Genre: fantasy romance

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

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#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 Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better 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!

A+ #BookReview: Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff + Giveaway!

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> Blogo-Birthday> Blogoversary> book reviews> Giveaways
A+ #BookReview: Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff + Giveaway!Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy horror, Dark Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, horror
Pages: 336
Published by DAW on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This cozy horror novel set in modern-day Toronto includes phenomenal characters, fantastic writing, and a queer romance—the perfect balance of dark and delightful
This stand-alone novel from the bestselling author of the Peacekeeper novels mixes the creepy with the charming for plenty of snarky, queer fun—for fans of T. Kingfisher, Grady Hendrix, and Darcy Coates
Generations ago, the founders of the idyllic town of Lake Argen made a deal with a dark force. In exchange for their service, the town will stay prosperous and successful, and keep outsiders out. And for generations, it’s worked out great. Until a visitor goes missing, and his wealthy family sends a private investigator to find him, and everything abruptly goes sideways.
Now, Cassidy Prewitt, town baker and part-time servant of the dark force (it’s a family business) has to contend with a rising army of darkness, a very frustrated town, and a very cute PI who she might just be falling for…and who might just be falling for her. And if they can survive their own home-grown apocalypse, they might even just find happiness together.
Queer, cozy, and with a touch of eldritch horror mixed in just for fun, this is a charming love story about a small-town baker, a quick-witted PI, and, yes, an ancient evil.

My Review:

Lake Argen is NOT Toronto – in spite of what the blurb says. In fact, that’s kind of the point of the place, that it is DEFINITELY NOT Toronto. Because what happens there, and how it happens, and why it happens, wouldn’t be remotely possible in a big city like Toronto.

So that’s precisely where Lake Argen is – remote from Toronto – or pretty much anywhere else. It’s a five and a half hour drive north of Toronto – not accounting for Toronto or Sudbury traffic along the way. Lake Argen is tiny and remote and near enough to Timmins, Ontario that it’s easy to guess where it would be on any map.

But of course, real maps, and real mapping, and pretty much anything of the outside world tend to ignore Lake Argen. Because that’s exactly the way that the people and the creatures in and around Lake Argen, the lake and the town and the silver mine that keeps them both going, want it to be and make sure it stays.

There’s something there that makes certain that anyone who DOES manage to find Lake Argen forgets the place and anything that happened there the moment they leave. Which is where the story begins, as a pretentious little rich boy has managed to overcome all of the town’s protections to sacrifice himself at one of the town’s sacred spots at dawn on the Summer Solstice. The body – or at least the locals presume it’s a body – has been whisked away by the sacrifice, into The Dark. Which is a real thing and not just a euphemism for disappearing a body. Travis Brayden has been sucked into elsewhere – and only Cassidy Prewitt is as worried about that as everyone should have been about exactly what that might mean.

In the near term it’s going to bring out the Ontario Provincial Police, because pretentious rich dudes have equally pretentious rich families who are going to demand to know what happened to their spoiled scions. The police can be persuaded – read that as magically induced – to believe that the idiot got eaten by a bear.

It happens. It really does. Maybe not quite as often as people think it does, but it does. It’s plausible enough to close the case file for the cops. It’s even happened before near Lake Argen, so it works all the better for being an established possibility.

But families down in Toronto can’t be charmed the way that the OPP visiting Lake Argen can. Brayden’s grandmother wants answers. So she hires, not a PI as the blurb says, but a currently unemployed teacher who needs the money badly enough to not question the dubious job she’s been given.

To go to Lake Argen, poke around for a week, and come back with what she’s learned so she can give the poor, dear, boy’s old granny some closure.

And if you believe that I have a Bigfoot to sell you. Not literally, not even in Lake Argen. But there’s certainly something behind the town’s fascinating history, near-complete isolation and surprising prosperity. Something that the town is determined to keep from any potential incomers until they’ve earned the town’s trust.

Which Melanie Solvich really shouldn’t, but somehow does anyway in spite of the shadiness of her mission. Or at least the trust of Cassidy Prewitt, to her confusion, delight and heartbreak.

Which is when the town of Lake Argen reveals its true colors, and things get really, really interesting – and very, very dark indeed.

