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
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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.

Grade A #BookReview: Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Grade A #BookReview: Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess KiddMurder at Gulls Nest (Nora Breen Investigates #1) by Jess Kidd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Nora Breen Investigates #1
Pages: 325
Published by Atria Books on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears
1954: When her former novice’s dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda’s letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests—but when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it’s time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.

My Review:

For a cozy mystery, Murder at Gulls Nest is a bit twisty and occasionally downright creepy, but in the case of this particular case – that’s a marvelous thing!

Nora Breen has come a long way to arrive at little Gore-on-Sea on the Kentish coast. All the way from more than 30 years as a nun, out of the convent and straight into the room that her former novice occupied in a somewhat rundown boarding house just before she disappeared.

A disappearance which has led to Nora being out in the world for the first time in decades, having entered her monastery in the post-World War I years after a personal tragedy, and emerged in 1954, not long after an entirely different war whose scars are still healing, both on the country and especially on its people.

She’s just a bit overwhelmed – but she’s also very determined. As well as downright nosy – a predilection that was considered a flaw in her former vocation. But out in the world that gets a considerably more mixed reception. The local police inspector in Gore-on-Sea – and in fact the entire police station – also believe it’s a flaw, and an annoying flaw at that. Nora, on the other hand, is having a bit too good of a time figuring out how to interrogate her fellow boarders without making them feel like they are being interrogated. Even though they are.

Which doesn’t stop Detective Inspector Rideout from relying on Nora’s nosiness, her stubbornness, and her imagination fired up by years of reading detective mysteries, to help him solve a puzzling series of murders at that boarding house, Gulls Nest. Murders that the coroner would much rather sweep under the rug as either suicides or accidents even though Nora is convinced that there is a murderer hiding among the eccentric guests.

And that her missing friend was the murderer’s first victim.

Escape Rating A: Murder at Gulls Nest turned out to be one of the creepiest cozies I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading – but a pleasure and a delight it certainly was. This is the first book in a series, so Gore-on-Sea could certainly get cozier, but as the place stands right now it seems like a good place to get murdered in.

This story, and the series, begins in one of the usual ways that classic mystery series begin when the sleuth is an amateur – meaning that Nora’s first case is entirely personal at the outset. In Nora’s particular case, that she has come to discover the fate of one of her novices allows Nora to both reminisce about her time in the monastery and ruminate on the life that brought her there and the compulsion that pulled her out.

And we do get more than enough to get what she came from and where she’s coming from, even though it’s an experience that seems just as much a part of the past as the mid-century, post-war setting in the kind of seaside holiday town that was on its way out then and of which there are only remnants now.

What draws Nora into the mystery as a whole, and the reader right along with her, are the downright eccentric denizens of Gulls Nest, from the opiate-addled landlady and her ‘wild child’ young daughter to the retired traveling puppeteer, the smooth black marketeer and the dour housekeeper who is so clearly a candidate to be either the murderer or the scapegoat.

As the residents drop one-by-one, the motive for the murders gets murkier and murkier. Not that there weren’t plenty of possible motives and suspects for each individual murder, but the question of who benefits from ALL of the murders drives Rideout and Nora into a reluctant investigative partnership that pushes the story forward even as Nora pokes her nose into people and places that seem as if they couldn’t possibly be relevant until they finally are.

It’s a relationship that works in spite of the initial inclinations of the people in it, and it develops from suspicion to annoyance to grudging respect to friendship in a way that feels organic to the characters and sets an excellent foundation for the series.

I had a grand time with Nora Breen as she stuck her ‘coulter’ – meaning nose – into places she probably shouldn’t but that someone absolutely did need to stick some kind of oar into. I loved her investigative technique of nosiness with a bit more heart and understanding than her own reading of detective novels had led her to expect. I found the murders appropriately twisty, the motive at the heart of it all just a bit heartbreaking, and was happy to see order restored and chaos put properly in its place.

