A- #AudioBookReview: Down in the Sea of Angels by Khan Wong

A- #AudioBookReview: Down in the Sea of Angels by Khan WongDown in the Sea of Angels by Khan Wong
Narrator: Eunice Wong
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, post apocalyptic, time travel, hopepunk
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 11 minutes
Published by Angry Robot, Dreamscape Lore on April 22, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

An intense and thoughtful time-travelling dystopian fantasy where three individuals, psychically linked through time, fight enslavement, exploitation, and environmental collapse. A great read for fans of Emily St. John Mandel.

In 2106, Maida Sun possesses the ability to see the entire history of any object she touches. When she starts a job with a cultural recovery project in San Francisco with other psions like her, she discovers a teacup that connects her with Li Nuan, a sex-traffificked girl in a 1906 Chinatown brothel, and with Nathan, a tech-designer and hedonist of 2006.

A chance encounter with a prominent political leader reveals to Maida his plan to contain everyone with psionic abilities, eliminate their personal autonomy, and use their skills for his own gain. Maida is left with no choice but to join a fight she doesn’t feel prepared for, with flashes of the past, glimpses of the future and a band of fellow psions as her only tools. She must find a way to stop this agenda before it takes hold and destroys life as she knows it. Can the past give Maida the key to saving her future?

My Review:

This is a hard book to characterize, and even more difficult to sum up in just a few – or even a few dozen – pithy phrases. But I’m certainly going to try.

A big part of that difficulty is that it isn’t just one story. It’s three stories that are loosely linked – even though that’s not obvious at the beginning – centered around three individuals who do not know what they have to do with each other any more than the reader does.

They’re also not experiencing the same thing – or even the same sort of thing, although the first and third are closer in that particular than either of them would ever imagine.

But there is one thing that they share from the beginning. All of their stories, all of their histories and hopes and dreams, take place in San Francisco, a place that has carried the hopes and dreams of so very many since long before the city boomed during the California Gold Rush.

In 1906, Li Nuan, 16 years old, sold by her parents into slavery, forced into sex work, whose very existence is proof that slavery was not eradicated by the Civil War, is ‘in service’ to one of the Tong bosses who ‘owned’ pre-Earthquake Chinatown. And the earthquake is coming, the end of the world as Li Nuan knows it. But she’s seeing visions of the quake, the fire that follows, and the death and destruction that results. And those visions have told her that she can seize the freedom she yearns for in the chaos – if she’s willing to do whatever it takes to claim it.

Nathan Zhao in 2006, an up-and-coming tech designer, is busy living his very good life without taking too much care for the consequences to the world he lives on. He’s a good man, a good person, he’s got a great job, is in a happy long-term relationship with his boyfriend, they’re free to be openly gay – which he knows is a privilege – and life is, well, good. The vision that he gets, both of Li Nuan’s past and of the environmental destruction to come in his near future, opens his eyes and sets his life on a different course than he’d originally planned.

The reason that both Li Nuan and Nathan are having these life-changing visions is Maida Sun. Maida is a historian and more importantly, is gifted with psychometry in a future where a significant minority of the population has been gifted with psionic powers of one stripe or another. Maida can see the past of any object she touches, and she’s working on a cultural reclamation project in the ruins of what her post-apocalyptic society calls ‘The Precursor Era’. In other words, us.

And that’s where all the links get filled in – and pushed out into the future. Nathan and his friends buried a time capsule in 2006, a capsule that is uncovered as part of the project Maida is working on. In that capsule, along with photos, memorabilia, a few personal items and a bit of outright junk, is a jade tea cup from the mid-19th century. A cup that passed through Li Nuan’s hands, down the generations to her great-grandson Nathan, and into that box only to emerge a century later under the hands – and into the powers – of Nathan’s great-great-niece, Maida.

At a point where Maida’s post-apocalyptic world is on the cusp of descending into the dystopia they initially avoided. But only will continue to do so at this terrible, hopeful juncture if Maida can seize her day and her freedom as decisively as her ancestor Li Nuan did hers.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those stories that made me think pretty much all the thoughts and feel like it brought up all the readalikes. Which is only fair as it’s not one story but three stories and they aren’t as similar as one might expect in a single book.

At the same time, it did feel as if all the stories revolved around the idea of ‘carpe diem’, even though the days that each person in the change needed to seize were very different. Still, when they each grabbed hold of that day out of hope for the future, they each moved the story forward into the hope that they reached out for.

A virtuous circle rather than the vicious cycle that begins each of their stories.

Li Nuan’s story is the most harrowing – not surprising considering the conditions under which she was brought to California. Nathan is honestly having a lot of fun in his part of the story – at least until he sees that his world is not only due for a great big fall – but a fall that he’s likely to live to see and and can’t continue his own personal revel toward the cliff even if he can’t do much to fix the wider world.

But the story is centered in Maida Sun’s early 21st century post-apocalypse. Initially her world seems filled with hope of a brighter day for everyone – even if most people are still cursing the ‘Precursors’ (meaning US) for leaving such a big damn mess to clean up.

Still, the human side of Maida’s world is filled with hope. The ‘Collapse’ of the Precursor civilization in the 2050s, the climatic changes, the wars and death and destruction that followed, set humanity up for a more cooperative future – with the help of the great ‘Bloom’ of auroras that surrounded the planet and gave rise to psionic powers among a percentage of the population.

But by Maida’s 2106, the new normal has been normal long enough, and the devastation of the collapse is just far enough back in time and memory, that some people are starting to think that the ‘good old days’ were better than they were – at least for THEIR sort of people. Whatever that might mean. And, because humans are STILL gonna be human, there’s always someone just watching and waiting to take advantage of that impulse. By creating a new scapegoat, giving a new generation someone to hate and fear, and telling as many big lies as they can to weaponize society so that a new authoritarian regime can rise and start the whole terrible cycle all over again.

It’s hard to miss the historical parallels, because the playbook being used is old and familiar and all the more frightening for being followed right this very minute. What gives Down in the Sea of Angels its hopeful ending is that Maida Sun and the psions are finally living in a time when more people seem to want the world to get better for everyone – or alternatively that she and the psion community have the truth on their side and the opportunity to nip the forces of regression, repression and evil in the bud before the tide has turned completely in their favor.

More than a few of all of those thoughts I mentioned at the top before I close. One of the reasons this story worked as well as it did is that San Francisco is a bit of a liminal place and its history as well as its reputation for being a bit ‘out there’ for multiple definitions of that phrase fit the story. (For an entirely different fantasy featuring San Francisco’s liminality take a look at Passing Strange by Ellen Klages.)

Maida’s particular early 22nd century was fascinating because it didn’t follow the usual patterns for post-apocalyptic stories – or at least there was clearly a delay between the apocalypse and the dystopia – or we missed the first wave of dystopia and this is the attempt of a second dystopia to take hold. It’s a very different post-apocalyptic vision from either The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed or The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow and the contrasts are quite interesting.

