Genre: gaslamp

A+ #BookReview: Legends & Lattes: The Graphic Novel by Travis Baldree, Samuel Sattin, Shanti Rittgers and Sarah Webb

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews> Graphic Novel Review> graphic novels
A+ #BookReview: Legends & Lattes: The Graphic Novel by Travis Baldree, Samuel Sattin, Shanti Rittgers and Sarah WebbLegends & Lattes: The Graphic Novel by Samuel Sattin, Travis Baldree, Shanti Rittgers, Sarah Webb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, gaslamp, graphic novel
Series: Legends & Lattes
Pages: 208
Published by Ten Speed Graphic on October 6, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A stunning graphic novel adaptation of the New York Times bestselling BookTok sensation and beloved cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes
“The modern classic about starting over truly comes to life in this warm adaptation of Baldree’s cozy masterpiece. I wish I could live in every panel.”—Matt Dinniman, New York Times bestselling author of Dungeon Crawler Carl and Operation Bounce House
After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword. The battle-weary orc aims to start afresh, opening the city of Thune's first-ever coffee shop. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success, not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her dreams a reality, she won't be able to go it alone. After all, the true rewards of an uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether they are drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup―Viv may find something deeper here than she ever imagined...
This full-color graphic novel adaptation brings the high fantasy and low stakes of this beloved story to vibrant life as it's never been seen before.

My Review:

It’s been FOUR years since I read the first, the original, the foundation of the current cozy fantasy spree, the one and only Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. It’s the story that started the trend, the pattern on which all the following cozy fantasies are based, or are playing off of, or are turning on their heads. Or all of the above.

And it was just as much fun this second go around, especially because this graphic novel version is a whole new way of getting back into a beloved story. (Also it was great to meet Viv and Tandri and Cal and especially Thimble again for the first time.)

For those who haven’t met Viv and company yet, well, this is a great way to get acquainted. Or if you have, re-acquainted, as I did.

The story, of course, is the same. Viv, retired orc mercenary and aspiring coffee shop proprietor, arrives in backwater Thune with a dream she’s hoping to fulfill, a sword she’s planning never to use again, and a stone that she hopes will bring her the luck she needs to make it all happen.

Which it does, just not in precisely the way that the legends would have it. And turns out to be part of the deliciousness of the whole thing.

First Viv turns a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Well, not exactly but the cliche is there if you look. She buys a decrepit livery stable, hires a grumpy hob-of-all-building-trades, and turns an eyesore into a coffee shop by the literal sweat of both their brows.

All she has to do is introduce Thune to the marvels of coffee, its taste, its aroma, and especially its shot of caffeine. (There’s a college nearby, it’s all gonna work if Viv can just hang on long enough – which is, of course, the real challenge.)

The story is about Viv putting the pieces together, one helper, one customer, one good deed and one temptation to pick up her sword and resisting that temptation at a time.

Just as in the original text, that story is surprisingly captivating. It’s all in the little details of getting a business up and running and hoping against hope that it will all work. It’s also a lot of work. Most importantly for Viv and the story, it’s about gathering the right set of good, solid, helping people around her and letting them do their thing.

The drudgery of the process, which was more absorbing than one might think in text, was even better in this graphic novel as the pictures literally do speak a thousand words. Or at least several hundred each.

It was great to see all the characters, and not just Viv and Tandri. (I didn’t have clear pictures in my head for either Cal or Thimble but now I do and that’s just marvelous.) My only complaint about the graphic novel, and it isn’t so much a complaint as it is a bemoaning that technology just isn’t advanced enough to waft the smell of Thimble’s cinnamon rolls out of the pages. Because that would be tempting and awesome and awesomely tempting all at once.

All the things I loved about this story were still there. Especially the delightfully karmic ending about that lucky stone.

Anyone who has been meaning to read Legends & Lattes but hasn’t gotten a ‘round tuit’ yet will find this graphic version a quick AND delightful way of learning just what it’s all about and why it’s become an instant classic.

Readers who have visited Thune before will love the opportunity to return for a visit that lets them view all their old favorite haunts from a slightly new perspective. This reader certainly did.

Escape Rating A+: I loved this the first time I read it. I’ve enjoyed all the prequels and sequels so far and am looking forward to more. This graphic novel was the perfect opportunity to go back and remind myself of just how good this story was, what made it so good as to start a whole new trend AND remind myself of just how much fun a quiet and cozy fantasy could be.

This story has everything we’ve come to expect from cozy fantasy, a hero turning over a new leaf, a dream fulfilled, a tough but not violent struggle to reinvent the self, a loveable but motley crew of competent and able assistants, a touch of romance and dramatic tension that gets resolved through cleverness – and a bit of karmic justice – instead of blood and vengeance.

All in very much all, a delightful, absorbing and utterly cozy read. Again.

Grade A #BookReview: Wickhills by Premee Mohamed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Wickhills by Premee MohamedWickhills by Premee Mohamed
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery, gaslamp
Pages: 320
Published by Tor Books on September 8, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the dangerous magical city of Wickhills, a streetwise secret agent is tasked with protecting a foreign defector from his pursuers... even at the threat of war.
Looking after a defecting scientist should have been Ferec's easiest mission. But now he's on the run from the intelligence agency she works for, dodging a handler who might have gone rogue, and relying on a secret patchwork of illicit resources and dodgy contacts. Turns out his defector might be carrying an apocalypse-level magical weapon ― and protecting it requires Ferec and his team to go underground, literally. Down here, the rules are very different... and the tense peace between every city in the world will shatter unless Ferec can drag their darkest secrets into the light.

My Review:

I picked this up because I’ve read a lot of the author’s work in the past few years and really enjoyed it. Howsomever, based on my reading of her Annual Migration of Clouds novella series and The Butcher of the Forest and some of her other short works, I was expecting, well, a short work. Which Wickhills definitely is not.

What I got was better, thicker, richer, denser and with a whole lot more to chew on both while reading and after I finished. If it WAS finished, which is more than a bit of an open question – but in an excellent way.

Okay, I KNOW I need to explain that.

