#BookReview: Single Player by Tara Tai

#BookReview: Single Player by Tara TaiSingle Player by Tara Tai
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, queer romance
Pages: 315
Published by Alcove Press on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Two video game creators go head-to-head in this delightful, queer enemies-to-lovers workplace romance debut.
Cat Li cares about two things: video games and swoony romances. The former means there hasn't been much of the latter in her (real) life, but when she lands her dream job writing the love storylines for Compass Hollow—the next big thing in games—she knows it’s all been worth it. Then she meets her boss: the infamous Andi Zhang, who’s not only an arrogant hater of happily-ever-afters determined to keep Cat from doing her job but also impossibly, annoyingly hot.
As Compass Hollow’s narrative director, Andi couldn’t care less about love—in-game or out. After getting doxxed by internet trolls three years ago, Andi’s been trying to prove to the gaming world that they’re a serious gamedev. Their plan includes writing the best game possible, with zero lovey-dovey stuff. That is, until the man funding the game’s development insists Andi add romance in order to make the story “more appealing to female gamers.”
Forced to give Cat a chance, Andi begrudgingly realizes there’s more to Cat than romantic idealism and, okay, a cute smile. But admitting that would mean giving up the single-player life that has kept their heart safe for years. And when Cat uncovers a behind-the-scenes plan to destroy Andi’s career, the two will have to put their differences aside and find a way to work together before it’s game over.

My Review:

Single Player, a bit ironically, has two players and two plots going for it that merge into one. After, of course, a truly epic boss battle that will have readers on the edge of their seats rooting for the player characters to win the game AND get the happy ever after they have so completely earned.

In other words, the story of Single Player is patterned after the types of games that the player characters – the protagonists Andi and Cat – both love to play. Games where the player gathers a group of like-minded but differently skilled fighters and friends in order to take on the forces of evil – and along the way romances one of the companions on their quest.

Although, at the beginning, Andi Zhang isn’t sure that she can bear the idea of adding romance options to her upcoming Triple A (big story, big budget, big expectations) game, Compass Hollow. Even though adding in those romance options is literally what Cat was hired for.

But the game that Andi needs to win isn’t the game that she’s designing – it’s the real world game of preserving the gaming industry as a bastion of cis-white-male-dudebro entitlement. It’s a game that Andi – Asian American and lesbian – has already lost once and is rightfully concerned that her literally life-threatening experience will repeat itself even though she’s moved both cities and companies.

That her nemesis has not only followed her but is waiting in the wings to take her down, again, in revenge for having turned him down – proves that the threat is real. (It’s really, real too, this shit happens in the gaming industry on the regular).

While Andi is battling the demons of bureaucracy and clueless oversight along with her own personal demons, she and Cat have started down the road of an enemies-to-lovers romance. Or at least that’s what each of them perceives it as. Howsomever, whatever they’re feeling for each other – enmity is only the mask covering up something a lot deeper and more than a bit schmoopier. Even if neither of them is willing to admit it until just before the final boss battle.

Because that’s the way that the best games lock in their romance options. And it’s a gaming convention that works every bit as well in Single Player as it does in Mass Effect and Dragon Age – or just maybe, even a bit better.

Escape Rating B: I picked this up because a friend informed me that the opening line from the story is a quote from Varric Tethras, and I’m all in for that as I adore Dragon Age. But it’s also a hint that this book is chock-full of gaming references and insider-jokes about games and the gaming industry. There’s also a lot of up-to-the-minute pop culture references that’s meant to either show just how cool or just how geeky and nerdy Andi and Cat are. Or both. Most likely both.

I had no problem with the gaming references, but got a bit lost in some of the pop culture. Other readers will find the reverse to be true. I looked up a LOT and it sometimes broke me out of the story.

There’s also more than a bit of the really, really real shit of the gaming industry in this story, and it was necessary to create the boss battle at the end that the story needed, but damn it was hard to read AND I’m wondering how many readers will think that part of the story was over-the-top when it’s actually NOT. Personally, I’m not sure I wanted that much REAL in my romance, but your reading mileage may vary.

(That the initials for the big gaming company that is funding Andi’s game are the same as a well-known gaming megacorp that has had some issues with exactly the buzzsaw that Andi faces is undoubtedly not a coincidence.)

All of that being said, the relationship between Cat and Andi that begins at Andi practically knocking Cat into a wall in her self-centered haste and Cat passively-aggressively setting up meetings between herself and Andi so that she can do the job she’s been hired to do, is filled with the stops and starts and human misunderstandings and epic interferences that romances in real life often have to contend with.

So the progression of the romance felt every bit as real as Cat likes to say that game romances do – that the feelings are real and the tropes mostly get avoided because they don’t really make sense – which is pretty much what happens here. Not that a couple of tropes aren’t tried on for size, but they don’t quite fit and that becomes really obvious to both Andi and Cat reasonably quickly on their road to romance.

I finished this book with a smile. I ended up loving the romance between Andi and Cat and felt really satisfied that the villain got as much of his just desserts as he’s ever likely to. That he’s left, as the big bosses in games often are, with the possibility of coming back for another round just gave Single Player a fantastic and absolutely gaming-appropriate ending.

Speaking of games, we got more than enough hints about the game that Andi and Cat are working on that I really wish we could play it!

#BookReview: A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic by J. Penner

#BookReview: A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic by J. PennerA Fellowship of Bakers & Magic (Adenashire, #1) by J. Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, foodie fiction, romantasy
Series: Adenashire #1
Pages: 288
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A human, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bake-off…
In the heart of Adenashire, where elfish enchantments and dwarven delights rule, Arleta Starstone, a human confectionist works twice as hard perfecting her unique blend of baking and apothecary herbs.
So when an orc neighbor secretly enters her creations into the prestigious Elven Baking Battle, Arleta faces a dilemma.
Being magicless, her participation in the competition could draw more scowls than smiles. And if Arleta wants to prove her talent and establish her culinary reputation, this human will need more than just her pastry craft to sweeten the odds.
While competing, she'll set off on a journey of mouthwatering pastries, self-discovery, heartwarming friendships and romance, while questioning whether winning the Baking Battle is the true prize.
Escape to for a delightful cozy fantasy where every twist is a treat and every turn a step closer to home.

My Review:

It sounds like the start of a joke, that opening line in the blurb, “A human, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bake-off…” It’s not a joke at all, it’s the start of a heartwarming cozy fantasy – even if it’s not quite correct in the particulars.

The elf strides in, the dwarf bounces, a fennex skulks in and the human rushes in at the very last second, still not convinced that she belongs in the contest or has even half a chance of making it past the first round.