As much as the rising tide of authoritarianism in Maida’s time resembles both the rise of Nazi Germany AND the present political situation in the United States, the way that the anti-psion sentiment is created and promoted by the powers-that-be owes more than a bit, in the fictional sense at least, to the anti-mutant sentiment in the X-Men movie series.

I’ll confess that I picked this up because I absolutely adored the author’s debut novel, The Circus Infinite – and I was hoping to get a similar feeling from this book. In the end I did enjoy Down in the Sea of Angels very much, but not quite as much as Circus, and I think that’s because of the split story lines and how long it took them to figure out that they were part of each other. Howsomever, I did absolutely love the audio narration by Eunice Wong, and it was lovely to hear her voice again, telling me a marvelous story.

A- #AudioBookReview: Trap Line by Timothy Zahn

A- #AudioBookReview: Trap Line by Timothy ZahnTrap Line by Timothy Zahn
Narrator: Greg D. Barnett
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Pages: 49
Length: 1 hour and 21 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

An engineer’s groundbreaking solo mission is rudely interrupted when he stumbles into an interstellar trap. The New York Times bestselling author of the Thrawn trilogy is back with a wholly original short story of first contact.
En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours.
Until he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone.
His fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can—and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.
With humanity’s place in the odd and ever-widening universe riding on Toby’s choices, it’s time to saddle up for a ghostly game of cat and mouse.

My Review:

What Toby Collier comes to appreciate when his ‘astral’ manifests in an alien trap instead of aboard the Terran FarJump ship Janus out in the far flung galaxy is something attributed to poet William Butler Yeats centuries before Toby was born, that “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

Certainly neither Toby, nor anyone from Earth, has ever met anyone similar to the vaguely avian-like Hyfisk, the soldiers with whom Toby is trapped in a small, family-operated space ship in the middle of the great, wide galaxy that all of them were traversing.

The family, Porpou, his wife, their daughter Ibbi and her ‘iguana cat’ Bisqitty, make their living by trapping astrals like Toby and the Hyfisks and reporting them to the ‘Overmasters’, whoever or whatever THEY are. For the family, it’s a living – if not necessarily a luxurious or even steady one.

But the trap is a roadblock for the astrals, an interruption that will lead to Toby’s death when he doesn’t complete his job out on the far reaches of human-discovered space and return in a reasonable time frame. Because his bosses will cut their losses along with the life-support of his physical body.

The Hyfisks’ situation is more dire – they are soldiers on the way to defend an important colony from an aggressive enemy. Not that they also won’t die when their life support is cut, but their duty is more important to them than their individual lives.

Except that they have been stuck in that trap long enough to give up. Toby, freshly trapped, hasn’t. And is determined not to. He’s also an engineer rather than a soldier, and he hasn’t yet met a puzzle that he’s not going to at least attempt to solve.

The Hyfisk can’t solve the problem with the knowledge they have. Toby, on the other hand, brings fresh – if non-corporeal – eyes and mind to the same problem and figures out that if they share their knowledge, they can escape. If they trust each other enough.

And if they can get the iguana cat to cooperate – which might be the most difficult part of the whole thing. Her name isn’t pronounced ‘BisKITTY’ for nothing.

Escape Rating A-: Trap Line turned out to be a whole lot of fun and I’m very glad I listened to/read it. Even though I initially picked it up because I was having a difficult time getting into anything. Monday’s book seriously did a number on my concentration, but this little story turned out to be the cure.

I picked this up through Kindle Unlimited – a subscription I get happier about all the time. It was fun, it was quick, the audio narrator did a great job portraying Toby AND the Hyfisks and it all just made for the reading pick-me-up I was desperate for.

For an SF story, Trap Line was surprisingly cozy. It’s a small cast in an even smaller setting, just ten Hyfisks, three insectoid aliens, an iguana cat, and Toby. It’s also small in length, but it sets itself well AND gives the reader just enough to get why and how Toby and Irion, the commander of the Hyfisks, manage to come to (mostly) trust each other in this “enemy of my enemy is my friend’ scenario. Particularly as Toby and the humans aren’t aware of the Overmasters enough to BE their enemy – at least not yet – AND Toby manages to convince Irion that the trap-keeping family are not really an enemy to either of them. They’re all just trying to get by – like everyone else.

That this is also a story about the cleverness of humans and the inventiveness of our species instead of any attempt to win by domination or violence – and not just because it wouldn’t work in this situation AT ALL – made this a whole lot of fun, with a comforting layer of competence over the whole thing.

It broke my reading slump – and I’m incredibly grateful for that!

Even though Toby, the Hyfisks, and Porpou have no ability to communicate all together (Toby and the Hyfisks can communicate because they’re all astrals), they still manage to concoct a mutually beneficial plan that has the wonderful added benefit of sticking it to the Overmasters for all of them without the Overmasters being aware that they’ve been shafted. Toby, the Hyfisks and Porpou have made friends, even if they haven’t managed to share a single word in ANY language – and their quiet rebellion makes for a glorious – and friendly – ending to this delightful short story.

#AudioBookReview: The Sirens by Emilia Hart

#AudioBookReview: The Sirens by Emilia HartThe Sirens by Emilia Hart
Narrator: Barrie Kreinik
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Australian history, fantasy, historical fantasy, historical fiction, magical realism
Pages: 352
Length: 10 hours and 56 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, St. Martin's Press on February 13, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine
2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever.
1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies.
A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.

My Review:

The Sirens turned out to be a book that I just plain need to get out of my system so I can make like Elsa and “let it go”. And that’s not a good thing.

Normally I do a plot summary/commentary first, but I don’t think I can here because saying anything more than is in the blurb would be a spoiler as nothing is revealed at the start. The whole story is about secrets and their very slow reveal in a family that has so much dysfunction – and such a unique dysfunction at that – that it lasts centuries. If not longer.

It takes place in two distinct timelines two centuries apart, the early 1800s and the early 2000s. The stories are wrapped around a pair of sisters in each timeline, seemingly joined by a rare and common disease. Or a birth defect. Or a genetic anomaly. Or perhaps, all of the above.

They’re not exactly allergic to water, but they all have aquagenic urticaria, which is a real thing that Mary and her sister Eliza certainly wouldn’t have had a name for in the early 1800s, although Jess and her sister Lucy in the early 21st century certainly do. Not that it helps, particularly as their expression of the condition seems unique to the four of them. They don’t get hives, they get scales – and sprout gills.

The story both is, and isn’t, about their shared condition. Rather, it’s about the secrets that are kept from them because of it, and the events that occur as a result of their need or desire to hide it and the traumas that are a consequence of all of the above.

That Jess and Lucy are both dreaming of Mary and Eliza throughout the story, and experience their fate with them within those dreams, links the past and the present in ways that Jess and Lucy don’t expect – but the reader certainly does long before the story comes to its conclusion.