The world of Wickhills, ESPECIALLY the city of Wickhills in that world, is very much urban fantasy AND gaslamp fantasy. Wickhills is a city, but it’s also a country. Not exactly but really, truly. The world is a bit like that of The Starless Crown or, weirdly and possibly more likely, the world of the Forever Desert. There are relatively few cities – or other safe places to live – and they are all almost completely isolated from one another. People believe that isolation happened more or less naturally as it did in The Starless Crown, but at the end there are hints that it might have been like the Forever Desert in that people believe the spaces between are impassible but they’re actually just very difficult AND policed by forces who are determined to keep people separated.

But it’s also a world like Elantra, in that not all the ‘people’ are human people. They’re all ‘people’ but some are manticores (Ferec’s boss is a manticore) there are avian-type people, gargoyle-type people, aquatic monster-type people and vampires. The vampires start seeming fairly ordinary compared to some of the other folks who make up Wickhills.

In other words, there’s a LOT going on just figuring out what’s going on. And then there’s the story.

Ferec is a member of Wickhills’ Secret Police. Of course they don’t call themselves that or they’d never be able to recruit anyone. And Ferec has spent nearly ten years convincing himself that Seaborne ISN’T the secret police. That they’re the equivalent of the CIA, or the FBI, or some combination thereof. (But if they’re the FBI they’re the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover at his MOST paranoid.)

So underneath the story about spies and secret agents and weapons of mutually assured destruction, there’s a story about Ferec coming to terms, or NOT, with who he’s REALLY been working for and the kind of work he’s ACTUALLY been doing – for a DECADE.

But there IS a story about spies and secret agents and weapons of mass and mutually assured destruction – and that’s the story that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat throughout Ferec’s wildly dangerous out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the fire mad running dash from the highest heights of the city he knows and loves all the way down to the darkest and deepest depths where he owes a debt that he never has been able to pay.

All he can do is add to his tab and hope that, once again, he can manage to come out on top. IF he can figure out what the hell that top might actually be – and if he can keep his gang of colleagues turned friends AND traitors alive along the way.

Escape Rating A: There seems to be a trend this year of stories – or at least fantasy and science fiction stories – where the system is corrupt (although that’s far from new in either genre) – where the protagonist is more of an antihero than a hero (that’s not new either) – but where the protagonist’s ability to get the job, usually a job that’s more than slightly dirty, done relies a LOT on friends in some VERY low places in order to survive and to somehow save whatever of the day is worth saving. Which generally doesn’t turn out to be nearly as much as the protagonist believed it was at the beginning.

Green City Wars was EXACTLY that type of story, and Skotch and Ferec are in really similar situations and would have a surprising amount of stuff in common and stories to swap – even though Skotch is a genetically engineered raccoon – like Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy – and his story is science fiction, while Ferec is human and his story is gaslamp fantasy.

This is very much a story about how the sausage gets made – AND it’s a story of the sausage maker discovering that he’s been making bloody sausage all along and not something he can label “tube steak”. Ferec has always known that the job could be dirty, but here he’s confronted with the fact that it’s been dirty all along and that it’s dirty all the way down to the bone. It strips away at his self-worth while at the same time his ability to keep getting it done – and getting his team out of the various traps – shows him just how good he is at it, even though the job itself is not good at all.

I came for the author, but I got into the story for Ferec – as we’re intended to. He’s a character of hidden depths and secret histories, as is the city that he loves. And won’t be able to keep even if he’s able to keep both it – and himself – alive. Unless the job isn’t done yet. Or it isn’t done with him yet. Which would be fitting and fascinating and this reader would be absolutely there for it.

A- #BookReview: Heaven’s Graveyard by Grace Curtis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Heaven’s Graveyard by Grace CurtisHeaven's Graveyard by Grace Curtis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, gaslamp, historical fantasy, romantasy, fantasy mystery
Pages: 368
Published by DAW on June 16, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Floating Hotel and Idolfire comes a science fantasy tale of history and myth, magic and mystery, perfect for fans of Shelley Parker-Chan and A. K. Larkwood
Two thousand years after the events of Idolfire, the world is on the brink of war, and the discovery of the enchanted city of Nivela threatens to push it over the brink

"What do you want to know?"

It’s been 2,000 years since the events of Idolfire, and we’re in a whole new Kite-drawn cargo ships race across thoroughly chartered seas, hauling the latest innovations in convenience and slaughter. It is developed, learned, interconnected, and on the brink of catastrophic war.
Archeologist Cod couldn’t care less about the conflict brewing between neighboring powers. She spends her days in happy obscurity, cataloging relics in the Republic of Asha and searching for clues about her lifelong obsession, the mythical hero Aleya Ana-Ulai. 
Then a letter arrives summoning her home. Cod’s old teacher has made the discovery of a lifetime. But her home is Palgaro, and the discovery—the ruins of the enchanted city of Nivela—is set to change the world. And not for the better…
Heaven's Graveyard is a sinister lesbian history mystery bringing the magic of Idolfire into a dangerous new century.

My Review:

This is the world created by Idolfire AND the world created by its lack. It’s also the story of one scholar’s obsession with history and one rogue assassin’s obsession with her. And, it’s a story about the havoc that obsession can create, both with its absorption and with the damage that its single-mindedness scatters like rain.

Let’s unpack that a bit, shall we?

Heaven’s Graveyard takes place in the same setting as the author’s earlier book, Idolfire. But this is not a sequel. Instead, this is that same world, centuries later. So far distant that the broken scraps of a dead empire that was the world of Idolfire, a world where magic is still a force in the world and at a time when wishes still had power in all the worst, cursed ways – has now become a gaslamp world at about the level of technology as our late 19th century. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would have felt right at home.

Their technology rules. Maybe not our kind of tech, but tech all the same. And, like many a tech-based world, magic is considered a myth. A story for children. But literal magic isn’t the only thing that’s disappeared. So have the larger-than-life heroes of legend.

And that’s where Coda Canalluny (who very much insists on being called just “Cod” for reasons that become clear in the story), Doctor of Archaeology, curator at the Asha Civic Museum, comes into the picture.

Or rather, it’s where she came in as a child, when she discovered Professor D. Marr-Ahava’s book, Ashan Myths for Children and fell in love with the legendary Aleya Ana-Ulai. The hero of a tale so old that it had passed into myth. A story about standing up and defying a queen, undertaking a dangerous world-spanning quest, falling in love and having to give up that love for the good of the kingdom she came to rule.

