowing, it’s described so thoroughly that you van visually imagine the villages high in the trees, sunlight pouring through the branches, people walking along wooden bridges to get to other wooden villages. I loved it. This is the kind of setting that would look amazing in a movie, its magical, scary, detailed and realistic.

I’m also used to a very prominent love story and that did not occur in this book and surprisingly I didn’t really mind. It made the situations and goals within the characters stand out more than the love story and usually the love story is the issue, how do the protagonists find each other again? Well our main character Daleina was all about self development and growth and her love interest was there but it was at sidelines while the main story followed her trials to achieve her goals.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about how many years were jumped or skipped in this book. I’ve seen it done on occasion but not as drastically as in this book. It wasn’t done in a way that made you feel scattered or disordered but it was big enough for me to sit there and think, really? Nothing of interest happened within five years that was worth noting more than a paragraph? That was what knocked off half a star for me.

The other point that made me knock off another half star was the amount of spelling or grammatical errors I noticed while reading. Now, I’m not perfect when it comes to grammar, I’ve been known to get my quite and quiet mixed up among many other things but in a professionally published book this should not be happening. At least not more than once or twice for my liking. I noticed at least five errors if not more. I wish I’d been a good blogger and noted these down but I didn’t. Sentences were missing the joining words in many places, it wasn’t the spelling or punctuation it was joining words that make the sentence make sense. 

Before I got started on this book I made sure to read a few reviews from other book lovers and bloggers to see what they thought about this book, everyone has said much of the same comments, the world, the spirits, the characters, the plot was all interesting or whatever, but I’m highly surprised that no one else has made a point of outlining this key issue so far. There were so many times it happened that it jarred me out of the story. Each time I was deeply in the world of Aratay and thrown back into the world of the living. For an ‘award winning author’ as it says on her bio, I really don’t think its acceptable.

Now I didn’t deduct a star for this because it’s not actually part of the book itself but rather the direction of the series. Perhaps I should include it in my rating or perhaps I shouldn’t I really don’t know. Drust has released the name, cover and synopsis of the next book in this series, The Reluctant Queen, my issue is that this book doesn’t follow Daleina right after the coronation. It doesn’t look like it’ll touch on Merecot becoming Queen and how Daleina and her could become enemies or allies. I won’t go into what the second book is about though you can find the information on Durst’s webpage. I’m sure the second book will be great but I’m just disappointed that it seems like it won’t be covering Daleina as much as I feel it should. There is so much left to explore for Daleina than Durst is covering and that is disappointing. 

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Till next time,

xoxo Book Dragon Ash