The elf, the dwarf, and the fennex ‘belong’ in the competition because they all have magic. Although the Langheim Baking Battle began as a competition for elves and there are still plenty of people around who believe that the tone has gone WAY DOWN since they started letting in members of other magical races.

It’s not that entry is technically restricted to those with magic, but everybody ‘knows’ that non-magical bakers like Arleta Starstone somehow never make it into the contest. They must not be considered good enough. Or the game is rigged.

Of course the game is rigged, and Arleta knows it. Because it’s part of the story of her whole entire life that no matter how good her confections are, she’s always going to get the worst spot in the local market and she’s always going to pay the most for it and her potential customers are always going to expect her to discount her prices because ‘everyone’ knows that magical baking is ‘better’.

Whether it is or not. In Arleta’s case, it’s definitely not. Winning the Langheim Baking Battle would prove that to everyone who has ever looked down their magical nose at her – even if they’ve had to look up to do it.

But Arleta has been beaten down too much for too long to even think she has a chance. However, her ogre neighbors, her unofficial adopted fathers Verdreth and Ervash, are certain she has an excellent chance if she just puts herself in the running. So they do it for her.

And with the help of a little bit of unintended misdirection, she gets in. And then proceeds to try and get herself out. But between her dads pushing her from behind, and a very handsome elf encouraging her – and facilitating her participation with travel and transport – she can’t quite make herself refuse.

Although she keeps trying all the way to Langheim. And once she’s standing on that stage, adding her little bit of special savory goodness to the sweetest of recipes, she has all the chances she needs to make it to the top.

With more than a little help and encouragement from the friends she makes along the way.

Escape Rating B: This first book in the Adenashire cozy fantasy series (there are at least three more!) is definitely one of those “book baby” situations. As in, if either Legends & Lattes (or Can’t Spell Treason without Tea) and The Great British Bake Off had a book baby, it would be A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic.

And it would be delicious. There would also be delicious recipes in the back – because there are.

This first entry in the series has a bit of heavy – but delicious – lifting to perform in order to get to the sweet, gooey, tasty center of things. As the series opener, there’s the intro to this fantasy world and especially to Arleta’s home village of Adenashire. Then there’s the plot centered around the Baking Competition, which is where Arleta’s new friends – and the main characters of the other three books – get introduced. And last but absolutely not least there’s the romance between Arleta and the literal elf of her dreams, Theo.

The world Adenashire inhabits is a place where magic is what makes the world go around, and anyone who doesn’t have magic is definitely considered lesser. Humans CAN have magic, some do, but Arleta doesn’t happen to be one of them. So Arleta faces prejudice at pretty much every turn and she’s internalized all those feelings of being ‘less than’ to the point that she expects to be trodden upon at every turn.

The Baking Competition is a chance for her to get out of that mindset – if she can. And it’s a hard slog every step of the way that is not helped by the voice in her head telling her that she it’s wrong to accept help from anyone. That we don’t know where THAT voice originated gave me fits and explains the B rating. It’s not that feelings like that don’t happen to plenty of people and don’t cause internal strife and dramatic tension, it’s rather that they don’t come completely out of nowhere and Arleta already had more than enough pushing her down without piling that on. (YRMMV – your reading mileage may vary)

The competition – and all of the baked in tension of those shenanigans – is lots of fun with lots of stress for everyone. Anyone who loves cooking and baking contest shows is going to find that part a hoot!

Then there’s the romance, which is as sweet as Arleta’s baking while also playing back into the baked in prejudices of this world AND manages to check off a whole bunch of the more fun romantic trope boxes along the way and fill them with flowers. And a cat. Mustn’t forget Faylin because that cat won’t allow that for an instant.

All in all, there’s a LOT to savor in this story. Including those recipes in the back. There’s a recipe for Salted Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies that I’m planning to try. I loved the setting and the setup, enjoyed the baking competition but probably not as much as someone who is really into those shows, adored the group of found family that gathers around Arleta in spite of herself AND finds its way to Adenashire afterwards. I was looking for a sweet treat of a fantasy and this definitely satisfied that craving, so I’ll be back with the next book, A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons, because I can’t resist either part of that combination!

#BookReview: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

#BookReview: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac FellmanNotes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy, relationship fiction, science fiction
Pages: 336
Published by Tor Books on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.
In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.

My Review:

The story begins at the end, which doesn’t mean that either the narrator or the reader is in any way spoiled about how it began. Because that’s the point of it from the beginning.

Griffon Keming is trying to understand who his parents really were before they became his parents, now that their larger-than-life personas are no longer there to get in the way of that knowing. And because they’re gone, and he misses them, he’s trying to process that grief and that absence and memorialize them – at least for himself. Or perhaps in a way that’s JUST for himself, as a way of bringing them back to life one last time.

But he only knew his parents after the point in which they came into each other’s lives, when he was fifteen and they were into their forties. The places and events that made Zaffre and Etoine Keming, and the things that made them famous, were already behind them. Already memories and nightmares that may still have influence but they have no desire to exhume for either the enlightenment or the amusement of their adopted son.

So, in the wake of their passing, in what was once Zaffre and Etoine’s New York City apartment, Griffon discovers the writings his father left behind. An angry, angst-filled, sometimes ranting and raging diary of his decades of sobriety, and a manuscript that Etoine had titled Autoportrait, Blessê in his native language, Stephensportois.

But that autobiography wasn’t so much an autobiography of Etoine as it was an attempt to immortalize Zaffre, the woman he loved so much that, once upon a time, he killed a king for her.

Escape Rating B: There are multiple avenues of approach to Notes from a Regicide. The above was the way I got into this book and found my way through it, but it may tell a different story for each reader.

For some, the most obvious point of entry may be that Griffon, Etoine and Zaffre were all trans, and this is the story of the family they created together out of love and choice. A family that was far from perfect but that worked for them and that nurtured Griffon into a healthy adulthood after a childhood filled with physical and emotional abuse.

It can be interpreted as three broken people who made each other strong in their broken places – which were legion and not limited to Zaffre’s neurodiversity, Etoine’s alcoholism and the mental contortions Griffon forced himself to go through in order to protect his birth father from the consequences of his abuse of his own child. No one comes out of any of those things unscathed.

And then there’s the part that initially caught my curiosity, the question raised by the title. Who was the ruler, and where, and why were they murdered? That’s where the story slips into speculative fiction – somewhere on the border between science fiction and fantasy.