A story about bringing back the magic that was stolen from her people by breaking into the lost ruins of a formerly world-spanning empire, and bringing her people’s most powerful artifact back home where it belonged.

People in Cod’s world, in Cod’s own profession, are sure that Aleya’s entire story is a myth. Because there is no magic in their world. (OTOH, we know it’s all TRUE, because it’s the story in the book Idolfire. Cod’s world is the world that was made out of Aleya and Kirby’s sacrifices for both of their widely-separated peoples.)

Cod is obsessed with proving that Aleya really existed, and that all the stories about her quest to the fabled capital of Nivela are historic truth and not merely mythological hyperbole. She’s spent her career trying to prove her hypothesis – just as her mentor has done.

So when she receives a ‘wire’ from that mentor, claiming a momentous discovery, Cod rushes back home, the last place she ever planned to return to, only to find that her beloved teacher was murdered mere hours before her arrival.

She’s certain his death has to do with his discovery and their shared quest. She just doesn’t know who or how or why. And she is so desperate to discover the truth of everything that she can’t see the threat standing right by her side until its far too late.

Escape Rating A-: Heaven’s Graveyard is linked to the previous book, Idolfire, in multiple ways – but I think it stands alone all the same. The stories are told in the same way, that the current quest is a result of an incident in the mythological past that no one in the stories present believes to have been true. Idolfire looked back at Nivela in its prime and Heaven’s Graveyard casts its eyes back at the quest to find the ruins of Nivela that no one believed existed then – and believe even less now.

Idolfire was not a story of Nivela itself, we didn’t need to know whether the legends that Aleya and Kirby followed were true or not. We just got caught up in them following that thread. Likewise here, we need to know what is believed in Cod’s today about what happened in the past. We don’t need the details of that past to follow along on this quest.

To be fair, there are moments that have a lot more resonance if you do know Aleya’s and Kirby’s story from Idolfire. But you don’t HAVE to know to get into Heaven’s Graveyard. Cod’s quest to find her mentor’s murderer and the truth of his potential discovery is more than enough story for one book.

As much as Heaven’s Graveyard is about Cod’s search for the historical Aleya and for the contemporary murderer, underneath that it’s a story about obsession, and that story starts with Aleya’s mother, a scientific genius who was obsessed with making space travel feasible. Vivette Canalluny’s career was cut short by poverty and single-motherhood. The birth of Coda was the literal ending, or coda, to all her dreams. Cod grew up in the shadow of her mother’s intellectual obsessions, her neglect, and her eventual madness.

So Cod mostly raised herself, knowing that she was a constant disappointment to a mother who resented her every breath. In her turn, Cod retreated into her own intellectual obsession with Aleya, and neglected the people around her in favor of her own obsession. Never realizing that her lover was obsessed with her and was willing to do anything to have her. Or get her back and use Cod’s obsessions as a way of punishing her while feeding, in turn, her own obsessions for money and power.

Because while Cod is looking for vindication of her theories, her frenemy Sparrow is following right behind her, looking for the power that Aleya brought home to her kingdom. Because power is a weapon that Sparrow can use and sell without a care in the world about the price the world will pay for the war she’s intending to arm on both sides.

I think the above represent the largest threads in this story, but they’re not the only ones. It’s a murder mystery wrapped in an epic quest filled with questions about how history gets remembered and what qualities turn a life into a legend and who gets to decide the legacy of that legend.

I don’t think ‘fun’ is the right word for this story, because it gets kind of deep and goes to some sad places. But it is absolutely compelling in all of its searching and questing for all the truths that Cod has hidden from herself and the truths that have been hidden from her along the way. The sapphic romance in Idolfire was a tragic one because Aleya and Kirby knew from the beginning that they could only be together in death. And they were. The sapphic romance in Heaven’s Graveyard isn’t so much tragic as it is utterly misguided and completely one-sided – at least until Cod finally opens her eyes to the world that’s been around her – and her own obsession – all along.

A+ #AudioBookReview: Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: Brigands & Breadknives by Travis BaldreeBrigands & Breadknives (Legends & Lattes #2) by Travis Baldree
Narrator: Travis Baldree
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, gaslamp
Series: Legends & Lattes, #2
Pages: 336
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on November 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller, Fern.
Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!
If only things were so simple…
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.
A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.
As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when there isn’t a job to get in the way.

My Review:

Brigands & Breadknives brings the story that began in Legends & Lattes into a delightfully full circle that ties the events of Bookshops & Bonedust up into the story with a great big beautiful bow.

Legends & Lattes kicked off the whole cozy fantasy trend with its story of Viv, the orc who opened a coffee shop in off-the-beaten-path Thune, fell in love with Tandri the succubus, and they, with the magically delicious help of Thimble the rattkin baker and the whole, entire town of Thune, settled into their happy ever after with a whole lot of help from the friends they made along the way.

But orcs are more commonly soldiers than shopkeepers, so the story in Bookshops & Bonedust gave readers Viv’s origin story – or at least her change-of-heart story. That second book in the series – not a middle book at ALL – was a portrait of the middle-aged shopkeeper orc as a young mercenary, forced to stay behind her mercenary company to heal up from some serious wounds, making good friends, saving the day and more importantly, figuring out what she might want to be when it was time to retire.

In other words, it showed readers the decision-making process that eventually brought Viv to Thune to open Legends & Lattes.

This third book ties it all together. Viv has been in contact – if sporadically over the years – with Fern, the rattkin bookseller who befriended her in Bookshops & Bonedust. In fact, Fern is both the bookshop in Bookshops AND the origin of the Bonedust too.

Just as Viv has found her way by this point in HER story, Fern has seemingly lost hers. Fern, now a middle-aged rattkin, may be a reasonably successful bookseller, but personally she’s lost her way. Or at least her contentment. In spite of everything, Fern feels empty at a point when most of her life should feel full. Or at least full-ish.

Do rattkin have midlife crises? Because it sure sounds like Fern is having a doozy.

Which is where Viv’s letters and Viv’s encouragement to her old friend to come to Thune and open a bookshop next to the coffee shop find fertile ground. Leading Fern to trek to Thune in the hopes of finding whatever it is that seems to be missing from her life.