That this is the opening of a series was definitely the icing on a very tasty murder cake that only occasionally held a hint of bitter almond. Exactly how Nora is going to manage to keep herself on in Gore-on-Sea (and OMG that name is both a hint and a hoot under the circumstances) I can’t wait to see who and/or what she digs into next!

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne HillermanShadow of the Solstice: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel, 10) by Anne Hillerman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, thriller
Series: Leaphorn & Chee #28, Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #10
Pages: 336
Published by Harper on April 22, 2025
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In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.

The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice? When the outsiders’ erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone–and the woman’s daughter doesn’t seem to care. Darleen’s curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client’s grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen’s information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.

My Review:

The advantage of a mystery series in which there are not just one but two highly qualified investigators is that it is possible to focus on two separate crimes and NOT have them merge into a single perpetrator or gang of perpetrators at the end.

Navajo Nation Police Lieutenant Jim Chee has been investigating a rise in disappearances across their jurisdiction. Not that adults don’t occasionally walk away from their lives no matter where they live, but this rise is considerably more than the usual, with more families than are usually left behind in such cases left bereft by the limbo of their probable loss.

At the same time, Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is investigating complaints about an unapproved and downright dangerous structure being built by a visiting “meditation” group on land that they have rented from a well-known local family.

This may not sound like all that big a deal, but a) they don’t own the land, b) the owner refused permission for them to build, c) they didn’t get their plans approved and d) the structure is a sweat lodge meant to be used for meditation and healing ceremonies and its construction is so dangerous as to be downright deadly in the wrong circumstances. Which is exactly what they’re planning to hold. That the whole setup not just looks and sounds and more importantly ACTS like a cult setting up for something either dangerous or suicidal or both makes the owners’ feel unsafe and makes Bernie’s hackles rise accordingly.

Into this already potentially explosive mix throw the possible arrival of the Secretary of Energy, probably to give a speech that will run directly contrary to Navajo Nation policy, with all the chaos that a visiting dignitary could bring – as well as the tensions arising from the lack of certainty about whether she will or she won’t.

Chee has been left in charge of whatever is going to happen, if it’s going to happen, because the station captain had a heart attack right after the potential visit was announced. He’s torn between duties, cases and family while his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, has turned over a really big rock and a much more dangerous snake than she expected has crawled out to strike at a bigger prize than anyone imagined.

Escape Rating A-: As much and as long as I have loved this series, it took me a bit to get into this particular entry in it for reasons that I think were a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing. I was looking for more of an escape than I got this time around, as this story took me away in geography but not so much in other ways.

In other words, everything that happens in this story felt very close to ‘real’ life, and I wanted to be further away than that. Also, I was really, seriously worried for one of the characters and I needed to find out that she’d be okay before I could relax into the story. Once she managed to rescue herself, the rest of the story grabbed me and didn’t let go until the end – which was more than a bit of a nail-biter.

What made this one both so real and so fascinating was the way that even though the two cases don’t merge into one in any of the usual ways, they were both motivated by a lot of the same things – none of which were the ostensible causes of the crimes themselves.

Both crimes are about greed and manipulation, about taking advantage of people’s desire for a better life to line the pockets of the perpetrators at the expense of as many people as possible. That one is a Medicaid scam in Phoenix and the other is a cult subjugating its members even as it bilks them of their money is merely window dressing on the true motives of their perpetrators, which are to take advantage of people – and the government in the case of the Medicaid scam – and line their own pockets.

That one perpetrator is coldly, cruelly sane while the other believes he’s getting messages from a higher power – or at least pretends to – doesn’t mean that they’re not operating from surprisingly similar playbooks in the end.

And ending which administers just desserts to both, even though it’s not remotely possible to truly balance the scales in either case. Which comes back, again, to just how closely reality bites this fictional setting.