Because Stephensport is one of those places that’s on no map we know, that perhaps may have or will exist in a bit of a fever dream – or a drunken hallucination. And the story of Stephensport is the story of a bloody revolution that arose in paranoia and ended in exile, that brought down a tyranny and ended a dream and a nightmare at the same time.

Exactly how a reader will feel about Stephensport and the rebellion that Etoine accidentally fomented and Zaffre willingly fostered will depend a lot on how much one wants to believe it happened versus just how unreliable a narrator one believes Etoine to be. And I’m not at all sure but fascinated either way.

And if part of that fascination is related to T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series that begins with the chilling and awesome folkloric horror of What Moves the Dead, set in the equally fictional country of Ruravia, that’s just fine with this reader.

In the end – as it was in the beginning – Notes from a Regicide is two things for certain. It’s a passionate love story between two beautifully damaged people, Zaffre and Etoine, because that’s the way Etoine wrote his Autoportrait. And it’s a son’s last love letter to the parents of his heart.

#BookReview: Last Chance to Save the World by Beth Revis

#BookReview: Last Chance to Save the World by Beth RevisLast Chance to Save the World (Chaotic Orbits #3) by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #3
Pages: 133
Published by DAW on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The explosive, satisfying conclusion to the Chaotic Orbits novella trilogy sees Ada and Rian breaking into a high-security facility to give Earth a fighting chance at survival

Sexy, fast, fun and funny, this happily-ever-after ending is perfect for fans of the Murderbot novels and the Wayfarers series

After a few weeks trapped on board a spaceship with Ada (and, oh look, there’s only one bed), Rian has to admit that maybe Ada’s rebels have a point. The nanobots poised to be unleashed on Earth are infected with malware that will ultimately leave the residents of Earth in a worse position than they’re in now. But is it too late?

Ada and Rian arrive on Earth with little time to spare. Together, they have to break into a high-security facility and infect the nanobots with a counter-virus before they’re released in order to give Earth a fighting chance. And if Ada happens to notice some great tech laying around in this high-security facility she shouldn’t have access to and then happens to steal a bunch of it when Rian’s not looking? Well, he knew who she was before he teamed up with her. And if he wants it back, he’s going to have to catch her first.

With countless twists and turns, this enemies-to-lovers slow-burn and high-tension romance plays on a Sherlock and Moriarity character dynamic rooted in science fiction with a heavy romance and mystery angle.

My Review:

Ada Lamarr’s caper-and-heist riddled ‘chaotic orbit’ of the galaxy is on its way back to a corporate controlled, pollution ravaged Sol-Earth when this third entry in the series opens. Ada and her reluctant passenger, government agent Rian White, have finalized their plans to thwart an evil corporate kingpin who planned to hold Earth’s environmental recovery for ransom for the next, well, forever.

Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The second biggest problem with this plan is that the first enemies it has to survive are each other, because Ada and Rian, no matter how much they might be on the same page when it comes to Earth’s potential recovery – are enemies in every other way.

They might both wish that they were enemies-with-benefits, but they are also both smart enough not to get that deeply involved – all puns intended – with someone they can’t trust. Particularly when they know that said enemy ALREADY has plans to betray them at the first available opportunity.

But the real problem, at least from Ada’s perspective, is that the first enemy that her plan has to survive isn’t the uptight government agent she’s been lusting after since they crashed into each other in Full Speed to a Crash Landing.

The first enemy Ada’s plan has to get passed isn’t Rian, it isn’t the government, it isn’t even the squadrons of corporate security drones and goons her target has stationed to protect his ‘investment’.

First, foremost and with way less prep than Ada ever likes to have, Ada has to get her crazy, convoluted scheme past her mother.

Escape Rating B+: A HUGE part of the fun of the Chaotic Orbits series in both Full Speed to a Crash Landing and How to Steal a Galaxy is that the story is told from the inside of Ada Lamarr’s, wheels-within-wheels, lies-hiding-lies and misdirections all around very intelligent and utterly snarky head.

Which means that we’re aware that Ada is pulling some kind of con – but not necessarily the same con – on every single person around her. Including herself. So even though we’re in her very own skull there are still secrets that aren’t revealed until the very end of the caper – if not a bit after – because there are plenty of things in Ada’s mind and heart that she doesn’t want to think about. Possibly ever.

The biggest thing she’s not willing to think about is her sure and certain knowledge that Rian is going to betray her in the end – if he hasn’t already. It’s only fair, because her plan to betray him has been baked into this caper from its opening gambit back in that first book.

The part that she’s not willing to think about is that she wishes the situation were otherwise. He’s Mister Law-and-Order. He can’t live the chaotic, one-step-ahead-of-the-authorities, the ends-justify-the-means-as-long-as-there’s-a-big-payday, next-heist-please life that Ada thrives on.

And those natures are much too baked into both of their psyches for either of them to ever change. So in addition to her many, many thoughts and concerns about her plans for this particular caper, Ada also spends a lot of her internal energy veering away from the heartbreak she tried to avoid but knows, deep in her heart, is coming anyway.

So, on the top level of this story, the takedown of the stupid evil villain/greedy corporate monster, the thing that Ada has been working on from before the beginning of the series, and every single lie and misdirect since – all of that is absolutely righteous. And it’s a win all the way around. Earth has a chance to get better – if we don’t screw it up again.

But the catharsis of that HUGE win is blunted because we’re pretty much all on Team Ada, we’re all shipping Ada and Rian – and their relationship takes a HUGE, messy hit in this story. They’ve both been forced to realize that what they feel for each other, as totally ill-advised as it might be, is also absolutely real. And that they can’t both be themselves AND have each other.

That part of the story ends on a note of possibility, both for Ada and Rian finding each other again and for that finding to be part of another caper/heist of some sort. Whether that means another book in the series, or was just a way to end things with a hint of will they/won’t they/can they/should they is something we’ll hopefully see in the future. Which means that the HEA promised in the blurb is still some ways off – at best.

As for this reader, I want to keep right on shipping Ada and Rian, but I can’t see a way to make it work. I hope the author can, and that we ALL get to see it!