Escape Rating A+: Direct Descendant was everything I hoped for from this author, which is what got me here in the first place.

It didn’t matter that this is being marketed as horror. I didn’t even notice when I picked it up. All I cared about was the author. I’ve loved so many of the stories she’s written, including but absolutely not limited to the Vicki Nelson/Blood Price/Tony Foster series and especially the Confederation/Valor/Peacekeeper  series.

I was expecting this to be more Blood Price, at least in the sense that I was expecting urban fantasy – and that’s actually close to what I got. (Confederation/Valor/Peacekeeper is SF and the cover of this book was enough to tell me we weren’t going to go there. Not that I’d mind, you understand, not at all, if the author did go back there because that series was AWESOME.)

Direct Descendant turned out to be awesome as well, just not in the same way. Which is even better.

This is one of those stories that is best described through the book blender – and it’s going to take a big blender to fit everything in order for this to be what comes out. The blurb is right about T. Kingfisher, Grady Hendrix, and Darcy Coates being part of the mix, but I’d personally also throw in Jennifer Thorne’s Lute, Alix E. Harrow’s Starling House, Anne Bishop’s World of the Others – because The Dark is certainly Other with a capital O – along with Hazel Beck’s Witchlore and even a touch of Annelise Ryan’s Monster Hunter Mysteries. (If you’re looking for readalikes, those are ALL hints.)

The story sits right at the crossroads where horror and dark fantasy meet and nod warily at each other, while urban fantasy leans against a fencepost and gives both of them a bit of side-eye.

How horrifying the horror is depends on how one sees The Dark – and yes, that’s capitalized. The Dark is certainly not good, but it’s not really EVIL, either. It’s OTHER, and its motivations and morals are its own based on its own world which is not ours.

That doesn’t mean that humans haven’t and won’t do TERRIBLE and EVIL things to bargain with it, serve it, or attempt to conquer it. The history of Lake Argen as well as its current, totally anomalous, health and prosperity, are all direct results of a group of humans doing something really evil to get The Dark’s attention. An attention that their descendants still benefit from.

A more benign method of getting The Dark’s attention might have worked equally as well, but that’s not the kind of people the Founders were, so that’s not what they tried. And not that they, personally, didn’t get exactly what their methods deserved while their descendants reap the benefits.

What tips the scale, at least for this reader, over into urban fantasy or even, believe it or not, cozy fantasy, is the way that everyone in town is determined to do their duty, serve the town and make a real and really supportive community. It’s a truly lovely place – if you can stand the weather and the isolation and the generally creepy vibe. But most of the time, the weather is the town’s biggest problem by a considerable margin.

The romance between Cassidy and Melanie, while it is inevitable, is also utterly adorable. And it’s the perfect vehicle for explaining just how things work in Lake Argen AND finally getting to the bottom of what’s threatening the town. That the eldritch horror who brings the warning is also the cutest little thing ever described in the pages of a “horror” story puts an exclamation point on just how cozy this horror/fantasy really is – especially when it’s his nagging that finally saves the day. Or night. Or just Lake Argen’s symbiotic relationship with The Dark.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

As you can see from the above review, I LOVED Direct Descendant – and it’s far, far, far from the first time that I have fallen hard for this author’s work. Which makes the works of Tanya Huff a perfect candidate for one of this year’s Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week giveaways.

Therefore, on this the FOURTH day of this year’s celebration, today’s giveaway is the winner’s choice of ANY book by Tanya Huff in any format, up to $30 (US) which should be enough to get Direct Descendant if you’re looking for either a terrific introduction OR you’re a fan like me and you’ve already got everything else!

Good luck with today’s giveaway and remember that there’s more to come!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

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

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#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 Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better 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!

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

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca ThorneTea You at the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne
Narrator: Jessica Threet
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Tomes and Tea #3
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 41 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#BookReview: Idolfire by Grace Curtis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#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 Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better 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.

A+ #BookReview: Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Swordheart by T. KingfisherSwordheart by T. Kingfisher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: World of the White Rat #3
Pages: 448
Published by Bramble Romance on November 27, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The delightful charm of The Princess Bride meets the delicious bodyguard romance of From Blood and Ashin this cozy fantasy romance from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher

Halla has unexpectedly inherited the estate of a wealthy uncle. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with money-hungry relatives full of devious plans for how to wrest the inheritance away from her.