Escape Rating C: I came so very close to DNF’ing this one really early on. The only reason I kept going is that I received an ALC (Advance Listening Copy) through Netgalley and that’s one queue I try to keep relatively clean. I tried reading the thing instead because that would be faster but couldn’t manage that either, so I stayed with the audio and increased the speed – which I seldom do because I’m normally there for the voices.

The narrator in this particular case, Barrie Kreinik, was very good and I’d certainly be willing to listen to another book she narrated. She even sang, and sang well, the parts that needed singing, but the book as a whole drove me so far round the bend that I just needed to get it done.

I honestly expected to like this. And I did like the historical parts – both because the history is fascinating and because, in spite of Mary’s story being ‘told’ through Jess’ and Lucy’s dreams, Mary and Eliza’s story was still mostly ‘shown’ rather than ‘told’. We see the action – and its results, as they happen, and it’s raw and harrowing and immediate even though it takes place two centuries ago. Mary may be filled with angst and fear and regret – and she often is and rightfully so considering what happens to her – but in the moment she acts and doesn’t angst before and regurgitate after.

Which is far from the case when it comes to Lucy’s story. Lucy’s story is not merely told instead of shown nearly all the time, but it’s told in the most distancing way possible. First she angsts over what’s about to happen. Then she angsts over it while it’s happening and we see the event through her emotions about the event rather than the event itself. Afterwards she chews over the event that has already passed and angsts about it even more.

The thing is that the story is told from inside Lucy’s head, but we’re not actually in Lucy’s head. Instead the story is told from a third-person perspective that puts Lucy’s thoughts and emotions at a distance. That so much of Lucy’s story is told either through Lucy listening to podcasts or Lucy reading newspaper articles and Jess’ diary puts even more distance in that distance.

So we’re not close enough to Lucy to FEEL with her, and her pattern of telling most of the parts of the story three times made it difficult for me to feel FOR her as I just wanted her to get on with it. That I figured things out LONG before she did left me waiting for someone or something to hit her with a clue-by-four because she really, really needed one.

Putting it another way, Lucy’s story is distant because it’s filtered and chewed over and gnawed at and angsted about. We get so much of Lucy processing her story, like a cow chewing its cud, that we don’t experience it. And it feels as if neither does she.

In the end, I got left with a whole heaping helping of mixed feelings. The story turned out to be a whole lot of atmosphere, often creepy, a great deal of deserved angst and not a lot of action until very near the end when all the various plot threads come to an ending that should have been a surprise but mostly wasn’t. The historical story about the horrors of the convict transport ships that carried prisoners from Britain to Australia was searing and horrifying every nautical mile. It was a dark journey and a dark time in a dark age.

The concept of Jess’ and Lucy’s part of the story had the potential to tell a story of female resilience and the power of sisterhood, but that part of the story got lost in the slow and repetitious way that it was told. There was so much potential in this story, but too much of it got washed away by the tides.

Of course, your reading mileage – even measured in nautical miles, kilometers or fathoms – may vary.

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Railway Conspiracy (Dee & Lao, #2) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #2
Pages: 304
Length: 8 hours and 25 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Judge Dee and Lao She must use all their powers of deduction—and kung fu skills—to take down a sinister conspiracy between Imperial Russia, Japan, and China in a rollicking new mystery set in 1920s London.
The follow-up to The Murder of Mr. Ma, this historical adventure-mystery is perfect for fans of Laurie R. King and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films.
London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary. Aided by Lao She—the Watson to his Holmes—along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable “dragon-taming” mace.
The mace’s owner is a Chinese businesswoman who thanks Dee for its retrieval by throwing a lavish dinner party. In attendance is British banking official A. G. Stephen, who argues with the group about the tenuous state of Chinese nationalism—and is poisoned two days later. Dee knows this cannot be a coincidence, and suspects Stephen won’t be the only victim. Sure enough, a young Chinese communist of Lao’s acquaintance is killed not long after—and a note with a strange symbol is found by his body.
What could connect these murders? Could it be related to rumors of a conspiracy regarding the Chinese Eastern Railway? It is once again all on the unlikely crime-solving duo of Dee and Lao to solve the case before anyone else ends up tied to the rails.

My Review:

I was completely enthralled by the first book in the Dee & Lao series, The Murder of Mr. Ma, and have been hoping for a second since the minute I turned the very last page of that first. So I was more than pleased to see this second book appear – even if finishing it has returned me to my earlier state, now hoping for a third book to be published.

Because this second adventure was every bit as marvelous as the first – and in some ways better as we already know these characters but now have the opportunity to plumb their hidden – and sometimes not so hidden – depths.

This second of Dee and Lao’s adventures is set in 1924 London. Both characters are based on real historical figures. Lao’s background and current profession were historically as the series portrays him. From 1924 until 1929, he was a lecturer at the University of London on the subjects of Chinese language and literature. Whether his students were as frustrating, and whether Lao himself was as utterly bored out of his mind as he is portrayed in the story, is not certain, but they certainly leave the fictional Lao ripe to be carried along in Dee’s adventures.

Spring Heeled Jack as depicted in the English penny dreadful Spring-Heeled Jack #2, Aldine Publishing, 1904.

Dee Ren Jie is as much myth as he is historical, but the historical Dee was a magistrate in late 7th century China. How much the historical Dee resembles this fictional interpretation is unknown, but I think it’s safe to say that the original Dee never masqueraded as the English folk hero/demon Spring-heeled Jack – as Lao’s friend Dee often does.

The story combines these bits of history with a compelling, confounding mystery, as all the best historical mysteries do.

Dee has returned to London after a year’s absence as an agent of the then-current Nationalist government in China. But that government is shaky at best. There are movements within China, including but not limited to the Communist Party, to bring the Nationalist government down. And there are forces outside China, great and would-be great powers far from limited to Britain, Russia, Japan and the United States, observing and even influencing events hoping that to destabilize the Nationalist regime so that they can pick up the pieces.

Which is where Dee and Lao and their associates, the redoubtable Sergeant Hoong and young English pickpocket Jimmy Fingers come into this tale, which begins with the return of a precious stolen artifact, middles in a great deal of romantic misdirection practiced successfully upon the supposedly impervious Dee, and concludes with an explosive confrontation on the London Necropolis Railway. (The Necropolis Railway is another bit of history that seems like it must be fiction, but it did really exist!)

When the dust settles, and there’s LOTS of it to settle, the immediate crisis – at least the London branch of it – is over. Dee is left realizing that he’s been a fool. And that while this crisis has been ameliorated it has absolutely not been averted – but that the fight will take him to other shores in other guises. In addition to making a fool out of him, the conspiracy has also made him their scapegoat, and London has become much too hot for him – at least as long as he continues to present himself as, well, himself.

So poor Lao is stuck returning to the boredom of his academic existence, while the country he left behind and plans to return to, is in jeopardy from all sides – including the one that he himself espouses.