#BookReview: Hunter Squad: North by Anna Hackett

#BookReview: Hunter Squad: North by Anna HackettNorth (Hunter Squad) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, science fiction, science fiction romance
Pages: 210
Published by Anna Hackett on April 3, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

We survived the invasion and beat the aliens. But they left something behind…
I was born to protect. I’m a Connors, a soldier like my father before me, and I’m the medic for Hunter Squad. Every time we go out to hunt the mutated monsters the aliens left behind, I’m there to treat anyone who gets hurt.
But sometimes, I can’t always save everyone, and that haunts me.
When Hunter Squad is called out to rescue two missing boys, I’ll do anything to bring them home alive. Even work with our brand-new recruit, Jessica Ramos.
I’m not convinced she’s the right fit for the team, but she’s an expert when it comes to monsters. The creatures are exhibiting dangerous new behaviors, and we have to stop them. Whatever it takes.
Working alongside Jess, everything about her gets under my skin: her confidence, her intelligence, her fit, curvy body, and her damn freckles.
When old memories come back to haunt me, it’s Jess who helps me. Jess who draws me in a way no woman ever has. I can’t afford to let myself care for her.
Falling in love is not on my agenda.

My Review:

The first book in the Hunter Squad  series, Jameson, set up this world as it is 30 years after the Hell Squad series came to its explosive Independence Day style ending. This second book sets up the new BIG BAD, the whoever/whatever that is somehow managing to train bands of formerly dumb and disorganized Gizzida/terran hybrids into teams capable of planning, coordinating and outright luring the human defenders into what someone or something hopes they can turn into a no-win scenario – for the humans.

In other words, the fragile – not exactly peace but not outright war – that has existed since the “pure” Gizzida got knocked back into space is heating up from a simmer back to a boil. The hybrids aren’t merely on the move – they are on the attack. And they are suddenly a whole lot better at that than they used to be – which is absolutely not a good thing for the slowly rebuilding human population.

Hunter Squad, made up of the literal ‘next generation’ of the Hell Squad, has the necessary but unenviable task of hunting down packs of Gizzida/terran hybrids who are attacking human settlements. While that’s been their job for a while, it’s only on this particular hunt that they realize that lone humans have been disappearing on an increasing basis over the past several months – because they find out what happened to a few of them and it isn’t pretty.

It’s more like Shelob in The Two Towers – only worse. Because Shelob’s depredations were mostly – not totally but mostly – about the great spider protecting her own territory and maintaining her own food supply. Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but that’s what nature is supposed to be – even if humans still end up on the sharp and pointy end of that cliche a lot more than they’s like.

The unnatural spiderweb-like fuckery that Hunter Squad discovers in this second entry in the series doesn’t seem to be about preserving food – but it might be about preserving specimens for exactly the sort of lab experiments that the Gizzida used to do. The kind of experiments that created the hybrids that Hunter Squad is still fighting 30 years later.

Just as the overall situation is getting darker and more dangerous, a bright, hot light blazes through this story in the burn-the-sheets sex-into-love romance between Hunter Squad’s medic, North Connors, and the squad’s newest member, Jessica Ramos.

She doesn’t want to mess up her just barely started membership in Hunter Squad. It took a lot of time and effort to get from North America to Australia, and she has a lot of important research to do on the hybrids. She can’t afford to get sidetracked by a handsome face and the body to go with it.

Especially when that handsome face seems to scrunch up in distaste every time North lays eyes on her. She’s not remotely interested in a personal relationship with someone who can’t seem to stand her presence.

It’s going to take a crisis – or two or three – for North and Jessica to figure out that they’ve been reading each other’s signals very, very wrong all along.

Escape Rating B: As with Jameson, and with the original Hell Squad series, this story runs along on two distinct tracks that intersect at – ahem – climactic moments. There’s the big, overarching plot of the series, and then there’s the romance in this particular ‘chapter’ of that story.

The romance in this one is between North Connors, son of Ash Connors and Marin Mitchell, and Jessica Ramos, one of Cruz Ramos’ cousins from North America. So they both have history to live up to, which is clearly going to be a theme of this series. North is a medic, and Jessica hunts monsters in order to study them.

This isn’t exactly a relationship made in heaven – at least not at the beginning. He has demons when it comes to not being able to save ALL his patients. He’s afraid to get close to anyone – and he’s a bit of a dick about it because Jessica gets under his skin in ways he’s not comfortable with.

Jessica may be attracted to what he looks like, but his behavior is off-putting, because, well, he’s being a dick in ways that make her believe he doesn’t have any faith in her abilities. That they fall into bed anyway and eventually into love isn’t a surprise, exactly, but damn it happened really fast. I liked the romance in Jameson better because it wasn’t instalove the way this one turned out to be.

Very much on my other hand, I’m every bit as fascinated with the overall plot as I was with the first series. It makes so much sense that, just as the humans are rebuilding, the hybrids are as well. The invading Gizzida were just that, invaders from another world. They wanted to strip Earth of its resources and leave an empty husk behind. They HAD to be fought.

But the hybrids they left behind are entirely other matter. They weren’t Gizzida enough to die when the anti-Gizzida device went off, but they’re sure not acting like they are willing to coexist peacefully either. We don’t yet know what their actual imperative is – but I expect we’re about to find out.

Which is the scary but fun part of this series. The hybrids look like they’re experimenting on humans – both in the sense of how the humans react to threats and campaigns, and quite possibly in the sense of turning some into lab rats for nefarious and/or deadly purposes.

We certainly get hints of an intelligent hybrid watching from the shadows. And I’ll admit to wondering just how hybrid that hybrid is. There are other frightening possibilities which I can’t wait for the author to explore in later books in this series.

Based on hints at the end of this story, it’s clear that the next romance will be between quadcopter pilot Colbie Erickson and her Hunter Squad teammate Marc Jackson. And that their adventure is going to take them into the heart of at least one hybrid base or experimental lab – as well as deep into each other’s hearts. I’m looking forward to getting a glimpse of whoever or whatever is behind the uptick in monster intelligence and capability in the coming books in the series.

But that’s going to be a while, because the author’s next several books look like they will be contemporary romance and romantic suspense. As always, I’m looking forward to whatever romantic reading adventures this author is sending my way in the months to come!

#BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen

#BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan BannenThe Undermining of Twyla and Frank (Hart and Mercy, #2) by Megan Bannen
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, dragons, fantasy romance, Weird West, fantasy
Series: Hart and Mercy #2
Pages: 464
Published by Orbit on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy comes a heartwarming fantasy with a best friends-to-lovers rom com twist--When Harry Met Sally, but with dragons!—set in the delightful demigod and donut-filled world of Tanria.
The entire town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbor and best friend, Frank Ellis, to join the Tanrian Marshals. Eight years later, Twyla and Frank are still patrolling the dangerous land of Tanria, the former prison of the Old Gods.
Twyla might look like a small town mom who brings cheesy potatoes to funerals and whips up a batch of cookies for the school bake sale, but her rewarding career in law enforcement has been a welcome change from the domestic grind of mom life, despite the misgivings of her grown children.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) a recent decrease in on-the-job peril has made Twyla and Frank's job a lot safer ... and a lot less exciting. So when they discover the body of one of their fellow marshals covered in liquid glitter--and Frank finds himself the inadvertent foster dad to a baby dragon--they are more than happy to be back on the beat.
Soon, the friends wind up ensnared in a nefarious plot that goes far deeper than any lucrative Tanrian mineshaft. But as the danger closes in and Twyla and Frank's investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realize that her true soul mate might just be the person who has lived next door all along...