While locked in her bedroom, Halla inspects the ancient sword that's been collecting dust on the wall since before she moved in. Out of desperation, she unsheathes it―and suddenly a man appears. His name is Sarkis, he tells her, and he is an immortal warrior trapped in a prison of enchanted steel.

My Review:

Swordheart begins the way that a LOT of T. Kingfisher’s fantasies seem to begin, with a woman coming to the unwelcome realization that the only way she’s going to get out of the trouble she has found herself in through absolutely no fault of her own is to put on her ‘big girl panties’ and deal with it.

And that she doesn’t have nearly as much time as she’d like to locate those panties – because she hasn’t seen them in ages. If ever. Or in Halla’s case, whether she has ever owned a pair in her whole, entire life.

What she does have is a really big problem. Lucky for her, she has an equally big sword to cut through that problem. And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs a tale. And, quite probably and totally deservedly, more than a few miscreants along the way.

This shouldn’t be the beginning of an adventure story, but it is. Not because Halla sees herself as having EVER been built for adventures, but because that’s what happens to mousey women with overbearing relatives who have just come into possession of sizable estates due to the largesse of dead relatives who believe they are doing a ‘good thing’. And they are, or they would be, if the world were a bit more fair or if the rest of their remaining family were a bit less grasping.

But that’s NEVER the case, is it?

Halla has been keeping house for her great-uncle-by-marriage for over a decade. The man was a querulous old bastard, but he took her in when his nephew, her husband, died young and left her penniless. He gave Halla purpose, food and board and lodging, and in return she kept his house until he died and he left her his ENTIRE estate. Not that she hadn’t earned it, not that she didn’t deserve it, but her greedy, grasping, overbearing aunt-by-marriage and said aunt’s utterly obedient and utterly-under-his-mother’s- thumb son (with clammy hands) had plans for the old man’s property that can still be brought within their grasping grasp by marrying Halla to her cousin. Not that she’ll survive long after that.

Which is where the sword comes in. A sword that Halla intends to plunge through her own heart – if she can just figure out how to make THAT work. But first she has to draw the sword.

And then she has to figure out what to do with the MAN who appears in her room in a flash of light to Halla’s complete and utter embarrassment – and his. Because she’s half naked to get her clothing out of the way of the plunge and his heart has just started beating – for her.

Escape Rating A+: Swordheart was just so damn much fun. I want to cackle in glee at the very thought of this story. In fact, I still am. This turned out to be one of those books that I read in a day and didn’t even care that I was shedding used tissues by the score because I had a cold. I didn’t even care about the cold. I was just gone and really happy to be so.

Halla reminds me so, so much of some of the author’s other protagonists, especially Hester Chatham from A Sorceress Comes to Call. Who, in turn, seemed like the sister from another mister to Miss Percy from Quenby Olson’s, Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons, meaning that if you liked any one of these three you’re going to love the others just as much.

I’ve also read several other books about swords either with a person inside or swords with minds of their own. The first I remember is the sword Need from the Vows and Honor trilogy in Mercedes’ Lackey’s long-running Valdemar series. So the idea isn’t new, exactly, but it’s certainly used to marvelous effect in Swordheart.

Also, Swordheart itself isn’t exactly new. If it sounds familiar, that’s because the book was originally published in 2018 with a considerably more understated cover. Putting it in front of readers again with THIS gorgeous cover is fan-damn-tastic.

Because the book is just so good and so much fun. I adored Halla – not so much at the beginning when she seems to be a bit of a doormat – but once she takes her life into her own hands – AT LAST – she’s terrific. Because she’s scared and has doubts and admits that she doesn’t know what she’s doing and is WAY outside her comfort zone but moves forward anyway.

Halla should be the patron saint of ‘fake it ‘til she makes it’ in the World of the White Rat.