It all sounds ripe for another book, doesn’t it? I certainly hope so!

Escape Rating A: I loved this even more than I did the first book, The Murder of Mr. Ma, which means that I need to give another shoutout to First Clue Reviews for their featured review of that first book.

One of the reasons I liked this better leads around and back to the other reason I got into this series. Many of the reviews of Dee & Lao liken them to Sherlock Holmes, especially the more active Guy Ritchie movie interpretations. While I think that is debatable, one way in which Dee & Lao are certainly like Holmes and Watson (and also Barker & Llewelyn) is that Lao serves as Dee’s chronicler as Watson does Holmes, with the same amount of reluctance to participate in the process on the parts of both Dee and Holmes.

Which means that this story is told in Lao’s first person voice. This is his interpretation – with the occasional use of a bit of literary license – of the events. In that regard, the narrator Daniel York Loh does a terrific job of interpreting Lao’s voice, to the point that when I ended up reading the last part of the book because I needed to find out who the true leader of the conspiracy is and how all the issues and conundrums got resolved – I was still hearing Loh’s voice in my head speaking as Lao.

I couldn’t put this one down because of how effectively it combined the pure whodunnit of the theft and murder conspiracy in London with the depth of historical setting and situation that lay behind it and the increasing knowledge of and bond between the characters, this most unlikely band of ‘scoobies’ that includes a government official, a merchant, a scholar, a pickpocket and has increased by the addition of a knife thrower and a dog. Dee pretends they are a circus act and he’s not far wrong in some aspects, but if it is it’s a circus that manifests a well of competence and an ability to improvise on the spot and roll with the punches.

And not just the punches they are administering themselves.

This reader, at least, is already anticipating Dee and Lao’s next adventure. It’s sure to be another fantastic read. After all, thanks to the conspiracy it’s going to have to start with Dee coming back from the dead!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. HarrowThe Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow
Narrator: Aida Reluzco
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, dystopian, fantasy, horror, short stories
Pages: 36
Length: 1 hour and 17 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow weaves a dystopian fairy tale that follows the town storyteller as she struggles to protect a local demon from the knight hired to kill it.
In this gritty, haunting tale about doing whatever it takes for love, a small-town storyteller resolves to keep the local monster—and her own secrets—safe from a legendary knight.
Nestled deep in the steep hills, valleys, and surrounding woodlands lies Iron Hollow, a rural community beset by demons. Such horrors are common in the outlands, where most folks die young, if they don’t turn into monsters first. But what’s causing these transformations?
No one has the answer, not even the town’s oral historian, seventeen-year-old Shrike. And when a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest beast to haunt their woods, Shrike has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still human, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.
Determined to keep May safe, Shrike stalks the knight and his demon-hunting hawk through the recesses of the forest. But as they creep through toxic creeks and overgrown kudzu, Shrike realizes the knight has a secret of his own. And he’ll do anything to protect it.

My Review:

I picked this up for two reasons. The first reason – and the more important – is that I really loved The Starling House by this same author, also in audio. The second reason is that I’ve been experimenting with a Kindle Unlimited subscription and have really liked some of the Amazon Original Stories with audio that I’ve discovered, notably my holiday romp through the Under the Mistletoe Collection.

The Knight and the Butcherbird looked like exactly the kind of story I’ve been enjoying more lately, dark fantasy hovering over the edge of horror, in a nice, bite-sized audio version by an author I already like. It sounded like a win/win – and it absolutely was. All the more so because this is one of those stories that straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy in a way that chills, thrills, and makes the reader, or at least this reader, go both “Aha!” AND “Ahhhh” at the end.

It also turned out to remind me of a whole lot of different, differently weird and differently creepy stories while blending into a darkly satisfying whole.

This is very much a dystopia, the kind of dystopia you get when your story is set on an Earth that we’ve fucked around on and left the consequences for our descendants. At first, I thought it was a bit Mad Max but things aren’t quite that bad – or at least the violence isn’t quite that widespread.

Instead, it’s very much like the world of Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds duology, where pollution has ruined the ground, the air, the wildlife and the weather, but people are hanging on by the literal edge of their fingernails, like the grim death that’s inevitably coming for them sooner than it should.

But that’s the view in the ‘outlands’, which is very much where Iron Hollow survives in remote, rural Appalachia. Just as in Clouds, there are “Enclaves”, protected places where technology is still functional, where the elite live in abundance, health and prosperity and look down upon the dying primitives that send them raw materials to keep their technology functional so they can remain all of the above.

Those outlands, still rife with pollution and radiation and microplastics, produce more than just raw materials. They are also plagued by monsters. Monsters that the Enclave-folk call demons. Monsters that used to be their friends and their loved ones, transformed by an alchemy that no one understands and no one can cure.

The Enclaves send out knights to eliminate those monsters. Not out of altruism. Not out of the goodness of their hearts. Out of need and greed. The populations of the Enclaves have grown too large for their technology to maintain. The outlanders are dying off, each generation smaller than the next. Extinction is in sight. All the Enclaves need to do is wait to sweep into what will soon be empty lands.

But those lands are filled with monsters, and until the science of the Enclaves can find a way to stop humans from becoming monsters, the land they covet is not safe for them to take.

The knight that comes to Iron Hollow has come to kill the latest monster. The monster that, as far as Shrike, Iron Hollow’s scribe and archivist is concerned, is still her wife May. Whether May is a monster or not. Because, when all is said and done, aren’t all of us capable of becoming monsters if the need is great enough?

Escape Rating A: This was a story that chilled me to the bone – even though I laughed myself silly when the knight of this story, Sir John, said that he had been sent by the “King of Cincinnati”. (I don’t see my old hometown mentioned much in fiction, and I absolutely wasn’t expecting it here.)

This story starts out dark, and it gets darker as it goes, and not in the ways the reader initially expects.

First because it’s saturated with Shrike’s bottomless grief. She and her wife were childhood besties, young sweethearts, happy marrieds, and now Shrike is a widow. At seventeen, because people in the outlands don’t live past 40 if they even reach that milestone.

Most monsters are found early, because the metamorphosis manifests as an illness that changes people from, well, people, to red-eyed shapeshifters with hoofs and horns, or feathers and claws, or gills and fins, and eventually to all of the above in a neverending kaleidoscope of transformation.

Shrike, as the historian, archivist, chronicler and storyteller of the hollow, knows that the mutation isn’t truly a disease, and that there is no real cure. Her only real fear about the nature of her wife’s condition is her fear that the transformation has wiped out May’s recognition of her and her memory of their love.

The knight’s secret provides Shrike with the answer she has long hoped for, even as her storytelling provides him with an answer that he wishes he had never learned.

As I listened to the audiobook of The Knight and the Butcherbird, read marvelously by Aida Reluzco, even as I was absorbed in the story I was surprised, teased and occasionally outright puzzled by all the stories it reminded me of. And I want to share those before I close as on the one hand this story was exactly the right length for what it wanted to tell AND I wanted more like it at the same conflicted time.