My Review:

Twyla Banneker and Frank Ellis are the very best of friends – and have been for more than a decade. They are also next-door neighbors in the tiny town of Eternity, and are partners in the Tanrian Marshals. They are, in every possible way except one, each other’s person all the way down to the bone.

Their deep and true friendship is the bedrock upon which their lives are completely invested. They helped raise each other’s kids. They’ve saved each other’s lives. They’ve killed for each other and they’ve nearly died for each other – many times each.

But there is a gigantic misunderstandammit at the core of their relationship. Frank has always believed that Twyla’s marriage to her husband Drew – now more than a decade dead – was so wonderful that she’s never looked at another man in all the years since. Frank’s marriage ended in divorce about as long ago and he’s certain that Twyla’s marriage was nothing like the clusterfuck he was part of.

Twyla, on the other hand, because her marriage was nothing like Frank thought it was from the outside, never ever thinks of her now 50-something self as being anything more than useful. And she doesn’t want to go there again, ever. She’s not still mourning Drew – in fact she feels guilty that she didn’t all that much to begin with. She loves her now adult children, but she’s happy to have her own space and her own life. She just can’t believe any man would want her at this point in her life and she’s convinced herself she’s fine with that.

And she and Frank have much too much to lose if they even think about being more to each other than what they already are, and rely on, and pretty much live for even if neither of them can admit it.

Which is where they are when one of their fellow marshals is killed in the not-nearly-as-wild-as-they-used-to-be Tanrian Wilds, smothered in glitter. Yes, glitter. Nothing in Tanria, as far as anyone knows, produces glitter as any sort of byproduct. As far as anyone knows.

At least, not until Frank and Twyla find a creature that’s supposed to be extinct, poachers attempting to poach that same creature, and the disgustingly glittery evidence that there be dragons here, and that these dragons spit, not fire, but something considerably sparklier.

Escape Rating B: I both kind of knew what I was getting into and kind of forgot. I read that first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, more than two years ago, and got a bit frustrated by it but in the end mostly liked it. I picked this one up now because the third book, The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, is coming out this summer. I wanted to get caught up.

This series is definitely sitting on one of those genre bending fences – honestly, I think directly on the actual splintering fencepost complete with the point at the top – between cozy fantasy, fantasy romance, and the Weird West.

Not that Tanria is actually the Wild West, even a paranormal/supernatural version of it, but between the dead drudges from the first book, the concept of marshals riding circuits looking for both monsters and poachers, the supernatural storms and the sorta/kinda horses, it has the feel of the Weird West all the same.

The small town vibes of Eternity, where Frank and Twyla live, with their combination of magical and mundane businesses and big city sophisticates far, far away, reads a lot like Tawney in Tomes & Tea (otherwise known as the Can’t Spell Treason without Tea series). Or even the town in Legends & Lattes. But the reference to Tomes & Tea is considerably stronger in this entry in this series because of the dragons. Not so much the glitter, but definitely the dragons.

The romance in this entry in the series, very much like The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, was both the strongest AND the most frustrating – and not just in the sense of the obvious pun. On the plus side, and very much so, the possible/probable friends into lovers romance between Twyla and Frank is a very real source of dramatic tension because it’s such a real and difficult problem. If they get it right, they’ll have something amazing. But they already have something pretty darn wonderful and they’re risking losing it if they reach for more and fail.

That a good chunk of the reason they are such a mess about it is based on a honking huge misunderstandammit of many years’ duration gave me fits. Frank starts out in a hole and can’t seem to stop digging when it comes to how he feels about Twyla and how he assumes she feels in return. I wanted to reach in and knock some heads together rather often.

Very much on my third hand – and I’m sure there’s some creature in Tanria that has at least three – I loved that Frank and Twyla absolutely do have a relationship of equals, both in their friendship and in their working relationship in the marshals. And I particularly enjoyed that this is a romance between people who are mature adults and that it needs to be that way. The romance doesn’t work without the weight of their long friendship to ground it.

The dragons turned out to be the glittery icing on this particular cake. They also turn out to be an important part of both the story and the future of Tanria, but not in ANY of the ways one generally expects in fantasy. And the baby dragons are clearly adorable beyond words and they gave the story a light, glittery heart at the center that was as delightful as it was unexpected.

I came into this one looking for the pun in the title, because I knew there had to be one after the first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. This time around, the pun was considerably less obvious and a bit more directly related to the plot, but it’s definitely there.

The next book in this series is The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, coming in July. Considering that Marshal Rosie is an immortal demigod, I’m really curious to discover just how she’s going to get ‘undercut’ because it’s going to have to be something sharp and special to even make a dent. We’ll find out this summer!

#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia Park

#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia ParkLuminous by Silvia Park
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, literary fiction, robots, science fiction
Pages: 400
Published by Simon & Schuster on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.

My Review:

They are all the children of the famous, failed neuroroboticist, Cho Yosep; Jun, Morgan, and Yoyo. But the childhood they shared was long ago, long enough that Jun and Morgan have had the chance to become adults, and to become estranged from their father and each other. While Yoyo, their android older brother, has been bought and sold and become and been changed, over and over again. None of them emerged from their childhoods, or even their sometimes barely-functioning adulthoods, unscarred.

In the reunified Korea of this future, the scars of the wars that brought reunification to pass are still evident everywhere – on the people, on the land and in the rising discontent on both sides of what was once the border between two sovereign nations whose unity seems in danger of fracturing again – sooner or later.

This is also a future where robots have become ubiquitous, filling roles that were once reserved for humans as servants, caregivers, children, friends, lovers. They are always helpful, forever loyal, and permanently second-class. Or worse. Or less. Or both.

Morgan makes robots. She’s a top designer for the pre-eminent robot design and manufacturing empire in the world. On the one hand, she believes that she’s carrying on the work her father abandoned. On another, she’s indulging her own fantasies through her work, and feeling guilty about both the indulgence and the deception.

And very much on her third, and possibly robotic, hand, she’s still both mourning and searching for the robot brother her father brought into their family – and mysteriously took away.