While the adventure that Halla and Sarkis – the man trapped in the sword – find themselves undertaking is terrific, it’s the romance that makes this book sing. Not just because it’s understated – although it is – and not even because this book stands firmly on both its literary feet in that the fantasy would hold up without the romance and the romance would hold up without the fantasy. It’s that the romance feels oh-so-real and doesn’t shy away from the problems inherent in their relationship.

AND of course because it’s a romance between people who have years and mileage and baggage and fall in love not in spite of all of that but because of all that. They are the right people for each other NOW, where they might not have been at any previous time in either of their lives.

That this is now grouped into a whole entire series that begins with the Clocktaur War series in Clockwork Boys, pulls in this lovely story of Swordheart and moves right along into the marvelous Saint of Steel series (Paladin’s Grace, etc.) just makes the depths of the worldbuilding so much richer and deeper. I loved that we got yet another terrific character from the Temple of the White Rat in this one, and that it’s the LAWYER of all people who ends up saving the day for everyone.

(I have to confess that I sincerely hope that one of these days the author gets around to telling Bishop Beartongue’s story. Because she’s fascinating and OMG that has to be a doozy.)

In short, although I seldom am, I loved Swordheart and my only regret is that I didn’t read it sooner. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Clockwork Boys rapidly ascending the virtually towering TBR pile to tide me over while I wait for What Stalks the Deep, the next book in the author’s Sworn Soldier series, to come out in the fall.

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

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The River Has Roots by Amal El-MohtarThe River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Narrator: Gem Carmella
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy, fantasy romance, retellings
Pages: 130
Length: 3 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#BookReview: The Baby Dragon Cafe by A. T. Qureshi

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Baby Dragon Cafe by A. T. QureshiThe Baby Dragon Café (The Baby Dragon, #1) by A.T. Qureshi, Aamna Qureshi
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, dragons, fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Baby Dragon #1
Pages: 317
Published by Avon on January 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The perfect read for fans of Pumpkin Spice Café and Legends and Lattes!
When Saphira opened up her café for baby dragons and their humans, she wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult to keep the fires burning. It turns out, young dragons are not the best magical animals to keep in a café, and replacing all that burnt furniture is costing Saphira more than she can afford from selling dragon-roasted coffee.
Aiden is a local gardener, and local heart-throb, more interested in his plants than actually spending time with his disobedient baby dragon. When Aiden walks into Saphira’s café, he has a genius idea – he'll ask Saphira to train his baby dragon, and he'll pay her enough to keep the café afloat.
Saphira’s happy-go-lucky attitude doesn’t seem to do anything but irritate the grumpy-but-gorgeous Aiden, except that everywhere she goes, she finds him there. But can this dragon café owner turn her fortunes around, and maybe find love along the way?

My Review:

Saphira is in over her head – as first time business owners often are. The cafe she dreamed about owning is up and running – and running her ragged. She’s also discovered that living the dream is quite a bit different from dreaming that dream, which is where the story begins.

Like many of us who love reading or watching stories about friendly dragons, stories like The Dragonriders of Pern, Fourth Wing and How to Train Your Dragon, the idea of living in a place where dragons are really real and pretty much everywhere seems like, well, a dream come true.

Saphira lives in just such a place, Starshine Valley. Dragons really do fly overhead ALL THE TIME. But only the wealthy, powerful Drakkon families actually have their own dragons. For most people dragons are out of reach in more ways than one.

Which is where Saphira’s dream, the Baby Dragon Café, comes in. Baby dragons, just like any other intelligent creatures that live among human populations, need training. In the dragon’s particular case, they need to be trained to BE dragons, the gorgeous, HUGE flying and fire-breathing creatures they will become, while at the same time learning how to behave with their humans and the things, people and places that their humans hold dear.

Saphira envisioned her café as a place where baby dragons and their humans could come in to socialize while they’re having a drink and a snack. She was thinking of just how adorably cute baby dragons are. She rather underestimated just how accidentally destructive they can be while learning to control their fire-breathing as well as their gangly limbs.

Her insurance isn’t remotely covering the destruction.

Which is where Aiden Sterling and HIS misbehaving baby dragon, Sparky, come in. Literally. It begins with Aiden and Saphira believing they can fix each other’s problems – or at least their most obvious problems.