The setup of the elite Enclaves vs the disease-ridden outlands is very similar to The Annual Migration of Clouds and We Speak Through the Mountains, definitely including the patronizing attitudes of the Enclave citizens towards the outlanders they exploit. The slow, hidden transformation of humans into monsters, as well as that creepy border-shifting sense that the story is on the sharp and pointy line between the darkest of fantasy and the fear-shiver of horror is similar to T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead and What Feasts at Night as well as Kerstin Hall’s Star Eater. (Tracking down that the thing stuck in my head was Star Eater took quite a while because I didn’t even like it all that much but it there were parts of it that were creepy in exactly the same way that The Knight and the Butcherbird is creepy, although Star Eater has plenty of extra creepy bits that are all its own.) There are also hints of Idolfire in those dying dystopian outlands.

But the biggest surprises were just how much of The Last Unicorn and the movie Ladyhawke I found in The Knight and the Butcherbird. I wasn’t expecting both the state of the world and Sir John’s quest to hit so many of the same notes that The Last Unicorn did. And I absolutely did not come into this story thinking that Ladyhawke would fly away with the whole thing after all.

The Knight and the Butcherbird is not exactly a happy story, but it is a haunting one. It is also very, very satisfying, in an astonishingly rueful way. I’m glad I spent an hour with the knight, the butcherbird, and their beloved monsters.

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca ThorneTea You at the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne
Narrator: Jessica Threet
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Tomes and Tea #3
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 41 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The Princess Bride meets Travis Baldree in Tea You at the Altar, the third cosy fantasy in Rebecca Thorne's bestselling Tomes & Tea series. Our sapphic adventurers must navigate the ultimate maelstrom – their own wedding!
Kianthe and Reyna are ready to finally walk down the aisle, and in just seven days their wedding of a wifetime will become a reality. There's still so much to do but, like all best-laid plans, everything seems to be going awry.
Their baby dragons are causing mayhem in the town of Tawney, and Kianthe’s uptight parents have invited themselves to the wedding. Yet, worst of all, Reyna has become embroiled in a secret plot to overthrow Queen Tilaine. The world seems against them – and how are they going to live long enough to say ‘I do’?

My Review:

The Tomes & Tea Quartet has turned out to be an epitome of cozy fantasy romance – something I don’t think anyone expected when Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea came out pretty much directly in the wake of Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and we were all very much there for it because there wasn’t anything else like either of them at the time.

Of course, there is now because they’re both oh-so-good and they have very much of the same feels and yet they’re not nearly as much like each other as appeared at first blush. And all the blushes thereafter.

The thing about cozy fantasy is that, while bad things do happen to good people, the bad things aren’t necessarily all that bad – and they tend to get resolved in peaceful – or at least bloodless – ways.

But Tomes & Tea has hewed a bit closer to its fantasy roots in that there really is true evil afoot in the person of capricious, rapacious Queen Tilaine, and the solution to the Queendom’s – and the whole world’s tyrant queen problem is going to involve some political shenanigans, some dangerous skullduggery, and a certain amount of outright treason.

In other words, this is the story where Kianthe and Reyna stage a coup against the very queen that Reyna once swore fealty to as a Queensguard. The thing about staging a coup is that both successful and failed versions of that act generally end up bloody. The only question is which side the blood belongs to, with the answer generally being both – and LOTS of it.

But this coup is all wrapped up in lace and chiffon, as the overthrow is intended to occur in the literal middle of Reyna and Kianthe’s wedding. But that’s only if they manage to get all their ducks and pirates in a row, wrangle the townspeople of Tawney AND Kianthe’s estranged parents, keep last-minute suitors for both brides at bay and, last but absolutely not least, find a second-choice candidate for Queen to stand against Tilaine – because their first and otherwise only contender just said “not just no but hells no” and has managed to make it stick in spite of all the pressure to change her mind.

Escape Rating A: I was intending to savor this a bit. After all, it’s the next-to-the-last entry in the Tomes & Tea series, and I’m not going to be ready for it to end, even at the end of the next book. Probably no one else will be, either.

But I was listening to this in audio, the narrator Jessica Threet was doing a lovely job, the story was proceeding at a lively but not breakneck pace – it’s not that kind of story – and I realized that the cozy pace was beautifully concealing an ever ratcheting amount of underlying tension and I just couldn’t wait any longer and read the last third in a rush because it was just time for the other boot to fall, for Queen Tilaine to crash the party, and for someone’s world AND worldview to come crashing down.

Hopefully Tilaine’s, but I’d reached the point where I HAD to know, my patience was out, and another hour was going to see me through to the end if I was willing to stay up for it.

Which, of course, I was. And I did. And OMG the damn thing ends on a huge and downright shocking and even painful cliffhanger and the final book in the quartet, Alchemy and a Cup of Tea, won’t be published until August 12 but I already have an eARC and I doubt I’ll be able to wait that long to find out what happens next. And finally.

Kianthe and Reyna have earned their happy ever after, they deserve it, they’re entitled to it, and I can’t wait to see it happen. And I probably won’t. Wait that is. (Wherever the line was when they were passing out patience, I didn’t start out with nearly enough to stand in it and wait to get more.)

If you LOVE cozy fantasy, you’re going to leave Tea You at the Altar already itching for the finale and looking for something to tide you over in the meantime. Alchemy and a Cup of Tea isn’t coming until August. The next Legends & Lattes book, Brigands & Breadknives, isn’t coming  until NOVEMBER, so that won’t help with the tiding over unless you need to get caught up and/or want to indulge in a reread while you wait.

If you haven’t had a chance to blush over Kimberly Lemming’s Mead Mishaps series, (That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, and That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human (yes, there’s a theme here!)), that series has a very similar vibe to both Legends & Lattes AND Tomes & Tea, (including the pirates!) and is just plain cozy – and even sexier – fantasy romance fun and should keep the vibe going long enough to get to Alchemy and a Cup of Tea – along with plenty of cups of tea, of course!

A- #AudioBookReview: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

A- #AudioBookReview: The River Has Roots by Amal El-MohtarThe River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Narrator: Gem Carmella
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy, fantasy romance, retellings
Pages: 130
Length: 3 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

My Review:

Thistleford lies just on the borders of Faerie – or Arcadia as it is called in this beautiful, lyrical almost fairy tale. (It reads so much like a fairy tale, and it certainly turns out to be one, but I kept thinking it must be a retelling of something I just didn’t recognize – and maybe it is.)

Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn live on the banks of the River Liss, and their joy as well as their duty is to sing to the magical willows that thrive on the banks of the river. It’s a task, and a delight, that has been handed down through the Hawthorn family for generations. Not just the singing, but also the care, maintenance and very careful harvesting of the willows and all the magical things they produce.