Over the more than OMG 30 years that I’ve been following this series (the series began in 1970 with The Blessing Way but I didn’t get hooked on it until the early 1990s) the more I’ve enjoyed getting to know these characters and have loved watching them grow and change over the years. When the series began, the ‘Legendary’ Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn was the protagonist and young Officer Jim Chee was his sometimes reluctant sidekick. Now Chee is the lead investigator, his wife and fellow officer Bernie is NOT his sidekick but an investigator in her own right. They face a whole new set of challenges, often separately on the job but together in their relationship, while behind them a new crop of officers is learning the ropes and their world is changing – as the world does. (And if any of this sounds familiar that might be because the original stories are the basis for the TV series Dark Winds.)

But humans are always gonna human, there will always be more problems for them to face and crimes for them to solve, and I’ll always be looking forward to the next book in the series whenever it appears. Hopefully, that will be this time next year.

A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. HarrisWho Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr, #20) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #20
Pages: 384
Published by Berkley on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The gruesome murder of a prominent nobleman throws an already unsettled London into chaos in this electrifying new historical mystery by the USA Today bestselling author of What Cannot Be Said.
August 1816. England is in the grip of what will become known as the Year Without a Summer. Facing the twin crises of a harvest-destroying volcanic winter and the economic disruption caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British monarchy finds itself haunted by the looming threat of bloody riots not seen since the earliest days of the French Revolution. Amidst the turmoil, a dead man is found hanging upside down by one leg in an abandoned chapel, his hands tied behind his back. The pose eerily echoes the image depicted on a tarot card known as Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The victim—Lord Preston Farnsworth, the younger brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions—was a passionate crusader against what he called the forces of darkness, namely criminality, immorality, and sloth. His brutal murder shocks the Palace and panics the already troubled populace.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, learns of the murder from a ragged orphan who leads him to the corpse and then disappears. At first, everyone in the dead man’s orbit paints Lord Preston as a selfless saint. But as Sebastian delves deeper into his life, he quickly realizes that the man had accumulated more than his fair share of enemies, including Major Hugh Chandler, a close friend who once saved Sebastian’s life. Sebastian also discovers that the pious Lord Preston may have been much more dangerous than those he sought to redeem.
As dark clouds press down on the city and the rains fall unceasingly, two more victims are found, one strangled and one shot, with ominous tarot cards placed on their bodies. The killer is sending a gruesome message and Sebastian is running out of time to decipher it before more lives are lost and a fraught post-war London explodes.

My Review:

One of the things I utterly adore about this series is the way that each book is firmly fixed in its time and place, and that that foundation in its there and then shows the exact opposite of ANY vision we might have in our heads about what the Regency period was like. Especially if that vision owes its glitter and sparkle to Bridgerton, Georgette Heyer or even Jane Austen.

Weymouth Bay with Approaching Storm. Painting by John Constable (1816)

This particular entry in the series shines a light in darker places than usual, as it takes place in the summer of 1816, which, basically, wasn’t. Not that the summers of 1817, 1818 and 1819 were all that summer-y either. Although the sunsets were spectacular for years afterwards.

What made the situation so much darker and chillier, as this book explores rather, well, darkly, is that they didn’t know WHY clouds and storms blotted out the sun for days and weeks on end. It’s not totally unreasonable for people to have thought the world was coming to an end.

Because they were freezing and starving and it seemed like it would never end.

Not that already weren’t entirely too many people starving and shivering because Britain’s post-Napoleonic War economy was a wreck. The war was over – YAY! BUT, the soldiers were demobilized and thrown back into the population without pensions. The government was going through a period of austerity – for everyone but themselves, of course – and jobs were scarce.

And the government – and so many of the upper classes – were just so certain that it was the fault of the poor themselves that they were poor, and if they were just forced to be good, upright citizens who knew their place and didn’t question their betters that conditions would miraculously improve.

(And doesn’t that sound so very familiar?)