He desperately needs someone to train his baby dragon. A dragon who is the living embodiment of his younger brother, a charming, devil-may-care rogue of a dragon racer who died doing what he loved – upholding the family’s reputation as star dragon racers. Which, as much as Aiden loved his brother, Aiden himself wants no part of.

Saphira needs help. And money. And help. Which sounds more mercenary than it should – or than it turns out to be. The baby dragons she loves are tearing her café apart piece by piece, eating through her savings at an alarming rate. Without help, she’s going to lose her café, which embodies the dream that she and her late grandmother shared.

AND Saphira sees training Sparky as her likely one and only chance to bond – even a little bit – with a dragon of her (very briefly) own. People like her, people from outside the Drakkon families, have no avenues for having a dragon of their own.

And that’s EXACTLY the way that the powers-that-be of the Drakkon families like it. But Sparky has a mind of HIS own, too – and the “puppy dog eyes” to make it happen even if he has to train his own human to behave along the way.

Escape Rating B: I’ve written a LOT about how this story gets set up because it felt like there were a lot of stories thrown into this particular book blender to create The Baby Dragon Cafe.

The first (and second) are pretty obvious, right there at the top of the blurb. This is very much a cozy fantasy romance, and it is a bit in the shadow of Legends & Lattes – but mostly because that book popularized the cozy fantasy genre – something we all may be looking for a lot more of in the months ahead. (I certainly read this now (the ebook is available NOW and it’s only $2.99) instead of waiting for the July 1 publication date for the paperback) because I was looking for warm and cozy reads with happy endings this week.

But Legends & Lattes isn’t the exact comparison that leaps to mind. The Baby Dragon Cafe reminds me a LOT more of The Dallergut Dream Department Store and The Full Moon Coffee Shop in that all three worlds are very much contemporary worlds just dipped in magic. Dallergut has the dream shop AND the contemporary city that serves it, while Full Moon Coffee Shop is a magical place that drops in on the “real” world. And Full Moon is also steeped in the love of animals for their people, as this story is.

The romance wrapped around Saphira’s Baby Dragon Café is very, very cozy, but the magic of the world reads more like a coffee shop alternate universe fanfic than it does a contemporary small-town romance like the other book mentioned in the blurb, The Pumpkin Spice Café seems to be. Your reading mileage may definitely vary.

However, that leads back around to the love story, which is cute and sweet and kind of familiar in its friends-to-lovers romance between a shy and somewhat reclusive rich guy who leaves the airs and graces to his family and kind of forgets that he’s not really JUST an ordinary person and the woman he falls for who he recognizes as extraordinary even as the traditional society he comes from sees her as lesser because she’s not “one of them”.

I’m a bit torn about the romance. On the good side of that tear, it’s cozy, it’s sweet, little Sparky does an adorable job of being, well, adorable, as well as serving as a combination of motivation, glue and chaperon for his two humans. On the less good side of that ledger, Saphira’s relationship with Aiden has the potential to get VERY squicky as she’s working FOR him, and it does get squicky in other ways as he’s just SO VERY CLUELESS about all the ways that their little corner of the world sees her and their relationship.

On the neutral side, the story reads as if the dragons could have been dogs and it would have nearly as well. But I still LOVE the idea that it’s dragons and I wish we knew more about how this world works because the idea of it is just as adorable as it seemed in the beginning.

In the end, for this reader, Sparky and the baby dragons carry the day and the story. And I have hope that the one part of this story that niggled at me, the potential squickiness of their relationship and Aiden’s general cluelessness about his own position of privilege, will be less of a factor in the upcoming second book in the series, The Baby Dragon Bakery, as we’ve already met the main characters and know that they start the story on the same level, as well as the same level of cluelessness about whether they’re just best friends or have the potential for something more!

#BookReview: Love in Other Worlds edited by Tracy Cooper Posey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Love in Other Worlds edited by Tracy Cooper PoseyLove In Other Worlds (Christmas Romance Digest Book 2) by Tracy Cooper-Posey, Taylen Carver, Meg Napier, Michelle Moras, Erin M. Hartshorn, Chelsea Mueller, M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantasy, short stories
Series: Christmas Romance Digest #2
Pages: 274
Published by Stories Rule Press on November 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A Magic-filled collection of Christmas-themed portal fantasy romance novelettes

Slipping through a portal to another strange world, filled with magical beings and fantasy creatures, and finding true love is challenge enough for any self-respecting hero or heroine. How much more magic and mischief can Christmas deliver to transworld-travellers and their loved ones?