Because there is still magic in this world, even as ‘modernity’ encroaches, and the willows that the Hawthorn family tends produce the best magic-infused wood for working this world’s magic. A magic that is based on language, on the conjugation of words, and the transition of forms from the word “grammar” into “grimoire” – and back again.

Which is where the story of the Hawthorn sisters turns from love to tragedy and back again. Esther, the older sister, has fallen in love, not just with the Fae lands of Arcadia that border their own, but with one of the Arcadians, the wrath of the storm that calls themself Rin even as they refer to Esther as ‘Beloved’.

But Ysabel longs to remain with hearth and home, and resents the parting that she knows will come. She wants Esther to marry the neighbor who continues to court her in spite of her rejection – because that’s the future she wants for herself.

Instead, they find themselves thrust into the middle of exactly the kind of ‘murder ballad’ that Ysabel always loved to sing, and it’s left to Esther to sacrifice even more than she already has to keep Ysabel from making the same terrible mistake.

If she can find a way to make the magic that saved her reach out to a woman who has always loved her sister but rejected the magic that drives her very soul.

Escape Rating A-: The audio narration of The River Has Roots, in the hands – and more importantly the voice – of Gem Carmella – is absolutely exquisite. Not that the story isn’t lovely, but the reading, and even more poignantly the singing, of the narrator puts this story over the top in more than one way. (That the background and transitional music in the narration was performed by the author and her own sister added an extra bit of loveliness to the entire endeavor.)

Most of those ways are very, very good. The music of the Hawthorn Sisters is an important part – sometimes THE most important part – of the story.

There were also, however, and very much on the other hand, points where she was voicing the villain of the piece and she was so damn good at portraying his slimy villainousness that I wanted to throw something – preferably at him. He was so vile, and portrayed so well in that vileness, that I wanted to wash that voice out of my ears.

It took me a while to figure out what bothered me SO MUCH about the villain – because it was done so beautifully well – is that he’s a particular kind of villain. He’s a broken stair villain. He’s toxic, Esther knows he’s toxic, the narrator handles voicing his toxicity so well that it’s screamingly obvious, but he’s the kind of villain that is embedded in the system and manipulates it to his advantage even as the people around him just claim that he’s socially awkward and Esther KNOWS she’ll be portrayed as a hysterical female or receive some other gendered dismissal as long as he continues to seem like he’s obeying social norms and just doing it badly when he’s really hiding his despicable intentions under a thin veneer of ‘polite behavior’ and what he’s really trying to do is box Esther in so that she has no choice but to submit.

I’m going to try real hard to get down off this soapbox, but I’ll admit that it’s giving me extreme difficulty. The whole thing disturbed me considerably more than intended – but it SO DID.

As is fitting for a fantasy where the magical system is based on language, I fell so, so hard for the gorgeous lyricality of this story. At the same time, I have to confess that I was one of the few people who just didn’t ‘get’ or ‘get into’ This Is How You Lose the Time War, so I came into The River Has Roots hoping that I would like it but not predisposed to do so. It was an experiment that this time paid off.

From the beginning, the story reminded me a LOT of The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed with its setting on the edge of a dangerous fae country and its rules about coming in and attempting to go back out. It also very much has the feel of a fairy tale, and if it turned out to be a reworking or retelling of an existing tale I wouldn’t be surprised. Additionally it held echoes of Sharyn McCrumb’s Appalachian-based Ballad series that begins with If Ever I Return Pretty Peggy-O, which, come to think of it, are also murder ballads.

All of which meant that I wasn’t expecting a happy ending and was VERY pleasantly surprised – as were the Hawthorn sisters – when one arrived anyway. I’ll certainly be back the next time the author publishes a solo endeavor!

A- #AudioBookReview: Thaumaturgic Tapas by Tao Wong

A- #AudioBookReview: Thaumaturgic Tapas by Tao WongThaumaturgic Tapas (Hidden Dishes #3) by Tao Wong
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, foodie fiction, urban fantasy
Series: Hidden Dishes #3
Pages: 140
Length: 4 hours
Published by Dreamscape Media, Starlit Publishing on March 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

With Magic Comes Mayhem
For the Nameless Restaurant, once a discreet hole-in-the-wall meant for a cast of supernatural regulars, the increasing levels of background magic has brought with it that most dreadful of locusts - new customers.
The staff of the Nameless Restaurant are finding the influx of new customers - both mortal and magical - to be a challenge. They're reaching a breaking point and something has to give.
The only question is, will it be Mo Meng's rules on magic or the restaurant itself?
Thaumaturgic Tapas is the third standalone novella in the cozy cooking fantasy series Hidden Dishes.
The Hidden Dishes series is a cozy cooking fantasy perfect for fans of Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Junpei Inuzuka's Restaurant to Another World. Written by bestselling author Tao Wong, his other series include the System Apocalypse, A Thousand Li, Climbing the Ranks, Hidden Wishes and Adventures on Brad series.

My Review:

This third book in the mouthwateringly delicious Hidden Dishes series (after The Nameless Restaurant and Chaotic Aperitifs) was supposed to be titled Sorcerous Plates. Magical chef Mo Meng’s ‘plates’ absolutely are not sorcerous – no matter what each book might be called – but the dishes he serves on those mundane plates are definitely magically delicious. And all without the use of any charms, lucky or otherwise, in his cooking process.

Not that he isn’t using a bit more magic in his cooking than he promised himself he would in the early days of his Nameless Restaurant. When the series began, Mo Meng served a small and self-selecting clientele of mostly supernatural diners – or at least those in the know about the supernatural world.

Until a chaotic visit from a newly awakened jinn changed all that which is the story in The Nameless Restaurant, and now Mo Meng and his human jill-of-all-trades-except-cooking, Kelly, have way more diners than they can handle or the tiny restaurant can actually hold.

Bowing to the necessity that either Kelly or himself – and someday both – need help before they are run literally off their feet, he has placed magical ‘Help Wanted’ signs around Toronto’s magical district. Those signs bear strange fruit in the person of a young demon looking to get out from under his infamous sire’s very large and possibly downright sulfurous thumb.

As long as Damian doesn’t set either the restaurant or its patrons on fire – literally – his help is very much needed as part of this evening’s crew at the restaurant, as Mo Meng has chosen to challenge himself by creating a menu consisting entirely of ‘leftovers’.

Which leads to a lot of small plates attempting to fill some supernaturally large appetites, some upset mundanes who don’t like the lack of a fixed menu, a reservation system, a waiting list and especially the lack of electronic outlets for their ever-present gadgets.

But the real story at the Nameless Restaurant is all about the creation of this quirky community of ultimate insiders, along with the inside joke of a vampire lawyer negotiating a contract between a very young demon and a very old witch, while a pair of government agents look on trying to determine whether it is, or is not, their circus and whether they should or are even capable of doing anything about this particular bit of magical ‘monkey business’.