So when Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, gets called to the sight of the gruesome murder of one of those upper class so-called reformers, it’s clear exactly which rocks he’s going to be turning over to find out whodunnit. Because he’s certain that whoever the killer might have been, it’s not going to be the easy solution that the Crown demands in order to, well, keep order among the lower classes while hoping to satisfy the upper classes that justice is being done.

Even if it isn’t. And won’t. Unless Devlin gets his hands dirty with yet another investigation that some members of his own family would prefer he left well enough alone. Even if that well enough isn’t well at all – and they know it.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve not been remotely coy about the fact that I love this series, and this entry absolutely did not change my mind one iota. Over the course of 20 books in 20 years – and counting – it just gets better and better.

Over the course of the series I’ve realized that I’m mostly here for the historical fiction aspects of the series. Not just the way that the author illuminates this time and place that we think we know, but also the way that we walk London’s streets with Devlin and feel the cobblestones under our own feet.

At the same time, the mystery is always important and not merely in the sense of figuring out both whodunnit and why it was done. Murder is a disruption to order – to the way things ought to be. The Regency period, with its incapacitated king and its overly self-indulgent regent who will be king, was a period where order was already disrupted. And that’s before one factors in the disruptions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Meanwhile, the seeds for the Industrial Revolution have already been sown, and revolt and rebellion are bubbling up from the so-called lower orders who have seen their disruptions and results in nearby France and in the far away but less bloody and more successful United States. Change is in the wind – even if that wind is not blowing the skies clear enough to grow crops.

The disruptions caused by murder in this series, particularly this murder, are intended to show what’s lurking in the depths that is usually covered over by government propaganda and social expectations.

Because the victim in this particular case was believed to be a ‘good’ if somewhat priggish man who was working for the ‘betterment’ of the country even if he was a bit overbearing about it all. But someone knows that facade was just that, a false front that they are determined to strip away. This is a fascinating case because the point of it is NOT to capture a villain, but to expose exactly how much of a villain the murder victim really was – and to uncover his confederates in that villainy.

Justice, such as it turns out to be in this case, has already been had. And this entry in the series is all the more interesting for its purposes to have been so turned around and yet resolved as satisfactorily as possible.

I was all in on this one from the very first page, and finished the story in a bit of a sad catharsis because I was glad to see it resolved but that resolve is equivocal in exactly the way that it should be and that was marvelous in its way.

One final note about this story. I’m surprised to have a readalike for this that is not historical fiction or mystery, but if you’re interested in the effects of the year without a summer, there’s an award winning science fiction short story, “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer, that deals with the effects of a similar situation on one small community and its lovely and hopeful in ways that make it a good follow up to Who Will Remember.

#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
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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.

A++ #BookReview: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

A++ #BookReview: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson BennettA Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery, urban fantasy
Series: Shadow of the Leviathan #2
Pages: 465
Published by Del Rey on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.

My Review:

There is something rotten in the state of the Empire. There are PLENTY of somethings ROTTING in the state of Yarrowdale, some naturally so, some deliberately so, some neglectfully so and some, even, all of the above. It’s a matter of which is which, which is what has brought Ana and Kol from their previous assignment to this rotting backwater on the edge of the Empire.

In a situation where the words “rotting”, “backwater” and “edge” should all be taken as many ways as possible – which is just the sort of situation that Ana Dolabra revels in solving.

Din’s first case assisting the eccentric genius (The Tainted Cup) began with the gorge-revolting sight of entirely too much corpse, as the victim had died as the result of a tree taking root in his stomach and growing downwards to root in the floor of the room in which he died even as the tree grew upward to entwine its branches with the ceiling.

This second case opens with much too little corpse, as all that officials have in the remote. soonish to be (negotiations are ongoing) imperial province of Yarrowdale of their latest assigned case are the right hand, left shoulder, and partial ribcage of the murder victim. The head comes later.

The carnivorous turtles that were clearly intended to handle corpse disposal must not have been quite hungry enough to get the job done before chance threw the remaining bits up and into the path of Imperial Iudex Commander Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol.

