The Queen of Blood is a fantasy book that is written so beautifully and so naturally that it feels completely matter-of-fact. There’s nothing pretentious or mannered about this book, which makes its depictions of magical spirits all the more powerful.

The Queen of Blood involves a world in which nature is full of spirits that long to kill and destroy. The relationship between people and spirits is summed up in a child’s jump rope chant:

Don’t trust the fire, for it will burn you.

Don’t trust the ice, for it will freeze you.

Don’t trust the water, for it will drown you.

Don’t trust the air, for it will choke you.

Don’t trust the earth, for it will bury you.

Don’t trust the trees, for they will rip you,

Rend you, tear you, kill you dead.

So basically it’s not so much that people live in harmony with the earth as that they live in a terrifyingly fragile — and often violently broken — truce, one which they maintain with charms and with the aid of people who can fight the spirits either in combat or by mentally controlling them.

The Queen of Renthia is a human who can control the spirits and keep them in check. Girls who show an ability to control spirits are taken to a school where they practice their powers, hoping to be chosen to be queen one day (runners up are heirs, and play various roles in protecting the people). One of these girls is Daleina, who saves her family from an attack of wood spirits when she is still quite young.

Readers who love magical schools will love the academy where Daleina spends most of her childhood. The girls at the academy bond together, and the emphasis on friendship as opposed to rivalry is refreshing. Daleina’s roommate is a prickly, ambitious young woman who only Daleina appreciates, and Daleina finds herself with a pet wolf because the book is just that nifty.

Daleina has enough power to get into the school, but one thing I like about her is that she’s not a Chosen One. There are no prophecies about her, she doesn’t have masses of good-looking people talking about how irresistible she is, and she doesn’t show any special magical ability. She’s smart, but not brilliant in an academic sense. What Daleina is good at is seeing the big picture. If this book were Game of Thrones (which it isn’t, despite some graphic spirit vs. human violence) Daleina would be the character pointing out nonstop that winter is coming.

Daleina is not strong enough to control spirits by brute force, so instead she coaxes or commands them to do what they want to do, but in a way that benefits her. For example, most of her peers would tell a group of marauding wood spirits to stop killing and go away. If the human making the command is powerful enough, this works. Daleina isn’t that powerful, so she tells the spirits to build. This distracts them from destroying a village and redirects their attention to something else that they enjoy – making elaborate structures out or trees and plant life.

Daleina is also good at thinking about combat creatively. During major battles, she uses air spirits to fly above the scene so that she can see what’s happening and yell directions to the more conventionally powered students so that they can work as an effective team. She acknowledges her lack of power, but compensates with strategic and tactical thinking.

This book has a romance, but the romance is very understated. The students are eventually placed with Champions, seasoned adult warriors who teach them survival skills. Daleina trains with Ven, the Queen’s ex-lover, who is in disgrace for challenging the Queen’s decisions. Ven and Daleina are accompanied by a healer, Hamon, who falls in love with Daleina. While Hamon seems deeply devoted to Daleina, her feelings seem a bit more complicated – she clearly does have romantic feelings towards him, but she’s also got a shit ton of other things going on in her life. Their romance is not a driving force in the story although it has an enormous amount of potential. Incidentally, Hamon is described as having very dark skin, which is a nice change in a genre that is often populated entirely by white characters.

There’s plenty of plot in The Queen of Blood, but much of the book involves studying, and training, and seeing how relationships are broken and built or rebuilt or lost in a life made up of risk, transition, and devotion to a single goal. The book shines because of the matter-of-fact writing style, which is lyrical but dodges many of the clichés of high fantasy.

It also stands out because of instead of being the Chosen One, or having a magical artifact (the wolf is helpful, but not that helpful), or being desired by one and all, Daleina really is a fairly underpowered individual who gets by because she never forgets that her purpose, and the purpose of all the heirs and the Queens, is or ought to be to protect people. She can fight, but she’s not a great warrior. She can control spirits up to a point, but she’s not incredibly high-powered. Her lack of awesomeness at one particular thing is what makes her so very good at strategic thinking – manipulating spirits instead of simply ordering them to do things, and directing battles instead of being a big player within them, with an eye on the importance of protecting people as opposed to furthering her own ambition.

The Queen of Blood, which is the first book in a trilogy, does not end on a cliffhanger, but it will leave the reader eager for the sequel. Book Two is slated for a February 2017 release. Although much of the book involves the main character’s life as a teen and a young woman, it seems to be marketed more for adults than as YA. While it doesn’t have much romance (nor is it marketed as a romance) I highly recommend it to fans of fantasy. It’s a beautiful and at times harrowing book that is overwhelmingly about the lives of women and their relationships to each other. Best of all, it preserves the beauty and terror of fantasy while avoiding many of fantasy’s clichés.