Only to discover that what’s missing isn’t in her life, it’s in her. So she runs away from, well, everything. Including all the friends who want to help her fill that hole that she can’t even admit is lodged in her middle.

Which leads her right, straight into the middle of someone else’s adventure – into the life and legends of one of the most storied beings in the world, riding side by side with Astryx One-Ear the Oathmaiden, guarding a prisoner, fending off bounty hunters, and pretending that she’s a lot more of an adventurer than she ever imagined she’d be.

Only to discover that running away has put her, by however roundabout a route, into the path that was always meant to be hers. All Fern has to do is stop living by what she imagines everyone else thinks she should be – and follow the path of her own star wherever it might lead.

Escape Rating A+: First things first. I listened to Brigands & Breadknives, read by the author Travis Baldree. There are not many authors who are as good at narrating their books as they were at writing them in the first place. But Baldree began as a voice actor, and became an author afterwards. He’s one of the few – along with Mary Robinette Kowal – who should ALWAYS read their books. ALWAYS. The narration of this was marvelous and made a great story just that much better.

Second things second, this is very much the story of Fern having the best and most adventurous midlife crisis that has ever been told. That it is told by the best and most profane storyteller to ever string a story together makes it just that much more fun – even as Fern is cursing herself and everyone around her pretty much every step of the way.

But especially herself.

The story isn’t quite as cozy as the earlier books – and it’s not meant to be. And not just because Fern never met a cussword she didn’t like the sound of. It’s not cozy because Fern herself isn’t a naturally cozy person – more spiky and prickly – and isn’t in anything like a cozy place in either her head or her heart.

She’s dealing with the cliche that goes “no matter where you go, there you are” and it’s not comfortable at all. That her urge is to keep running and hope it doesn’t catch up with her – even though it always does – is not surprising but it IS easy to empathize with.

This is, clearly, a story about the journey and not the destination. The destination is the LAST thing Fern wants to reach and she finds plenty of excuses to keep putting THAT evil day off as long as she can.

What makes the story so much fun is that Fern’s journey is to go on the adventure of a lifetime. It’s a madcap, out of the frying pan into the fire kind of story. An elf, a rattkin and a goblin go on a mad quest. It’s even more fun because it’s not the same mad quest, even though its the same prize at the end. Even better, the reward at the end turns out not to be the prize that each of them thought it would be.

Except maybe the goblin – but then she’s the only one who knew the truth all along. And the reveal is EPIC.

In the end – and along the way – Brigands & Breadknives does a terrific job of tying the first story, of middle-aged or at least middle-aged ish Viv forging a new path, opening the coffee shop and falling in love with Tandri, up with the second book of young Viv and young Fern bonding over books and stories and figuring out who they were and having an adventure, into this third story of middle-aged Fern and her midlife crisis joining Viv in Thune, realizing she hadn’t yet figured out who SHE wanted to be without worrying about what other people need and think and going on an adventure of her own and learning how to live both for and more importantly WITH herself.

As always and in the best cozy fantasy tradition, with a little help from her friends.

This book did turn the original Legends & Lattes into a delightful and satisfying full circle. It could end here. But I really, truly hope it doesn’t.

A- #BookReview: Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden RoycePsychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, gaslamp, Gothic, historical fantasy, horror, Southern fiction
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on October 21, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Ignyte and Mythopoeic Award-winning author Eden Royce pens a Southern Gothic historical fantasy story of a contentious funeral in her adult fiction debut.
Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well.
When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp―the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.

My Review:

I didn’t know what I was getting into with this book. I’ll confess that I picked it up because it was short and fantastical and that was exactly what I was in the mood for. It turned out to be fantastic and beautiful in ways that I was not expecting it all. But was so very happy to read.

From one perspective, this is a story about family ties that bind and strangle. From another, it’s a coming of age and into power story about a young woman who must break away from those family ties to save herself.

It’s also a story about passing on and paying forward, set in a time and place where the magical flows through the mundane, and each acknowledges what they owe the other.

The story begins with Phaedra St. Margaret, known as Phee to her family and the few friends her harridan of a mother allows her to have. Which is where Phee’s internal struggle begins and so often ends.

Phee, a bright and restless 21-year-old in the Reconstruction city of New Charleston, wants more out of life than her overbearing, oppressive mother will EVER allow her to have. Phee wants to work, for herself, for her independence, for the betterment of her race.

Her mother wants her to remain under her thumb for the rest of their lives – and quite probably after. And has been doing her damndest to make sure that happens, by any means available to her.

Which is where the messenger steps into the scene with news of Phee’s beloved Aunt Cleo’s death. Phee may have loved her Aunt, but her mother never forgave her sister for a long ago transgression and exiled her, not just from the family but from the city of New Charleston and seemingly even from being mentioned within the confines of the family home except for continued excoriation.

But someone needs to be the chief mourner, celebrant and arranger for Aunt Cleo’s funeral. In other words, someone needs to serve as the psychopomp – or pomp – for her homegoing. It’s a prestigious thing to do, but it is also an occasion for judgement by the community with the potential for social and even criminal punishment if the pomp fails to do right by the dead.

Phee takes on the duty that should be her mother’s. But her mother refuses to do right by her own sister. Phee can’t let that stand, nor can she let the opportunity go by. No matter how much her mother has filled her head and heart with the idea that she is incapable of filling this important role and seeing it through.

And that’s where the magic comes in.

In spite of her inexperience, her trepidation, and the little voice in her head that sounds exactly like her mother telling her that she is incapable of the job, Phee sets out for her Aunt’s house in not-too-distant Horizon, and there she discovers EVERYTHING.

The magic her Aunt created, the beauty of the task and the service she has agreed to and wants to perform, the truth about the family scandal that drove her aunt away, the desperate lengths her mother has resorted to in order to ensure that Phee follows the path she has decided upon for her, and the strength within herself to see both her own task through – along with the duty that her aunt left to her knowing that it would be fulfilled.

Not just out of duty, but out of love.

Escape Rating A-: This turned out to be an utterly beautiful story, but it started out in a very dark place – as does Phee. It takes her quite a while – and a fair number of chapters – to dig herself out of the slough of despond, obedience and oppression that her mother has put her in – and it’s the making of her in more ways than one.