It’s all part of just the delightful kind of clever, confounding, murderous puzzle that Ana Dolabra literally seems to live for, as it begins with a diabolical bit of a locked room mystery that sends out roots and tendrils until it blossoms into a vast, far-reaching conspiracy that threatens to topple the Empire.

Only for the entire, province-spanning construct to collapse of its own weight into the person of one small man who has lost sight of his purpose – as well as his mind – in a web of greed of his own manufacture, leaving Ana Dolabra bemoaning the banality of his crime even while she brings down its perpetrator and saves the empire yet again.

As she was made to do.

Escape Rating A++: For this enthralled but still somewhat emotionally exhausted reader, A Drop of Corruption – at nearly 500 pages (I think that estimate is LOW) – represents a lost weekend. I dove into the story late on Saturday and didn’t emerge until Sunday evening, still mired in a book hangover that seems as if it will require every bit as much time to recover from as one of the psychotropic drug binges that aid Ana in her deliberations.

I picked up the first book in this series, The Tainted Cup, because I couldn’t resist the premise. It’s billed as a take-off, or perhaps homage would be a better word, to Holmes and Watson. But it’s set in an epic fantasy world – for epic in multiple senses of the word. I haven’t seen this combination done at all, let alone as well as it is here, since the late Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy series a VERY long time ago.

There has been a recent run on science fiction mysteries, including an SF Holmes and Watson-esq duo in Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, but fantasy mystery, not so much. (The exact opposite is happening in regards to fantasy, SF and romance, as fantasy romance is hugely on the uptick, but science fiction romance is ticking along at the same rate it has always been – meaning some and some really good but not a lot.)

What makes Ana and Kol’s investigations so fascinating – and so much weird fun to watch – are the way that the series combines their very peculiar characters – and Ana in particular is quite peculiar in multiple ways – the way their strengths and weakness shore each other up in a relationship that is clearly NEVER heading towards the romantic, AND the way they stand on the shoulders of Holmes and Watson without ever being slavishly devoted to the portrayal yet STILL managing to sharply delineate the outlines we know, love and expect.

At the same time, those character outlines are firmly set in a fantasy world that is wild and weird and strange in ways that are completely unexpected while still sitting in a frame that practically defines current epic fantasy.

There’s no epic battle between good and evil here. There’s just the evil that men, and women, and other creatures, do. Those evils are committed in a corrupt empire that is rotting from within and without – and those evils are battled by people, like Ana and Din, who are doing their damndest to stem the tide and make sure the Empire remains a place worth fighting for – in their own way.

Layered on top of all that is that there is no wand-waving magic. But there are magical potions, and concoctions, and decoctions, and grafts, and pills in a vast pharmacopeia that literally boggles the mind. It certainly boggles Ana’s mind whenever she’s in need of inspiration, stimulation, or simply something to stave off ennui.

That pharmacopeia serves as both the foundation of the empire and most likely the source of its eventual destruction. That drop of corruption in the title, is everywhere and in everything and is what makes this world go ‘round even as it brings it ever closer to the edge of annihilation. As it very nearly does in this entry in the series.

A series which I dearly hope is not even close to done yet. Because damn but the whole thing is mesmerizing and fascinating and more than reminiscent of a fever dream created by Holmes’ own 7 percent solution – if not something a bit stronger. And I’m absolutely riveted by every single part of it.

(Book three is listed in Goodreads but with no title and no date. Still, that gives me hope!)

So come for the mystery, because it is compelling from the moment its tiny locked room is opened, all the way through its mind-blowing vastness and right into its surprisingly small conclusion even as its consequences spill out to bankrupt a province and change the course of an empire. Stay to watch that drop of corruption cause gigantic ripples in the course of a vast empire. Then wait and hope with me for more in this compelling series.

#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!