Here are seven delightful Christmas romances featuring fantasy worlds reached from ours via portals of all varieties, where our heroes and heroines struggle to find true love at this most magical time of the year.

"Veilbound" by Taylen Carver
"Winter Fruit" by Chelsea Mueller
"Second Christmas Solstice" by Meg Napier
"The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy" by M.L. Buchman
"Crowning the Snow Queen" by Michelle Moras
"Ornaments of Ice" by Erin M. Hartshorn
"Blackmont Bitters" by Tracy Cooper-Posey

The courage to step into another world brings risks…and sweet rewards, made sweeter by the joys of Christmas.

My Review:

I’m always on the lookout for Hanukkah romances this time of year, as there aren’t many. If you’re looking for the same, or at least curious, I highly recommend Love You a Latke and Eight Nights to Win Her Heart. I’ve also heard very good things about Magical Meet Cute and I’m thinking about squeezing that in this Hanukkah season – which lasts until January 2, 2025 this year.

The above is NOT a non sequitur, as I picked this collection up for just one story, “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman. He’s one of my favorite authors – as evidenced by my review of his latest thriller, Wedgetail, earlier this week. But I also love ‘portal fantasies’, as this collection most definitely is, so the idea of a whole book filled with stories of people who get a peek into worlds that aren’t QUITE our own, (think Narnia but for grown-ups), mixed with stories of holidays set on or around the winter solstice (December 21 this year) also sounded like a lovely thing to read this holiday season.

And so, we have seven solstice stories. One is that Hanukkah story. Some of the others are Christmas, at least sorta/kinda, and some are explicitly the solstice. I enjoyed the mix of perspectives and wish that the blurb did a better job of reflecting it. (Again, I’m not in full agreement with the blurb of a book I just read. It’s been that kind of month.)

Most of the stories are fantasy, which makes sense now that I think about it. Two of the stories are by the same author, as Taylen Carver is a pen name for Tracy Cooper-Posey, the author of the final story in the collection as well as its editor.

Because there are only seven stories here, and because I was having a good time reading them even if the individual stories didn’t always work as well as I’d hoped, I’ve given a mini-review and rating for each story individually.

For the collection as a whole, after some extremely fudgy math, I would rate the collection as a whole as Escape Rating B.

“Veilbound” by Taylen Carver (aka Tracy Cooper-Posey)
Two grumpy, anti-social guardians of portals guard openings to the veil that keep the world in balance. Guardians bound to SEPARATE and DISTANT portals, thankyouverymuch. Vera Thorn and Kellan Delacroix clearly don’t like each other much – although it seems they have history as well as a shared responsibility to keep their world in balance with the one on the other side of the veil. A balance that has been violently thrown out of whack in a way that will destroy everything if they don’t put aside whatever it is between them long enough to cross the veil and FIX IT. The fantasy parts reminded me a LOT of Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest, so the fantasy worldbuilding of this worked well for me even if the analogy didn’t completely hold true. The romance worked less well, because we just didn’t get enough of it to make this really feel like a romance. But it also felt like it got as close to a romance as these particular characters were able to get – which was not very but possibly much, much, later. Escape Rating B+

“Winter Fruit” by Chelsea Mueller
This is a much, much, MUCH more romantic version of the Greek myth about Hades and Persephone. Also a whole lot sexier and all of it blissfully consensual as well as sensual, which the original myth definitely is NOT. This story is a bit of the opposite of the first, as the worldbuilding is minimal and the romance is EVERYTHING, but then we already know this story so it doesn’t need much to get going. So to speak. Ahem. Escape Rating A-

“Second Christmas Solstice” by Meg Napier
This story is SF, and I think it needed something it just didn’t have. The SFnal aspects were VERY much handwavium, and the romance felt nebulous. Danica was a miracle to the parents who adopted her, but she’s also a refugee from an alternate, adjacent-ish world. Someone comes to retrieve her on Christmas, and she’s just not nearly skeptical enough. For SF, it’s way too much woo-woo magic and feelings and fate. TL;DR this just didn’t work for me. Escape Rating C