But it’s a VERY hard row to hoe, and a deeper rut to climb out of than Phee ever imagined.

At first, this part of the story resembled just the kind of story that drives me bananas, as it digs deep into all the ways that living while female creates painful struggles for female protagonists, especially in historical fiction, that I KNOW happened but as a reader I’m losing patience with reading in detail.

While Phee, as a young black woman, would have even more to contend with from society’s expectations of her due to her race and her gender, in the story the oppression and expectation that Phee has to fight against seems to ALL come from her mother so it reads in this particular story as more closely gender based. Your reading mileage may vary.

Her mother, a malignant narcissist of the first water, is really the villain of this piece and the reader starts wanting Phee to break away from the very first page. It’s clear fairly early on that part of the magical realism of this story is that her mother is using some kind of magic to bend Phee to her will. There’s a deep well of something awful in her mother that we don’t get to explore in detail but we know means Phee outright harm and we’re pulling for her to get away from the beginning.

The real magic of the story takes place once Phee gets to her Aunt’s place in Horizon. Neither Horizon nor New Charleston exist on any map, but do bear a strong resemblance to the magical and magically hidden black communities of Leslye Penelope’s Daughter of the Merciful Deep, while this story takes that element and combines it with the death magic of C.L. Polk’s Hugo Nominated short stories, St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid and Ivy, Angelica Bay.

So if you liked those you’ll like this and vice versa.

Besides Phee’s mother, the thing that drove me a bit nuts about this story – while adding oodles to the depth of it – was that while I understood the cultural importance of the homegoing, and the particular magic in the context of this story, there was an element to Phee’s taking up of that duty that carried greater social consequences, to the point of potentially criminal charges, if Phee failed that there just wasn’t enough room in the novella to explain.

As always, I just wanted more backstory for that bit, and there wasn’t quite enough space for it. It didn’t stop my enjoyment of and immersion in the story at all, it just left my wishing for a bit more. As I do. Likewise, I’d have loved to have seen Phee making all the decisions and arrangements once she decided to partner with Cross Prioleau as the funeral director to carry out Phee’s – and her Aunt’s – wishes. If only because I hoped for a whole bunch of scenes where all the pretentious asshats who believed they could run roughshod over Phee got their comeuppances.

Also, it’s clear from the story that Phee and Cross are going to become partners in both work and life and I wouldn’t have minded seeing a bit more of that AT ALL.

Nevertheless, the ending was marvelously cathartic, for Phee and for the reader. Phee has come into herself, and in planning and carrying out her beloved Aunt’s homegoing, Phee has finally come home to a place, a purpose and a life that will fill her heart and fulfill her dreams.

A+ #BookReview: Legalist by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Legalist by L.E. Modesitt Jr.Legalist (The Grand Illusion #4) by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, gaslamp, steampunk
Series: Grand Illusion #4
Pages: 576
Published by Tor Books on October 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of Saga of Recluce and the Imager Portfolio, continues the Grand Illusion, a gaslamp political fantasy series (Isolate, Councilor, Contrarian) with a prequel, Legalist.
Fifty years after the establishment of the Imperium, and 450 years before the events of Isolate, Dominic Mikail Ysella―ancestor of Avraal Ysella―is the grandson of the last king of Aloor. Stripped of most of their land, Dominic, as the third son, must support himself.
Dominic becomes a legalist and is elected to the Imperial Council quietly working as an isolate, someone unreadable by government telepaths.
Amid a time of a crumbling imperial line, Dominic must build a coalition within the Council and quietly draft a new constitution to save the Imperium from itself. Uncovering rampant corruption, graft, and potential to be arrested for treason, Ysella discovers any number of ways that simple legal specialist in water rights could get himself killed.

My Review:

Looking back at the Grand Illusion series, the very first book in the series, Isolate, was, among its many other marvelous themes and threads, a story about staging a mostly non-violent political coup from the inside. Following with Councilor and Contrarian, the series continues to explore what happens AFTER the balance of power has shifted as certain people attempt to shift it back to where THEY believe it belongs. With them, of course.

Whether that’s good for the rest of the country – or not.

This fourth book in the series takes a step back from those first three books and literally kicks the story back more than 400 years, but to a similar conflict. One that creates the possibility that occurs in the series’ ‘present’ in Isolate. A situation that is, come to think of it, is predicted late in THIS book, Legalist.

The ‘grand illusion’ of the series’ title is the illusion that government can make EVERYTHING better for EVERYONE at the same time. An idea that is so illusory it might as well be a mirror image of the famous line that goes, “You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.” (The quote is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but may have originated with P.T. Barnum substituting “fool” for “please” – and doesn’t that fit all too well!)

However, just because many people either see government as utterly useless OR expect it to solve all their problems – and sometimes both contradictory thoughts at the same time – that doesn’t mean that government – or at least people in government – are completely ineffective at helping the people they claim to serve.

And it certainly – and unfortunately – doesn’t mean that they are not  absolutely capable of harming the people they serve.

It sounds as if I’m talking about now, doesn’t it? And I am, but only in the sense that the grand illusion of what government can and cannot do is fairly universal.

The story in Legalist is about a crisis in government and about a change in the form of that government in the hopes of making that crisis a bit less, well, terrible. Because humans are gonna human, and that’s true on all sides of the equation.

So the story focuses on one single member of the Council of Guldor, water legalist Dominic Mikhail Ysella – not coincidentally the ancestor of one of the primary characters in Isolate. Ysella sees the current crisis coming from miles away – and so do many of his fellow councilors.

The Imperador, the man who brought the country together and held it together, is dying. His virtually unlimited power is about to pass to his remaining son, a man who enjoys wielding unlimited power and is not at all tempered in that wielding by experience, intelligence or anything even vaguely resembling a moral compass.

Under the Heir, Guldor will become the kind of tyranny that incites rebellions – until the country breaks apart in civil war. The current Imperador may have unlimited power, but he still has the sense not to rule in such a manner as to drive the entire country into revolt. His son will have all of that power but nothing to temper it and no desire to even try.

However, the country that the Imperador created does have a founding document that outlines who has what powers AND provides a method for altering that power. The trick – and it’s going to be a trick and a half – is to get the Imperador to agree to curtailing his own power.