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. ThompsonOne Level Down by Mary G. Thompson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 196
Published by Tachyon Publications on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Trapped in a child’s body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.
“Brilliant and beautiful! One Level Down is a perfectly executed gem of a book. Deeply satisfying and completely mesmerizing, it’s full of depth, heart, and thought. A remarkable achievement!”—Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop
Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.
Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.
But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot make the technician help her, the only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.

My Review:

For a rather short book, One Level Down tackles some really huge questions about the nature of reality.

The stage in which those questions play out is a tiny human colony in a not too distant future far from Earth. Or so it seems.

Because the colony of Bella Inizio both is and isn’t what it seems – and neither is founder Philip Harkin’s five year old daughter Ella. Come to think of it, Harkin isn’t exactly what he seems, either.

There’s a lot of that going around, like Russian nesting dolls, because that’s what Harkin’s Bella Inizio is, the smallest doll in a nest of simulated worlds built and maintained by Clawhammer Corporation and their rival, Pocket Parts.

As has been seen in plenty of SF stories, colonization is not easy. Golden worlds turn out to be tarnished, Class M planets turn out to have predatory inhabitants, worlds that looked perfect from light years away are discovered to contain deadly pathogens that can’t be seen from space.

That’s the case of the original Bella Inizio. The rich veins of precious minerals combined with a pristine ecology drew the colonists in – and the deadly gastrointestinal disease killed them off. Then Clawhammer swept in – as they did on so many other colony worlds – and made a deal with the remaining inhabitants. They bought the mineral rights to the planet, and in return set the colony up in a pocket universe, created to match the colonists’ requirements, safe from the disease that nearly wiped them out but locked away forever in a microcosm of the universe they once explored.

Except that Bella Inizio was owned in its entirely by one single homesteader – Philip Harkin. And his requirements for the pocket world were specially weighted in his favor and under his control – especially control of his daughter Ella, who had remained trapped, under his thumb, at the mercy of his fists, and perpetually five years old in body but not in mind – for the entire 58 years of the pocket world’s existence.

While she watched her father exert his life and death power over anyone who defied him in any way – but especially over anyone who questioned his treatment of Ella herself.

But Ella had plans and dreams of her own – plans that did not include staying trapped. And she had managed to gain just enough knowledge of the world outside to know that her opportunity was coming – if she could just figure out a way to seize it – and be free.

Escape Rating A-: There are not one but two really big questions that get tackled in this tiny novel. The larger – and more SFnal question – is the one about the nature of reality. The smaller but entirely too real question is about collaboration, and I don’t mean the good, cooperative kind. I mean the traitorous kind that leads to leaving one miserable and desperate little girl in the hands of a monster so that everyone else can have a happy life.

The universe of Harkin’s Bella Inizio is based on a conceptual framework that the universe is a seemingly vast simulation – a ginormous pocket world that is nested within an even bigger pocket world and could conceivably have an infinite number of small pocket worlds nested within it.

This idea gets played with from an entirely different angle in Brenda Peynado’s recent novella, Time’s Agent – but those pocket dimensions are discovered and not made-to-order. It could also be imagined as the kind of holodeck bubble that Moriarty is trapped in in the Star Trek Next Gen episode Ship in a Bottle. Or perhaps the computer simulation that is utilized in the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead.

In other words, this concept has been played with before, this time combined with more than a bit of corporate greed and an even more SFnal solution to the dangers of colonization than was faced in Mickey7.

What tips this particular story over the edge into both WOW and SCARY at the same time is the human dimension. Harkin is abusive to both his daughter and to the other colonists, who are, in their turn, abusing Ella as well so as not to upset their own personal applecarts. Or, to be more charitable – for certainly really awful definitions of charitable – are making the best of their own terrible situation by leaving her to suffer in worse. The way that the reader’s sympathy for them is stripped away at the end was rather breathtaking in its audacity.

As is Ella’s righteous takedown of the whole big ball of wrong in the surprising – but absolutely justified – conclusion.

#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!