“The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman
This is the story I picked up this collection FOR, and it did not disappoint. It also confirms my reflections from both of the Hanukkah romances I read this season, that the eight nights of Hanukkah create the perfect length of time for a quick but not too quick romance to feel just right. This particular romance is the story of a holiday miracle of a romantic match that also makes a terrific recipe – and is one as well. Aaron has inherited his grandfather’s bakery and his grandfather’s recipe for root beer pretzels – but the recipe card is faded and the handwriting is indecipherable. Unbeknownst to Aaron as the holiday begins, one of the key ingredients for those pretzels was the small-batch root beer that Elizabeth’s Great Uncle Sam used to make – and she’s just inherited his small bottling operation. With the help of an adorable little tenth-ranked angel, and a bit of magical peering into the past through the Hanukkah lights reflected in their menorahs, Aaron and Elizabeth manage to find each other, the secret ingredients to each other’s recipes, and the keys to each other’s hearts. Escape Rating A

“Crowning the Snow Queen” by Michelle Moras
This story reads as if Cinderella and The Bachelor had a book baby – or at least a short story baby, even though the main character is named after one of the roles in The Nutcracker ballet. This story also feels like the fantasy version of that SF story in this collection, “Second Christmas Solstice”, in the way that Freya is rather abruptly presented with the fact that, just like Danni in “Solstice”, she has family on the other side of a mysterious – and in Freya’s case outright magical – barrier that give her entree into an entirely ‘other’ world. In this case the world of the fey. This one works a bit better, at least for this reader, than “Solstice”, in that the worldbuilding is able to borrow a bit more from fairy tales and stories we already know to fill in its corners. The romance also has a bit more time to work with, so it’s a bit insta but in a way that can be at least partially chalked up to the magic of the fairy kingdom. Escape Rating B

“Ornaments of Ice” by Erin M. Hartshorn
This one is my second favorite after “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy”. It’s short and sweet and self-contained. It’s also simply lovely, and a true portal fantasy as Bran literally steps through a portal imbued in a Christmas Tree ornament, finds a rather different and considerably less royal fairyland than the one in “Crowning the Snow Queen”, takes a magical walk through that fairyland with a fairy who doesn’t quite feel like she belongs, just as he feels like he doesn’t completely belong among his people. As they journey together, they discover that they have bigger magic together than they do separately, and that they can find a place where they both belong by realizing that where they belong is together, on both sides of the portal. Escape Rating A-

“Blackmont Bitters” by Tracy Cooper-Posey
I ended with mixed feelings about this one, mostly because even as I read it it felt like it was a piece of something much, much bigger, as if a serious chunk of the worldbuilding had been or would be done elsewhere and that the reader was just supposed to ‘roll with it’ in this short story. I didn’t discover until afterwards that my feeling was correct, as this story is set in the world the author created in The Branded Rose Prophecy. So this story read as if an attempt was being made to make this shorter work stand alone that doesn’t quite, well, work. It’s a bit of a tease in its way, as the world sounds fascinating, dangerous and more than a bit down the other leg of the trousers of time from our own, a world in which the Norse gods came back, or were found again, or a bit of both, and the Earth that results from their return seems fascinating and very techno-magic oriented but I needed more of the setup to make this story work as the tension and tragedy in the romance was all based in the worldbuilding I didn’t have nearly enough of. Escape Rating C+