Jun protects robots, or at least he tries his best to in a world that sees them as useful until they’re not – and then they’re scrap. Jun is a detective in the underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated Seoul Police Department’s Robot Crimes Unit. He’s never gotten over the loss of his robot brother Yoyo, just as he’ll never be able to pay off the cybernetic body modifications that allowed him to survive the catastrophic injuries he received during the last war – and to live the truth he felt in his soul.

The frame of the story is one of Jun’s cases, an investigation into the disappearance of an elderly woman’s robot caregiver, the person Kim Sunduk has relied on for years to maintain her independence and her connection to the world. Connections that have been broken along with the woman’s heart.

Among these elements, the search for a missing caregiver that leads to an underworld of robot rage cages, a woman’s desire for love and approval, a man’s need to find the truths that were hidden in his childhood, lead, by a roundabout way, to the truth about Yoyo, truths about the war that no one wants to know, and truths about love that no one is willing to see.

Escape Rating B: Luminous is very much literary science fiction, which means the family is dysfunctional, none of the characters are happy, the story is steeped in tragedy and more is angsted about than done. Literary SF is not my favorite part of the genre, and I had some hesitation going into this one. In the end, it worked better than I expected because the police investigation provides a better framework than is usual in literary fiction upon which to hang an actual plot.

There are several ways of looking at this story – more than merely the three perspectives through which it is told. From one point of view, it seems as if Jun’s police investigation is the story, and it kind of is. But the story that is told isn’t merely about one robot’s disappearance. The story is about humans, and about their relationships with the robots that are now an integral part of society. From that starting point, it manages to dive into the relationships that robots have with each other – relationships that humans are entirely unaware of and do not even expect to exist. The detective story is Jun’s perspective, the robotic relationships are Yoyo’s, and are hidden every bit as much as Yoyo himself has been.

While Morgan’s strained human relationships and her clandestine creation of her own robot companion raise questions about whether the advent of robots has furthered the fracturing of human-to-human relationships.

I was certainly caught up in Luminous as I was reading it, but now that I’ve turned the final page I have some mixed feelings about parts. One is my own problem, in that I wish I knew a lot more about Korean history up until now because I believe the conditions of this near-future would have had more impact if I had. At the same time, parts of the situation felt familiar because the human condition in general is simply what it is. War is hell, war is always hell, what gives the war scenes in this story their resonance is that we are seeing things through their perspectives, particularly Jun’s and Yoyo’s.

It feels like the heart of the story is wrapped around the relationships between humans and robots, but because we get there through the police investigation, a lot of what we see is that humans treat robots the way that humans treat any population they see as ‘less than’ whatever group is dominant. It’s also not a surprise that the robots who get destroyed by violence are mostly female-bodied. That’s it’s female-bodied robots who become caregivers and servants, and that male-bodied Yoyo is turned into a weapon.

And that that easy dichotomy is the simplest thing about relationships between humans and robots, and that everything under that iceberg tip is considerably more complex.

After turning the final page, I ended up looking back at some other recent books about human/robotic relations in order to get a better handle on why some bits seemed rather familiar, and the one I believe Luminous most reminds me of is Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner because it also tells a story about human attempts to program robots to do their dirty work for them, and how the robots themselves evolve in considerably more complex – and humane – directions than was originally intended. There are elements of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton and  C. Robert Cargill’s Day Zero here also, and if that’s the part of Luminous that grabbed your attention, all are worth a read.

One final (final) note, Luminous is the author’s debut novel, and she kept me engaged in this story, in a part of the genre I don’t normally tackle, from beginning to end. I’m definitely looking forward to whatever she comes up with next!

#BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

#BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal KawaiThe Cat Who Saved the Library (The Cat Who..., #2) by Sōsuke Natsukawa, Louise Heal Kawai
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: books and reading, coming of age, fantasy, libraries, magical realism
Series: The Cat Who... #2
Pages: 224
Published by HarperVia on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The long-awaited sequel to the #1 international bestseller The Cat Who Saved Books—a delightful and heartwarming celebration of books, libraries, cats, and the people who love them.
A chronic asthma condition prevents thirteen-year-old Nanami from playing sports or spending time with her friends after school. But nothing can stop her from one of her favorite activities. Nanami loves to read and happily spends much of her free time in the school library, cocooned among the stacks.
Then one day, Nanami notices that, despite the library being as deserted as ever, some of her favorite books, including literary classics like Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar and Anne of Green Gables are disappearing from the shelves. When she alerts the library staff, they dismiss her concerns. But just as Nanami is about to return to her reading, she spots a suspicious man in a gray suit. Eager to discover what he’s up to, she follows him. The chase is cut short when Nanami suffers an asthma attack. By the time she catches her breath, the man has disappeared and all that is left behind is a mysterious light filtering through the library’s familiar passageways.
That’s when Tiger, the talking tabby cat who saves books, comes to the rescue.
Are Nanami and Tiger prepared to face the dangerous challenges that lie ahead? Why are faceless gray soldiers burning books in a stone castle? And what happened to Rintaro, the socially withdrawn hero who helped Tiger save books in a second-hand bookshop?
At a time of increased book bannings worldwide, Sosuke Natsukawa urges us not to underestimate the power of great literature—and to be prepared to defend our freedom to choose.

My Review:

I picked this up for the obvious. It’s clearly a story about a cat, and books, and at least one library, and I’m there for all of those things. That it’s also the follow-up to The Cat Who Saved Books, which I enjoyed very much for all the above reasons – although that’s about a bookstore rather than a library – certainly helped push this book to the top of my virtually towering TBR pile.

Nanami Kosaki is a bit younger than Rintaro Natsuki was when he began his adventure in that first book. Howsomever, she is also very much a child, or a young woman, on the cusp of the next stage of her own maturity, and she is also holding herself back from taking the next leap forward. Rintaro also faced barriers to that next leap, but in Nanami’s case those hurdles are created not just out of fear, but also out of love. And out of the desire that is so often fostered in females, the desire not to upset the people who are only creating those boundaries and barriers because they love us, believe they know what’s best for us, but want us to be safe above all, even if safety is not what we’re built for.

Nanami has chronic asthma that results in severe attacks that leave her completely debilitated if she is not very, very careful. Nanami, a junior high school student, has internalized that need for care at every step to the point where her world has been reduced to the smallest circle possible; the home she shares with her workaholic father, her school, the local library, and the one and only friend who doesn’t treat her as ‘less than’ in every conversation and at every turn.

