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Apr. 4th, 2019 09:18 pmI wasn't sure how much I was feeling Queen of Blood, the first book in Sarah Beth Durst's Queens of Renthia trilogy, but I decided to progress on with the next two nonetheless and ended up glad I did!
The series is set in a world that's jam-packed with constantly angry nature spirits that like to murder people, which ... at this particular historical moment feels like an unsubtle climate change metaphor in a way I don't entirely love ..... but also provides an excuse for a political setup focused on a non-hereditary monarchy: Renthia is ruled by a queen who has spirit-controlling powers and keeps them in check, and when she dies, the spirits choose a queen from among the various women born with spirit-controlling powers who've been training to replace her.
(Men do not have spirit-controlling powers. This fact is dropped early on and never returned to; it's not a plot point, the trilogy just doesn't really care very much about men. On the one hand, a relatable and understandable viewpoint! On the other hand, Sarah Beth Durst clearly did not remember that queerness of any kind existed until someone reminded her two-thirds of the way through book three, at which point she hastily assembled a side lesbian romance out of the leftover plot points in her fridge, so perhaps it's for the best that she didn't attempt a nuanced exploration of gender identity...)
In the first book, The Queen of Blood, Teen Heroine Daleina enters the training process to become one of the queen's official heirs despite the fact that her spirit-controlling powers are fairly minimal, trusting to her determination, hard work, and sense of responsibility to carry her through! which it mostly does, but I'm not sure it needed four hundred pages to do it.
In the second book, The Reluctant Queen, Daleina has fallen ill, which means it's very important to find new heirs lest she die and the spirits immediately murder everybody. The gruff champion who spent most of the first book training Daleina goes out searching, and turns up Naelin: a middle-aged mom with immense spirit-controlling power who has no interest in becoming queen and is ready to Refuse the Call FIVE HUNDRED TIMES.
I enjoyed this book a lot; it was both refreshing and entertaining to see the rest of the cast attempting to throw various Magical Coming-Of-Age tropes at a grown woman who was having absolutely none of it. "What do you mean, you're going to call an angry spirit at me with no warning so I can learn to control it with my power, that's super dangerous, my KIDS are here??" BLESS.
Other things I enjoyed about both this book and the third in the series:
- the legitimate conflicts between Daleina, an extremely responsible teenager whose top priority is the country, and Naelin, an extremely responsible adult whose top priority is her kids
- Naelin and Daleina both have het romances and they're both very supportive but a bit boring, BUT Daleina's sweet-but-boring healer boyfriend comes with a cheerful sociopathic professional poisoner mother who vastly more interesting and also vastly more relevant to the narrative
- in fact everyone has important moms and sisters
- but nobody has important fathers or brothers
- Daleina also has a royal frenemy who starts out as her school friend and becomes the queen of the neighboring kingdom and is also a bit sociopathic but, like, doesn't really want to murder Daleina, she likes Daleina, they were school friends and everything! it's just that she's fairly sure that if she's going to save the world she's got to murder Daleina?
- she also is much more interesting than Daleina's very sweet boyfriend
Overall Sarah Beth Durst is clearly very interested in women who are not the standard Powerful Teen fantasy heroines, and who are motivated by a sense of duty and responsibility, and I am interested in those things too! I'm still VERY dubious about the cosmology of her nature spirits, but for me it was worth the price of admission.
The series is set in a world that's jam-packed with constantly angry nature spirits that like to murder people, which ... at this particular historical moment feels like an unsubtle climate change metaphor in a way I don't entirely love ..... but also provides an excuse for a political setup focused on a non-hereditary monarchy: Renthia is ruled by a queen who has spirit-controlling powers and keeps them in check, and when she dies, the spirits choose a queen from among the various women born with spirit-controlling powers who've been training to replace her.
(Men do not have spirit-controlling powers. This fact is dropped early on and never returned to; it's not a plot point, the trilogy just doesn't really care very much about men. On the one hand, a relatable and understandable viewpoint! On the other hand, Sarah Beth Durst clearly did not remember that queerness of any kind existed until someone reminded her two-thirds of the way through book three, at which point she hastily assembled a side lesbian romance out of the leftover plot points in her fridge, so perhaps it's for the best that she didn't attempt a nuanced exploration of gender identity...)
In the first book, The Queen of Blood, Teen Heroine Daleina enters the training process to become one of the queen's official heirs despite the fact that her spirit-controlling powers are fairly minimal, trusting to her determination, hard work, and sense of responsibility to carry her through! which it mostly does, but I'm not sure it needed four hundred pages to do it.
In the second book, The Reluctant Queen, Daleina has fallen ill, which means it's very important to find new heirs lest she die and the spirits immediately murder everybody. The gruff champion who spent most of the first book training Daleina goes out searching, and turns up Naelin: a middle-aged mom with immense spirit-controlling power who has no interest in becoming queen and is ready to Refuse the Call FIVE HUNDRED TIMES.
I enjoyed this book a lot; it was both refreshing and entertaining to see the rest of the cast attempting to throw various Magical Coming-Of-Age tropes at a grown woman who was having absolutely none of it. "What do you mean, you're going to call an angry spirit at me with no warning so I can learn to control it with my power, that's super dangerous, my KIDS are here??" BLESS.
Other things I enjoyed about both this book and the third in the series:
- the legitimate conflicts between Daleina, an extremely responsible teenager whose top priority is the country, and Naelin, an extremely responsible adult whose top priority is her kids
- Naelin and Daleina both have het romances and they're both very supportive but a bit boring, BUT Daleina's sweet-but-boring healer boyfriend comes with a cheerful sociopathic professional poisoner mother who vastly more interesting and also vastly more relevant to the narrative
- in fact everyone has important moms and sisters
- but nobody has important fathers or brothers
- Daleina also has a royal frenemy who starts out as her school friend and becomes the queen of the neighboring kingdom and is also a bit sociopathic but, like, doesn't really want to murder Daleina, she likes Daleina, they were school friends and everything! it's just that she's fairly sure that if she's going to save the world she's got to murder Daleina?
- she also is much more interesting than Daleina's very sweet boyfriend
Overall Sarah Beth Durst is clearly very interested in women who are not the standard Powerful Teen fantasy heroines, and who are motivated by a sense of duty and responsibility, and I am interested in those things too! I'm still VERY dubious about the cosmology of her nature spirits, but for me it was worth the price of admission.