Or to retain his own power while limiting the powers of all who will come after him, knowing that it will happen much sooner than anyone would prefer. Change is coming, whether anyone likes it or not. The question before the Imperador, the Council, and especially Councilor Ysella, is whether this is a chance to turn that change from the unquestionable terrors of tyranny to the questionable future of a constitutional monarchy.

And who will survive the turmoil that will inevitably go into making it happen.

Escape Rating A+: This series is reading catnip for me, but I also think it’s a bit of an acquired taste – just that I’ve fully acquired it.

For one thing, all of Modesitt’s series are the ultimate in competence porn. Just like the protagonist of the Imager Portfolio, Dominic Ysella is simply damn good at his job – and he’s a decent human being as well. He doesn’t rely on luck or connections, just training and education and hard work and doing the right thing instead of the easy. He sees opportunities and he seizes them, but he also knows when to temper his own impulses.

And we see this world through his eyes as he does his best and damndest to make his country a better place than he found it.

From one perspective, it’s all about meetings and documents and political machinations – and on the other hand, it’s about not just being in the room where it happens, but making the moves needed to become the person who creates the situation that opens the room FOR it to happen.

This story could have been a bit dull – but it never is. Instead, as we follow along, we get deeper into the situation that Ysella finds himself in, we see the rock hemming him into the hard place – and watch as he opens up an unexpected space between the two so he has room to maneuver – and to make a difference.

And the story IS exciting. He’s constantly under threat of assassination, whether merely a character assassination or a bloody one. He knows he has enemies on all sides, as well as friends. He’s caught in the midst of secret work that will save his country and himself – but only if he can prevent it from a too early reveal that will inevitably lead to a charge of treason.

Ysella often feels as though he’s dancing one step forward and two steps back, on a tightrope, with no net, in the dark. We watch to see if he’ll fall even as we hope he’ll succeed.

Obviously, I loved this one, as I have the entire rest of the series. Due to this entry being a prequel to the rest, it would be possible for someone to start with Legalist, decide if this is a taste they’d like to acquire, and if it turns out to be so then going back to Isolate and reading the rest.

But speaking of the rest of the series, the author has announced that he has turned in the manuscript for what he says will likely be the last book of the Grand Illusion series, which will return to the main line of the series and take place after Contrarian. The publication date has not yet been set, however, the title of that final book will be Premier, as I predicted when I finished Contrarian. So I’m a bit chuffed about that even though I’m going to have to impatiently wait at least a year to read it.

A- #BookReview: A Tangle of Time by Josiah Bancroft

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: A Tangle of Time by Josiah BancroftA Tangle of Time (The Hexologists, #2) by Josiah Bancroft
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy mystery, gaslamp, urban fantasy, fantasy
Series: Hexologists #2
Pages: 416
Published by Orbit on September 9, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From one of the most exciting and original voices in fantasy comes the second book following the adventures of the Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, as they tackle a case that could redefine the nature of magic itself.
As the nation’s foremost investigators of the paranormal, Isolde and Warren Wilby are accustomed to bumping up against things that go bump in the night. They have made quite a name for themselves as the detectives of the uncanny, the monstrous, the strange. After a decade of wedded bliss and dozens of fantastical adventures, there is little in the world that can still surprise them.
But when a famous artist dies under suspicious circumstances, Isolde finds herself investigating a murder that may not have happened, and a crime scene that seems to shift beneath her feet. Not one to be easily thwarted, Isolde is compelled to take greater and greater risks in pursuit of her elusive answers. Meanwhile, the laws that govern magic appear to be breaking, and those cracks are spreading to the everyday world.
The mystery will carry the devoted duo to seedy underworlds, enchanted gardens, and subterranean military zoos. Old friends will come to the Wilbies’ aid as they infiltrate secret societies, battle vicious imps, and flee from a pack of venomous wolves. Equipped with Isolde’s hexes, Warren’s muscle, and an enchanted bag full of magical relics, the Hexologists will have to risk life and limb to unravel the riddle at the heart of A Tangle of Time.

My Review:

The Hexologists’ second outing (after last year’s titular series opener, The Hexologists) is full to the brim with ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey bits’, but the only Doctor in sight is Dr. Isolde Wilby.

Iz’ Wilby’s doctorate is in hexology, and together, she and her husband Warren (AKA ‘War’) are the Hexologists of the series title. They are also, generally and pretty much always, in some sort of trouble.

Even if it’s a trouble they did not necessarily go looking for. They don’t have to, as trouble clearly already has their address and has no difficulty in finding them whenever it feels the need to involve them in a new ‘adventure’. Or yet another opportunity for Iz to rile up and piss off the patriarchal ‘powers that be’.

This time around, trouble comes calling in the form of a gigantic headache and a heaping helping of deja vu. Along with the catastrophe of their magical ‘portalmanteau’ suddenly becoming inaccessible. Which is really going to peeve the dragon living inside it!

In this quasi-Victorian, gaslamp, alternate fantasy world, magic and technology exist side-by-side. But magic is considered ‘old school’ and passe and unsophisticated, while technology is all the rage. Iz is often derided and denigrated because she’s considered a superstitious ‘finger-wiggler’ – meaning magic-user – as well as a delicate female always on the verge of hysterics. Which makes her angry as hell a great deal of the time as she’s almost always right but her ideas are never acknowledged until a man says the thing she’s been saying all along.

And isn’t that still always the way.

So the first time that time stutters, Iz doesn’t tell anyone that the world is suddenly different – except of course for her beloved (very, frequently and often) husband, War. While she searches both high and low, literally and figuratively, for whatever has caused the world to turn not quite right – and keep right on turning towards destruction.

What she finds is not at all what she expected. Because time has tangled beyond recognition, wrapped around the dark heart of someone she believed was a friend. In order to set things back on the right – or at least a survivable – course, she’ll have to turn back time and rewrite the world. If it’s possible. If she can.

If for once in her life she can find her OWN way forward instead of following in the footsteps of those who have gone before her. Because they haven’t. Yet.

Escape Rating A-: The title is a bit of a clue, as this story is very tangled indeed. It’s one of those stories where it’s difficult at the beginning to figure out where it’s going because the point of view character, in this case Iz, doesn’t know where it’s going or if it’s going and certainly not why it’s going.