Like so many people whose movements are restricted in one way or another, Nanami spends a great deal of time in the world of books – hence her daily visits to her local library. She has learned the wisdom of the saying that “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”

But her thorough knowledge of every nook and cranny of that library tells Nanami that something is wrong. Books are missing. Not the usual ebb and flow of check-in and check-out of a public library but rather that vast swaths of books are disappearing all at once and not coming back.

A situation that absolutely cannot be borne. Which is where Tiger the Tabby steps through the back wall of the library, allowing her to follow the mysterious book thief back to his own world. A place where books aren’t merely burned, but where they are torn from time and space and memory so they lose their power to move the world through the hearts and minds of the people who read them.

Escape Rating B: The US cover of this second book doesn’t do Tiger the Tabby any more justice than the US cover of the first book did. Tiger’s considerably more dignified picture in the UK cover at right also does a much better job of giving Tiger his due.

But this story isn’t about Tiger any more than the first one was. Tiger is an important character, but his function in both stories is to open the way and guide the protagonist – not to lead the charge.

The stakes feel higher in this second book on multiple levels. On one level, it’s about Nanami and her future, just as the first book was about Rin and his. He was on the precipice of choosing between out and in, between rejecting the world and facing it. Nanami’s decision is harder because she’s not so much choosing between safety and adventure as she is choosing between letting her illness and the people who love her take care of her, or figuring out how to face the world as it is and her condition as it is on her own terms. To expand her real horizons to the limit that they can be – a limit that may not be infinite but is considerably larger than feels ‘safe’ to the people who love her and worry about her. She’ll have to stand her own ground against people who truly do mean well, to defend her corner against a world that will push hard to keep her in that corner, even when her asthma exhausts her to the point of passing out.

That the fight that Tiger the Tabby guides her to is, to her, much bigger than the mere fight for life, gives her a springboard of accomplishment from which to wage that fight, but she has to get there first.

Which is where the heart of the story, and the depth of Nanami’s heart, comes in.

Because, while this is about the books, it’s not just about the books. And it’s certainly not about the books as containers – even though it feels that way at first. This is a story about the power of what’s in books to move people – which moves the world.

Which leads even deeper, to a story about power, and how power is applied, and those who feel they have the right to keep their hands on the levers of power. Leading to a story that feels like it’s speaking to this moment, even though this book was published over a year ago in the original Japanese, and was intended to point at the vast (and continuing and increasing) amount of book banning that was – and still is – happening around the world.

In the end, this is a story that focuses hard on the very current debate about whether empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is a strength or a weakness. The forces arrayed against Nanami believe that empathy is a weakness. That reading the ‘wrong’ books fosters empathy and should therefore be eliminated by any means necessary.

Nanami believes the opposite, that empathy is a strength, although she would certainly agree that reading is a powerful force for fostering empathy. And it’s the power of Nanami’s heart, her empathy for others and their empathy for her, that means that she never goes into this battle alone, and that she emerges with new strength, a whole heart, and a whole lot of books, when her battle is won.

But it’s clear at the end that the war is not over. As it is not in the real world. Nanami seems to have found her road to her OWN future at the end of this story, and we get a glimpse of Rintaro’s life as it is now to see that he also reached out and grabbed his own happiness and fulfillment, but Tiger the Tabby is still out there, just waiting to guide a new hero to the next front of this neverending conflict.

 

#BookReview: When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

#BookReview: When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John ScalziWhen the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: humorous science fiction, science fiction
Pages: 336
Published by Tor Books on March 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain comes an entirely serious take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if suddenly the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese.
It's a whole new moooooon.
One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters -- schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians -- as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.

My Review:

You might be thinking that the title seems familiar. Or that it’s doing to you what it did to me and is giving you an earworm. It IS familiar. The whole line is, “If the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore”. I’m even hearing it in Dean Martin’s voice as it was one of his biggest hits and my parents certainly played the music of the Rat Pack around the house when I was growing up.

It’s also more than a bit of a pun for this whole entire book – especially the ending – as the moon hits pretty much everyone on Earth in the eye all the way through.

There are a lot of funny and or fanciful stories where the Moon is made of cheese. Usually green cheese – which works if the word green means “new” instead of the color. Wallace & Gromit travel to the moon to sample some of that cheese in A Grand Day Out. Wallace clearly hopes it’s his beloved Wensleydale – but sadly it’s not.

It may seem like I’ve digressed, but I’m not sure that’s true, considering the book. From a certain point of view, When the Moon Hits Your Eye could be said to be a series of digressions – or one whole entire digression. It’s certainly a series of vignettes, a month-long collection of slice of life stories all wrapped around a single, cheesy premise.

“What if the moon suddenly turned into cheese?” Not just the actual moon, but all the moon rocks carefully protected in museums and laboratories all over the Earth, right along with their point of origin.

Because that’s what happens in this book. It’s not about the science of how it happened – because no one can figure that out. At all. It’s about the reaction. All the reactions – including the reaction of the cheese itself.

Which is going to be absolutely moon-shattering – and potentially earth-shattering as well. But that’s not the point. The point is the human reaction to the cheese reaction to a fundamental change in the composition of the whole entire universe.

And it’s not good. But it is, frequently and often and wryly and ruefully, utterly hilarious.

[cover of Redshirts by John Scalzi]Escape Rating B: I ended up with a GINORMOUS cheese-wheel of mixed feelings on this one. I’ve read a fair bit of this author’s work, and let’s just say that Moon reads like a stellar reason why I’ve always said that Scalzi is a bit of an acquired taste. If you enjoy his authorial voice – it’s on full display in Moon. If you don’t, this isn’t going to change your mind.

The Scalzi story that Moon reminds me of most is Redshirts, which is as much meta as it is story and drove me a bit bananas in the reading of it. According to the author’s afterword, thematically Moon is part of a conceptual but not actual series that includes The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain, in that all three stories “share a similar conceit of ‘Everyday people dealing with an extremely high-concept situation, in contemporary settings’.”

Which circles back to the idea that this isn’t REALLY about the moon suddenly turning into cheese. It’s about the human reaction to the moon becoming cheese. And, because humans are gonna human no matter the circumstances, that reaction is frequently hilarious.

To the point where I frequently laughed so hard I shook the bed and had to go read someplace else so my husband could sleep.

That hilarity is possible because the story is carefully set so that it’s not a tragedy as a whole – although it could have been. And the one documented death that does occur – well let’s just say that a Darwin Award nomination would have been a fitting outcome and leave it at that.

