The Queen of Sorrow by Sarah Beth Durst

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong language, A couple of fade to black love scenes.


Queen Daleina has yearned to bring peace and prosperity to her beloved forest home—a hope that seemed doomed when neighboring forces invaded Aratay. Now, with the powerful Queen Naelin ruling by her side, Daleina believes that her dream of ushering in a new era can be realized.

And then Naelin’s children are kidnapped by spirits.

Nothing is more important to her than her family, and Naelin would rather watch the world burn than see her children harmed. Blaming the defeated Queen Merecot of Semo for the kidnapping, Naelin is ready to start a war—and has the power to do it.

But Merecot has grander plans than a bloody battle with her southern neighbors.

Overall I liked this book, and I struggled to give it a rating. In the end I decided not to give it a full 4 stars. The reasons for that are, first, it was an enjoyable book, but not one I had a hard time putting down. Second, Daleina was just way too trusting of Merecot and naive in the last book, and her continuing to want Merecot to be her friend after everything Merecot did was just stupid in my opinion. Third (minor spoiler here), I really wanted the problem with the spirits and humans coexisting to be completely solved, and I did not feel satisfied with the way that ended up.

I very much enjoyed most everything else about this book. Ven and Naelin where written very well. They ended up being my favorite characters in the series, and I liked how things ended up for them. I liked how things ended up for most of the other characters in the book as well. I enjoyed reading about the different kingdoms in Renthia and what they were like, even if a few of them were very brief glimpses. This series definitely could have been expanded and made into more books about those kingdoms, but I'm happy with just the three. Though I do hear that there is a fourth standalone book set in the same world.

This series as a whole is very good, and I have to say that the cover artist did an amazing job on the covers for this series. As a whole, I would probably rate the series 3.5 stars. The main thing I felt was missing to push it up to the 4 star range was relationship development. I liked the romance between Ven and Naelin, and although it wasn't done great, I thought it was developed well enough, and I felt the chemistry between the characters. However, I thought the relationship between other characters, was not so well developed. I never felt much chemistry between Daleina and Hamon. To top it off, he was way too overprotective, to the point of being annoying. I laughed when his mother called him a mother hen, because that was what I thought about him. Then there was the relationship between Erin and Cajara that just came completely out of nowhere. Talk about insta-love. I would have bought a great friendship more than I bought the insta-love thing.