She’s tangled and so are we. War, as always, is there to support Iz in whatever way he can. Including, if the situation calls for it, getting himself arrested right alongside her.

The situation DOES call for it. War isn’t even surprised about that. He’s always all in for whatever Iz is planning. Or not planning as the case may be and often, well, is.

The Hexologists’ world is very much a gaslamp world, but it also feels, not just different from our own but a bit askew from it. More than anything, this world reminds me of the polluted, corrupted, alternate New York City in the W.M. Akers’ Westside series, complete with sulfurous fog and equally sulfurous magic AND technology.

But there’s also more than a hint of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series, in the way that the story is not just playing with time but that it does not hold any time stream sacrosanct. There are no ‘fixed points’ in time. It’s possible to go back in time, make a mess of what was, and change what is – generally for the worse. Or at least for the weird. Which is definitely what happens in this story.

This is also one of those stories that relies on its singular voice. If you like Iz and the way she bullrushes through pretty much everything and everyone, you’ll enjoy the story. If she’s a turn off, then it won’t work. The dynamic between Iz and War is all the more interesting – and again, either refreshing or a complete turn-off depending – in the way that SHE is the protagonist and he is the support, helpmeet and very much her ‘beta’.

In the end, the title is a hint in multiple ways. Not only is the story about a literal tangle in time as well as magic, but the protagonists are also literally tangled up in that tangle, and the story itself tangles around them BECAUSE of that tangle. It reads almost like a collection of scenes and vignettes – because the tangled time is breaking the order of events – until at the end it all comes together and makes sense of the whole.

I had an initially confusing but ultimately grand time with this one. So I was very relieved when I turned the final page to see an announcement that (and I absolutely do quote), “The story continues in…Book Three of The Hexologists.” I’m looking forward to it.

#BookReview: The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka OlderThe Potency of Ungovernable Impulses (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #3) by Malka Ann Older
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: climate fiction, gaslamp, mystery, science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera, steampunk
Series: Investigations of Mossa & Pleiti #3
Pages: 246
Published by Tor Books on June 10, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Hugo and Nebula nominated science fiction detective series continues with The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, featuring a new mystery concerning alarming incidents of targeted, escalating academic sabotage.
When a former classmate begs Pleiti for help on behalf of her cousin―who’s up for a prestigious academic position at a rival Jovian university but has been accused of plagiarism on the eve of her defense―Pleiti agrees to travel alongside her and investigate the matter.
Even if she has to do it without Mossa, her partner in more ways than one. Even if she’s still reeling from Mossa’s sudden isolation and bewildering rejection.
Yet what appears to be a case of an attempted reputational smearing devolves into something decidedly more dangerous―and possibly deadly.

My Review:

The first two Investigations of Mossa & Pleiti, The Mimicking of Known Successes and The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, both began with missing persons cases rather than the corpse that kicks off most mysteries.

This third entry ALSO begins with a missing person, but not in the same way – at all. In the earlier books, the missing persons WERE the mystery, where this time the missing person is the person who usually investigates the mystery. Not that it’s not mysteries all the way down from the human-settled platforms that circle Giant (AKA Jupiter) to the roiling surface of that gas giant of a planet.

But Mossa is the person who is missing, sorta/kinda, and Pleiti is definitely the person who is missing her. (Not that THAT hasn’t happened before in their relationship!)

Mossa is lost, not physically but emotionally, deep in a depression that is so endemic to the human colony on Giant that it has a name and a pathology of its very own. Pleiti, on the other hand, is just a bit lost, leaving her partner behind in order to take a long trip around the transport rings to Stortellen, the university that sees itself as the rival of Pleiti’s own institution, Valdegeld.

Because a friend is being threatened, and she needs Mossa and Pleiti to investigate. If all she’s going to get is Pleiti, that’s going to have to do.

And it does – even if it doesn’t do at all for Pleiti herself until it’s nearly too late.

Escape Rating B: Part of what made the first two books in this series work so well, and made them so much fun to get into, was the way that Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti balance each other out, both in personality and skill set. Not that they aren’t both capable in their own fields, but rather that the mystery usually involves tackling a puzzle that straddles both specialties and they need each other to reach the solution.

Neither of them can see the forest for the trees, as that saying goes, but they can each see the forest for the other’s trees, and when needed, the other way around.

This time around, Pleiti leaves Mossa behind to help out a friend – at Mossa’s seemingly indifferent behest – then feels guilt-ridden because she didn’t recognize her lover’s depression. But she’s stuck, and stuck in, and has to make the best of the situation no matter how deeply she feels like an imposter.

It should work, because the case is very strongly rooted in Pleiti’s personal bailiwick. It’s a story about academic reputations, the fragility thereof, and the ease and rapidity with which an unfounded rumor can derail an entire career. It’s steeped in the maliciously incestuous incivility of the worst of academe, and it’s an environment that Pleiti, as a scholar herself, knows all too well.

But without Mossa, Pleiti flails and angsts a LOT. Not that the situation doesn’t warrant both, and not that she doesn’t wish for Mossa’s ability to obtain an actual, legal, warrant when needed, but mostly she needs Mossa’s pragmatism and laser-focus to balance her out.

I have to say that, as much as I wanted to slip back into Mossa and Pleiti’s world, and as much as I enjoy them as characters and find their setting fascinating, this entry in the series didn’t work for me as well as the first two.

There were a few reasons for that. One is the obvious as stated above, they are better together than they are separately. With Pleiti as the first-person narrator, combined with her tendency to angst-spiral, it sometimes got a bit hard to take.

And that’s on top of the deep dive into the darker corners of bad behavior in academe, of which there was a lot and I have to say that the motives for the reputation bashing were a bit opaque and off-the-wall at the same time. I did figure out whodunnit, but their reasons for doing it mostly get chalked up to ‘ungovernable impulses’.

Also, because of the way this story was deep into the academic life, AND because English or whatever common language has evolved over the decades if not centuries on Jupiter, that language used has gone out and mugged a whole lot of other languages for words, to the point where I kept dropping out of the story to get a translation for a word that I was almost but not quite sure of in context. My immersion in the story got broken OFTEN, and I don’t believe this was the case in the previous books, but without Mossa it seemed that Pleiti got deep into the jargon and cliches and colloquialism of her own profession to the exclusion of those not a part of it. Which is exactly what kind of insider-speak is intended to do, but it frequently lost this member of the intended audience.

