The Queen of Blood is the first novel in what will be epic fantasy trilogy set in a land called Renthia where the nature spirits are eager to destroy humanity, and only women can be born with the power to control them. Each small country (this book takes place entirely within the wooded nation of Aratay) is ruled by a queen powerful enough to keep the spirits under control, and succession is determined by the training of potential heirs instead of by lineage. This is both a compelling premise for a female-centric fantasy story and a basis for some unusual world-building. Much of the infrastructure and architecture in Aratay is composed of and built up in trees grown by spirits under the queen's command. Cool! While this is the first book in a trilogy, the story stands on its own perfectly well, with only a few hints that bigger things might eventually start brewing. 
 For me, the greatest strength of The Queen of Blood was its protagonist, Daleina. In a refreshing twist on magical-girl-out-to-save-the-world tropes, Daleina has only a relatively small magical talent. Her story is centered around her determination to do the most that she can with the little gift that she has. Over the course of the book, we see this shape her and turn her into a different sort of person than those characters who have sheer power to rely upon. It is a type of story that might speak to anyone who has had to work hard to accomplish things that come easily to others. 
 All that said, Durst uses a storytelling approach in this book that, frankly, puzzled me. It's this thing where the author doesn't tell you about how things work in a world/society/etc. until they're already happening. In and of itself, this is a perfectly valid writing technique. But the plot of the book centers around Daleina entering a school and training program that is meant to produce a new queen in the event of the current queen's demise, and each portion of the story centers around the next step in this elaborate training process. And while we can assume that Daleina understands this process fairly thoroughly as she repeatedly re-affirms her choice to follow this path in life (and is never shocked by what comes next), we don't get to understand what any of it really means for her future until it's already happened. Which makes for a strange reading experience, given that Daleina's goal-oriented nature is one of her defining characteristics. The result was that I constantly felt like I was running in the dark a couple of steps behind Daleina, trying to catch up with why exactly each next big thing meant as much to her as it did. 
 Some research reveals that Durst actually wrote the second book in this series first, and that this book is the result of her publisher suggesting the earlier story. I wonder if this explains the aspects of this book that felt slightly odd to me. It struck me as being a little like reading the prequel to a book I hadn't read yet, once I started thinking of it in this context. There's certainly a character in the first half of the book whose entire story feels like "important backstory" from the moment she appears. (Villain backstory, perhaps? I suppose we'll have to wait for the second book to know.) 
 Durst's prose style isn't anything spectacularly unique, but it is never less than perfectly competent and polished, and it kept me engaged through to the end. The characters are interesting and often surprising, and the romance elements are neither particularly sappy nor angsty. 
 I should mention that from the very start, The Queen of Blood was giving me vibes reminiscent of Naomi Novik's Uprooted. Both books feature malevolent nature powers in contention with human civilization, and a magical young woman determined to keep her people safe. But I wasn't distracted by any of these similarities, and I think that fans of Novik's book will find plenty to like in Durst's without finding it repetitive. And like Uprooted, I think that The Queen of Blood should have significant crossover appeal for readers of YA fantasy. 
 Overall, while this first book in the trilogy didn't make an overwhelming impression on me, I certainly liked it enough that I'll be looking out for the second book when it is eventually released. I think this is a series with a lot of promise.