Where all of this reader’s mixed feelings come into this review is that the one thing I wish Moon had that it absolutely doesn’t is any hint of causality – not even of the casual handwavium variety. It’s not just that the people in the story don’t know why it happened – because that’s true in the whole entire 1632 series by Eric Flint and THAT still works. (1632 has some EXTREMELY flimsy causality, but it’s enough to get the reader over the hump and into the story.) It’s that the reader doesn’t know either. Not why it happened and not why it stopped. It could have all been a mass hallucination – which gets argued decades after the fact – AS IT ABSOLUTELY WOULD.

Which gets back to my mixed feelings. The story in the middle, the days in the life of the people in the world who were dealing – or not – with the moon having turned into cheese, were fantastic and funny and real in all of their human reactions to this insane thing that was happening. But that marvelous middle ends up feeling like a tent without even the flimsiest tentpoles of causality to keep it upright. I enjoyed it as I was reading, but it fell flat to the ground at the end.

So even though I’m a teensy bit disappointed even though my sides still ache from laughing, I would still recommend reading When the Moon Hits Your Eye to anyone who loves the author, a good, needs a good, sustained belly-laugh (and don’t we all these days), or especially a combination of the two.

#BookReview: Idolfire by Grace Curtis

#BookReview: Idolfire by Grace CurtisIdolfire by Grace Curtis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, historical fantasy
Pages: 480
Published by DAW on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Frontier and Floating Hotel
On one side of the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is desperate for a chance. Her family have written her off as a mistake, but she's determined to prove every last one of them wrong.
On the other, Kirby of Wall's End is searching for redemption. An ancient curse tore her life apart, but to fix it, she'll have to leave everything behind.
Fate sets them both on the path to Nivela, a city once poised to conquer the world with the power of a thousand stolen gods. Now the gates are closed and the old magic slumbers. Dead — or waiting for a spark to light it anew…
A character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slowburn romance, Idolfire delves into the vastness of history and the terrifying power of organized faith.

My Review:

In the world left behind centuries after the fall of a world-spanning empire, history has fallen into myth and legend on its far-flung fringes. Kirby of Wall’s End and Aleya Ana-Ulai might as well be from entirely separate worlds – because they are.

When the Empire of Nivela fell, or died, or imploded, or all of the above, the places that either resisted them or were conquered by them – or both – were left to struggle on without all the things and people the Empire stole at the height of their reach.

Including, in the case of Wall’s End, their god. And in the case of the Kingdom of Ash, one of their most important relics. Wall’s End NEEDS their god back, because their land is dying without the renewing power of Iona, the Goddess of Spring. And the people are dying with it, withering generation after generation.

Ash just wants their relic back, as they believe that no one should have the power of Idolfire, the power to consume the accumulated worship vested in a deity, except for their own royal house.

Then again, Wall’s End is the last remnant of a kingdom that Nivela thoroughly conquered, while Ash successfully resisted the might of the Nivelan Empire until that Empire fell. Of its own weight – or its own ‘Worldlord’s’ hubris.

Or both.

The story of Idolfire is a quest. It’s two quests. Kirby sets out for the ruins of fabled Nivela to get her village’s god back. Not because she’s a hero – but because she feels guilty that what was left of the god listened when she cursed her brother and not only killed him but blocked the water for the entire village.

Aleya, the reviled, disregarded, bastard princess of Ash, is sent by her Aunt the Queen on an actual, sanctioned quest to the ruins of Nivela to retrieve the other half of their sacred relic. Aleya knows she’s not expected to succeed, that she’s expected to either give up or die trying. But if she does succeed, she’ll be able to follow her Aunt as Queen, and make the reforms needed to save her city from dying from the weight of its own corruption and hubris – much like Nivela did.

The story is their journey, separately and together, over the whole of what was once the great Nivelan Empire. Along the way, they face death and danger and corruption and old gods and new kingdoms and desperate people and deranged leaders. They turn an enemy into a fast friend.

They find redemption for the sins they left behind. And they fall in love, even as they know that, as much as failure will doom them, success can only be bittersweet.

Escape Rating B: If you’re expecting something like the author’s previous work, Floating Hotel, you might want to check out some reviews (obv. Including this one) before continuing. Because Idolfire is not at all like Floating Hotel, and not just because that was SF and this is definitely fantasy.

Because I really did enjoy Idolfire, I’m trying to set expectations a bit better than either a quick reference to Floating Hotel or the bolded opening line of the book’s blurb. OTOH, that description, “Idolfire is an epic sapphic fantasy inspired by the fall of Rome from the author of the Frontier and Floating Hotel.” is 100 percent true.

But the emphasis isn’t quite in the same places in the blurb as they are in the book – leading back around to potentially disappointed expectations.

The emphasis in the story is on the epic fantasy parts of the description. It’s a quest story. Actually, it’s two quest stories combined with two heroines’ journeys that begin at literally opposite ends of the world as they know it. Those two heroines do eventually meet and there is a slowburn sapphic romance but the romance isn’t the driving force in the story.

Their separate quests drive the story, quests that begin as far apart as possible – as Kirby and Aleya themselves do – but have the same center point in more ways than one.

Which is where that reference to the fall of Rome comes in. The fall, the reasons for that fall, and what the world looks like at the fringes of what was once the empire so long after that fall that history has fallen into myth and legend.

The historical underpinnings of this story may remind readers of the way that Guy Gavriel Kay works history into fantasy. Because yes, Nivela is Rome – more or less – but it is also biblical Nineveh. Ash is Assyria and Wall’s End is post-Roman-occupation Britain. But their enemy-turned-companion Nylo is from someplace like the ancient Greek city-states, and these places did not all exist at the same time.

The romance between Kirby and Aleya is VERY slow burn. They do come to love each other, but it takes them a lot of time – and miles, definitely miles! – to get there. They are both aware that the BEST ending they can possibly get is that they each return to their opposite ends of the world. It’s realistic but it’s ultimately sad. The reader wants them to have an HEA and they both want it and KNOW they can’t have it.

As much as I loved their journey and enjoyed their long and winding tour of this quasi-ancient, slightly magical, somewhat historical world, theirs is not the only perspective on their quests. Someone is moving events behind the scenes, looking on from above – or underneath – or both, watching as history unfolds. And it has shades of the secret at the heart of the city of Kithamar in Daniel Abraham’s Age of Ash series. It’s something I’m not sure worked in either epic, but it’s left me thinking I’ll go back to Age of Ash and see.

Nevertheless, that extra perspective is one that kinda works and kinda doesn’t and your reading mileage may definitely vary. My enjoyment of and fascination with Aleya’s and Kirby’s world, their epic journey through it and their relationship within it was MORE than enough to carry me through this fascinating tale.