It’s all in a day’s, or an evening’s, work at the Nameless Restaurant, a truly magical place to spend an evening. If only there were a way to magically pull the meals Mo Meng prepares out of the book and onto one’s own table!

Escape Rating A-: First, this series needs a trigger warning – but not the usual kind. Because reading and/or listening to Mo Meng’s meditations on cooking as well as his descriptions of the ingredients he’s using and the meal he’s preparing are guaranteed to make anyone hungry. This warning particularly applies to listening in the car on the way to the grocery store!

Howsomever, Mo Meng’s thoughts and observations about his long life and experience as a chef, as well as his meditations about available ingredients and exactly how he plans to use them in that night’s recipes are very, well, meditative. In the voice of the narrator of the series, Emily Woo Zeller, I could have listened to Mo Meng for hours – which I did.

Having listened to the first book, The Nameless Restaurant, and this latest, Thaumaturgic Tapas, while having read the second, Chaotic Aperitifs, I would personally recommend that if you enjoy audiobooks at all you get this series in audio if you can. It’s still very good as a book, but the audio adds something special, at least IMHO.

The format of each entry in the series so far is that of a ‘day in the life’ of Mo Meng and his restaurant. He begins the day deciding what he’ll serve that night, shopping for ingredients, and often having a conversation with his front-of-house manager (and jill of all trades), Kelly, about how things are going.

This entry in the series begins with both of them admitting out loud, for each other if not for themselves, that they are being run off their feet and that something has got to give. In this case, what gives is his wish to not add another employee. Mo Meng is immortal and he can use magic to help himself in the kitchen – although he’d rather not. But Kelly is mortal and she can only run but so fast in a tiny restaurant filled with tables.

So change has come, and Damian the young demon sweeps in with it, lowering himself to starting at the bottom – as a mere busboy – even as he battles the pride that seems to be one of his besetting – or perhaps inherited – sins.

Most of the story, however, is taken up with the bustling hours of the evening, when the restaurant is open and filled with customers – as well as with customers’ impatience and egos. But the mundane customers who chafe at the restrictions are mostly there to add a bit of heat and spice to the recipe.

What makes the story are the regular customers, who are not so regular at all. They offer a glimpse into the supernatural community, as well as the continuity of their continuing stories. Also, in this particular case, a bit of ballast, as long-time frenemies, Jotun and Tobias, a frost giant and a dwarf, have an eating contest that leaves them both groaning from over-excess.

That the two ‘creatures’ manage to leave their bill in the hands of the government agents set to watch them adds just the right – and light – note to this charming third entry in this delicious cozy fantasy series.

If you are waiting for the next books in either the Legends & Lattes series or The Kamogawa Food Detectives series, these Hidden Dishes will fill the empty spot while you’re waiting.

Speaking of waiting, it turns out those Sorcerous Plates might be magical after all – or at least in possession of a time travel charm. The next book in the Hidden Dishes series is, once again, Sorcerous Plates.

#AudioBookReview: Do Me A Favor by Cathy Yardley

#AudioBookReview: Do Me A Favor by Cathy YardleyDo Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley
Narrator: Elyse Dinh, Teddy Hamilton
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Romance, small town romance
Pages: 299
Length: 9 hours
Published by Montlake Romance on July 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Willa Lieu-Endicott moved from California to the Pacific Northwest to start over. Since her husband’s death, she’s been struggling to get back her old career as a cookbook ghostwriter. Unfortunately, her latest project—ghostwriting for a viral cooking sensation known more for his washboard abs than his meals—has her stuck.
Until she meets her new neighbor.
Hudson Daws, the handyman next door, lives on a farm with his parents and two adult children. He’s the opposite of everything she’s ever known. His happily chaotic life includes biker barbecues, an escape artist dog, and adorably menacing goats. He’s also got a sinfully sexy smile and a rumbling bass voice that makes her shiver. He inspires her.
From their first meeting, the two fall into an escalating cycle of favors, paybacks…and attraction, even though Willa’s trying to keep her distance.
They both have their own pasts to deal with. Now, they just have to figure out if they have a future.
A delectable rom-com about a widowed cookbook writer and a divorced handyman who find that it’s never too late for a fresh start.

My Review:

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and that seemed like an appropriate occasion for romance books, not just ON the day – although I am – but also the day before, which is today. So here we are. And honestly, as much as I adored the author’s previous book, Role Playing, I couldn’t wait to read this one the minute I discovered it existed.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

But what about this story? From a certain perspective, this is a bit of a typical small-town romance story, where a person from the ‘big city’, whatever that city might be, moves to a small town, falls in love with a local resident, and decides to stay in the new cozy paradise they’ve discovered with their new love.

And this is that story. But it’s so much more, and that’s down to the protagonists, Willa Lieu-Endicott and Hudson Daws. Because they’re not teens or twenty-somethings, and this is far, far, far from being either of their first romantic rodeos. They’re on either side of 45 rather than 25, and they have lives and metric tons of emotional baggage dragging behind them.

Which is what makes this story special.

Hudson is the local, born and raised on tiny Marre Island located somewhere in Puget Sound near Seattle. And it’s where he raised his now-barely-adult twins with the help of his own parents after his wife left Marre for Seattle so long ago that he’s gotten over it even if his kids still resent her, her departure, and the horse she left town on.

But leaving him with the then-toddlers left Hudson putting his own dreams on hold because his kids came first in HIS life if not his ex’s. And he got into the habit of NEVER putting himself first, so his life is content all the way around but not what he’d planned. Or maybe even all of what it could be if he let himself dream. Which he doesn’t.

At least not until Willa moves into the house next door to his family’s farm, and his dog decides he prefers her house to his. A fact that Hudson understands completely from the very beginning.

But Willa has come to Marre just as the knot in the end of her rope begins to unravel. Her beloved great aunt left her the little house, but that loss is the latest in a string of terrible losses. At 46, Willa is a widow. Her husband’s ‘live big’ lifestyle was guaranteed to get anyone sooner or later, but with his diabetes it was definitely sooner. They lived large when he was healthy, but when his health failed they lost their home and their savings and then Willa lost him, too. She had put her own career on hold to live his dreams, but now that’s gone and the pieces are more slippery than she ever thought they would be to pick up.

Her great aunt’s cottage is her only financial asset. The freelance project she is currently working on is her only financial hope, and she’s not at all certain where to turn next.

Which is when she finds Noodle, the dog who just won’t stay home, huddling in her garage in the midst of a thunderstorm. And lightning strikes. Not her house, but her heart. Twice over.

Escape Rating B: In the end, I very much enjoyed this book, but I middled with one hell of a lot of mixed feelings – and I’m still torn about the whole thing and trying to figure out why.

I picked this up because I utterly adored the author’s Role Playing (I also enjoyed her Fandom Hearts series) and wanted more of the same. The geekiness factor wasn’t required, but rather the romance between grown ups with lives that have left scars and the reality of finding love (again) when you’ve been beaten down a bit by life handing you lemons left, right and center with no sugar handy to make them into lemonade in sight.