Grade A #BookReview: Fangs So Bright and Deadly by Piper J. Drake

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Fangs So Bright and Deadly by Piper J. DrakeFangs So Bright & Deadly (Mythwoven, #2) by Piper J. Drake
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, urban fantasy
Series: Mythwoven #2
Pages: 304
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A Kitsune, a Kumiho, a Witch, and a danger not even their combined magic is strong enough to defy. 
Marie Xiao lives a double life, moonlighting as a freelance consultant in corporate Seattle even as she dedicates herself—and her powers as a witch—to chasing down objects of myth and magic before they can be used to harm humankind. She carefully guards the bridges between worlds and has never once been tempted to stray.
Until she catches the eye of a pair-bonded kitsune and kumiho and her whole world is thrown into chaos.
Japanese and Korean fox spirits Yamamoto Kuro and Joseph Choe have been hoping to cross paths with Marie since their first chance meeting at an artifact retrieval gone decidedly wrong. They may work for Marie's enemy, but they don't see any reason why they can't mingle a little work and play…especially when a (literal) dead man waltzes into their impromptu reunion, raising intriguing questions about a deeper magic that may be afoot. Temporarily teaming up, the trio investigate the unusual unrest…but as loyalties begin to shift and lines blur, Kuro, Joe, and Marie may find themselves at the precipice of something none of them are prepared to face…or deny.

My Review:

This second book in the Mythwoven series, after last year’s Wings Once Cursed and Bound, is every bit as fascinating and downright captivating as its predecessor.

We met Marie Xiao, nature witch and member of the Darke Consortium family, in the spellbinding – and spell breaking – conclusion of that first book, as the members of the Consortium came to rescue of kinnaree Peeraphan Rahttana from a collector who planned to ‘acquire’ the rare Thai bird princess for nasty and nefarious purposes.

As it turned out, during that operation, Marie needed a bit of rescue of her own, provided by two beings she knew had been working for Babel, an organization dedicated to acquiring magical objects for the purpose of sowing chaos among the human population.

She was grateful for the rescue but didn’t trust the two nine-tailed foxes who helped her – out of either the goodness or the mischief in their hearts. Whatever made the kitsune and gumiho come to her aid – she wasn’t able to forget how much the two male supernatural creatures captivated her senses. Even though she ALSO couldn’t forget that were present on the scene at the behest of her own organization’s enemies.

So when she encounters Kuro and Joe on the streets of Seattle, she’s more than a bit wary of their motives. And so she should be.

She’s just learned that the client she believed was mundane is, in fact, playing with dangerous artifacts they shouldn’t have ever had access to – an access that the Darke Consortium will need to revoke at the first opportunity.

It’s clear that Kuro and Joe are on the trail of the artifacts that Marie has just discovered – but for a much less benign reason. Or so it seems.

But Joe and Kuro haven’t forgotten Marie any more than she has them. Unfortunately for all of them, Babel hasn’t forgotten that the foxes’ protection of Marie may have obeyed the letter of their contractual obligations but certainly violated the spirit of it. And that the fox spirits need to pay for that transgression – with the very thing that makes them who and what they are – and as painfully as possible.

In that pain, and in their desperate need to be rid of the curse AND Babel, Kuro, Joe and Marie find a common cause, a common purpose – and the possibility of something even more precious. All they need to do is hoodwink Babel while revealing the deepest of truths to each other.

Escape Rating A: The fun thing about this series so far is the way that it manages to take the formulas for urban fantasy and paranormal romance – formulas that are tried and true and familiar – and make them fresh and new by adding in the panoply of mythical creatures and legends from places that weren’t touched on back in urban fantasy’s heyday AND then combining those legends with romantic possibilities that just weren’t publishable back then.

And then adds just a touch of cozy by bringing it all back to a found family where the vampire and the werewolf are the most mundane members of the crew. While Marie doesn’t get stuck in that dreadful ‘torn between two lovers’ melodrama, nor does she fall into the terrible romantic triangle trap. Instead, their happy ever after is a triad – and it’s wonderful!

But this isn’t just a romance, it’s also very much part of both urban fantasy and action adventure. If Anna Hackett’s Treasure Hunter Security and Simon R. Green’s Gideon Sable series(es) had a book baby, Mythwoven would be it. The Darke Consortium hunts down the weird and the mystical and gets it out of the hands of people who either have no clue or have entirely too much of one.

What made this entry in the series particularly fun was that it was a bit of both, with a heaping helping of a fascinating new magical system, a touch of Egyptian mythology, and references to not one but two great movies, Ladyhawke and The Sting. A combination that should not even be possible but works oh-so-well.

The Mythwoven series is clearly not done – and this reader is VERY glad of it. So, even though the next book isn’t yet on the horizon, I’ll certainly be looking to put it on my TBR pile the moment it appears!