I also picked this because I wanted to experiment a bit with Kindle Unlimited. I was able to get both the book and the audiobook, and was able to switch between at a whim. So I thought I’d flip back and forth and that’s where I nearly got completely stuck.

Particularly at the beginning, Willa’s head was a very difficult place for me to be in. The story is told in alternating chapters, first Willa, then Hudson, and each in the first person, so we really are inside each of their heads. Willa is just so angst-filled, and so much of her angst is about her lack of support and her programmed inability to reach out for help that I just didn’t want to be that deeply in her mind. It all made sense for where she was at and why it came about, but I felt like I was experiencing it with her to a degree that almost drove me away.

In text, I could just skim that part, but in audio – while driving – that’s a whole lot harder. And I was caught in the dilemma that the narrator felt right for Willa but she perhaps did a bit too good a job of narrating that angst.

I was, very much on the other hand, perfectly happy to listen to Hudson’s narrator to the point where I wouldn’t have minded AT ALL if he’d done the whole book in spite of how wrong that would have been on any number of other levels.

Still, once things started happening, once Willa began to climb out of the rut she’d dug herself into about accepting help when it’s offered and not feeling like she was either taking charity or pity or that she’d be left owing a debt she didn’t want to pay, the pace of the story picked up a lot and I started turning pages faster to see how it would all work out.

Because I knew it would. Willa and Hudson were made for each other, they just needed to get past their own ingrained tendencies and clamber over the pile of emotional baggage they’d each earned along the way. And I really, really needed to make sure that Noodle got HIS happy ever after because he’s such a cute little mischief maker and he did a terrific job playing Cupid for the humans he claimed as his that he earned it.

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James Logan

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James LoganThe Silverblood Promise (The Last Legacy, #1) by James Logan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Last Legacy #1
Pages: 521
Length: 17 hours and 2 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on April 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and - thanks to a duel that ended badly - the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His life consists of cheap wine, rigged card games and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away.When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father's death.His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow.For in Saphrona, everything has a price - and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.

My Review:

To take a page from a story not nearly as different as I expected it to be, “So naturally, our story begins where all great stories begin; with the seediest bar in town,” not with a missing contact but with a man attempting to piss his life away one drink and one shady card game at a time.

Lukan Gardova believes that he’s merely in the process of completing a job he started years ago, when he killed a man in a duel, his family paid the price with what little was left of their fortune, and Lukan left home in a storm of regret and recriminations.

He thought he had nothing left to return to. He wasn’t quite right seven years ago when he left, but he is when the story opens, when his past catches up with him. When he learns that his father was murdered and that the old man’s last words, written in his own blood, were Lukan’s name, the name of a glittering city far, far from his home in Parva, and a third word that might be a place or might be a name but almost certainly represents both a mystery and one last chance to do right by his father. A task that Lukan always thought the old man believed him incapable of.

But needs must and Lukan needs a purpose even more than he needs air to breathe and wine to drink. Not that he hasn’t done entirely too much of the latter over the years he’s been on the run from his past. From himself.

There’s one talent that Lukan Gardova has, above all others, a knack for getting himself into ever deeper piles of shit and trouble – and getting himself out alive. He’ll need all of that, and more than a little help from friends he hasn’t even met yet, to find his father’s murderer.

His quest begins in the fabled city of Saphrona, searching for a person, place or thing named Zandrusa. Lukan thinks what he has is a clue, but what he really has is a key. The key to a long-bubbling pot of corruption and conspiracy, facilitated by figures out of myth and nightmare.

A key to his father’s past. And, perhaps, a key to his own future. If he can manage to survive the pile of shit and trouble that his dubious gift has placed in his path. The odds are against him. Exactly what he expected.

Escape Rating A+: Some stories are very much “out of the frying pan and into the fire”, some are frying pans and fires all the way down. Lukan Gardova, on the other hand, the moment he lands on yet another already hot griddle the flames lick around the edges and he throws himself right into their path. Again, and again, and AGAIN.

Reading this felt like watching TV from behind the couch, with my hands covering my eyes to keep from seeing the onrushing disaster while peeking through my fingers to see if the hero might manage, yet again, to escape that onrushing disaster.

I found myself caught between the book and the audio, over and over again, because, as much as I really, really, really, NEEDED to find out what happened next, I also really didn’t want to see Lukan crash and burn – yet I expected it at every turn, much as he himself does. (Also, the audio voiced by Brenock O’Connor is EXCELLENT.)

From the very beginning, The Silverblood Promise had me hooked on its mystery and its protagonist every bit as much as Lukan himself is hooked on finding his father’s murderer. This story also scratched the itch left from my epic book hangover after finishing In the Shadow of Lightning. (I’m still waiting for the second book in that series. It’s been nearly three years. Come on already! PLEASE!)

But as much as Lukan reminds me of Demir with the similar openings of the two stories, with both men rotting their brains as fast as they can in very low places, not quite suicidal but not quite looking out for themselves either, trying to outrun their own demons and secretly hoping the demons will catch up anyway, Lukan also reminds me more than a bit of Kihrin from The Ruin of Kings and Kinch from The Blacktongue Thief. The story, OTOH strikes me as a readalike for City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky with a touch of the upcoming Idolfire by Grace Curtis. These are all stories that I loved so it’s not a surprise that I fell hard for this one as well.

I’ve read that it reminds a LOT of readers of The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I haven’t read that – YET. Let’s just say that the repeated comparison has moved that story considerably up the virtually towering TBR pile.

Back to Lukan, who is, in spite of his cynicism and snark, really just a big softy under his fractured and fraying armor – both literal and figurative. He’s on his last nerve pretty much all the time, and it shows. He’s the fool that rushes in where angels and demons would both fear to follow, someone who leaps over and over again never assuming that the net will appear. He leaps assuming that it will be pulled out from under him if it bothers to shimmer into existence at all – however briefly.

It’s just a part of what makes the story so compelling as the reader is always on the edge of their seat waiting to see what mess Lukan is going to fall into even as he escapes the previous mess by the skin of his teeth.

He’s one of those characters whose heart is in the right place even as entirely too many opponents are attempting to reach it between his fourth and fifth ribs. He doesn’t merely feel the fear and do his damndest anyway, he feels the fear, fucks himself up over it, and still does his damndest anyway even though his road to good intentions is paved with trapdoors.

I had an absolute blast following Lukan and his friends and frenemies as they find their way into the rot at the heart of Saphrona and out the other side – more or less intact – on the run yet again. I’m on pins and needles waiting for the next book in The Last Legacy series, The Blackfire Blade, coming in November. I’m definitely NOT waiting most of a year to read, or more likely listen to it this time around. Because Lukan’s journey has clearly just begun, and I can’t wait to see what trouble it leads him into next!