Your reading mileage may vary.

I still like Mossa and Pleiti, especially when they’re together, so I’m still following this series. Based on the ending of this book, this sapphic, gaslamp, SF mystery is planning to go full Sherlock Holmes in the next book, with Investigator Mossa striking out on her own as Giant’s first PRIVATE investigator and presumably, hopefully, Pleiti as her Watson-esq chronicler.

I’m looking forward to finding out!

#BookReview: Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Death on the Caldera by Emily PaxmanDeath on the Caldera by Emily Paxman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery, gaslamp, witches
Pages: 448
Published by Titan Books on June 17, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

It’s Murder on the Orient Express – with witches!
A thrilling blend of fantasy and classic murder mystery, this rollicking adventure with a wide cast of suspects is ideal for those who love both Agatha Christie and V. E. Schwab, and are drawn to stories that take place in a vivid fantasy world.

The Linde siblings—Kellen, Davina, and Morel—are anxious to return to the kingdom of Halgyr before their father dies, leaving Kellen to assume the throne as king. They book tickets on a luxury express train, expecting a swift journey home—but disaster strikes when the train engine explodes, stranding the siblings atop a caldera bubbling with volcanic magic.

The crash triggers Davina’s latent witch powers, but her magic disrupts her ability to remember what she was doing when the explosion took place. While a witch would be the prime suspect for the catastrophe, the only ones who knew Davina might become one are her brothers—who never warned her. And, to add insult to injury, somebody is bumping off the surviving train crew and passengers. But it can’t be Davina, can it?

While the remaining passengers try to determine who sabotaged the engine and catch the killer, the fractured siblings attempt to stay one step ahead, concealing not only Davina’s powers but their own secrets. Luckily, they aren’t the only shifty characters on the train…

A thrilling blend of classic murder mystery and fantasy for those who love Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile every bit as much as Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses.

My Review:

The Linde siblings, Morel and Davina, come to glittering, progressive Pesca to deliver bad news to their older brother Kellen, who is on the embassy staff there on behalf of their homeland, the mysterious, secretive, kingdom of Halgyr.

And the secrets immediately start spilling out.

Kellen may appear to be just a rising young star on the Embassy staff, which he certainly is, but it’s also a ruse and a cover identity of extreme delicacy. Kellen is the heir to the throne of Halgyr, his brother Morel is the spare, and their sister Davina is a real princess chafing at the bounds of her gilded but secure cage.

The news that Morel and Davina have brought to Kellen is that their father, THE KING, is dying, and that Kellen needs to get himself home and fast. His siblings brought him the message personally because the train that made their journey is the fastest method of transit from Pesca to Halgyr through the vast, sparsely inhabited and constantly contested caldera lands that lie between.

Which puts the three siblings on the luxury express train two nights later, headed home by the quickest route, hoping that they’ll be able to see their father one last time before his end. Hoping that their secrets will hold up to the minimal scrutiny that the rich receive even when traveling between countries that are almost constantly courting armed conflict.

Of course, that’s when the situation goes completely pear-shaped in a way that is guaranteed to make readers see shades of Murder on the Orient Express. Except that it’s not a natural but annoying snowstorm that has stopped this train – and there’s no Poirot available to solve the mystery.

Make that mysteries, plural.

Because this train isn’t merely halted, it’s outright crashed. In a remote valley, cut off from all hope of rescue by a magically blown up bridge in back and a magically conjured boulder in front – fused to the engine itself.

And even as Kellen, out of a sense of duty and a desperate desire to keep himself busy – and his secrets intact – begins a very amateur investigation of the crash, the remaining survivors start dying. Not from the witchcraft that derailed the train in the first place, but by the expert application of a sharpened blade to the throat. Throats. One after another.

Someone stopped the train. Someone is cutting throats. Is it the same someone? Do they have the same motives? Will there be enough time to figure things out before the throatcutter runs out of throats?

It’s really too bad there’s no Poirot on this Express, because his expertise would have been very helpful. Even if he would have inevitably exposed too many of everyone’s secrets. Especially Kellen’s.

Escape Rating B: Death on the Caldera is an absolutely captivating gaslamp fantasy mystery. There’s also a whole lot packed into this story that isn’t necessarily all satisfactorily explained or worked through, but a good reading time is absolutely had by all – especially if you love fantasy and/or SF mystery blends. Which this reader absolutely does.

It’s hard to miss the callback to Murder on the Orient Express, and I have to admit that the resemblance carried me over a fair number of open spaces on those tracks. But the resemblances to Christie’s classic mostly serve as framework for all the other elements that are roiling through this story, so it’s not a good idea to get too caught up in the similarities.

What the story is precariously balanced over are the many, many secrets that are held by the passengers, the two countries they mostly represent, and the contested territory the train has gotten itself stuck in.

It’s relatively simple – and utterly fascinating – to follow the human elements. The political and criminal as well as the political criminals and the criminal politics and politicians, and layer upon layer that are steeped in the history of this world that we don’t know nearly enough about. (Then again, that’s always my issue, that I want to know more than any single story has got time to delve into.)

At the heart of this mystery, at least the side of it that’s the human parts, is the relationship between the Linde siblings, their collective and not all that great relationship with their parents, and the secret that both brothers have been keeping from Davina. The secret about Davina is a big part of the stew of the story.

Davina is a witch. Her mother was too. But the actual talent only manifests in women although, as it turns out, the males can pass witchcraft onto their female offspring, which absolutely IS relevant in the story.

The fear driving the Linde brothers is that their sister could be responsible for the damage to the train. The anger driving Davina’s behavior during this whole mess is that both of them knew and neither of them told her. She’s an adult, if just barely, so she really did need to know and they really should have told her. Even in her sometimes still childish tantrums Davina’s not wrong about nearly all of her resentments, only that this isn’t the time and place to act out.

There are also ginormous secrets about the royal house of Halgyr that will have worldwide catastrophic implications if they come out. Which they are in danger of doing because Kellen is a hot mess through this whole, well, mess.

That’s not all. In fact, that’s far, far, far, from all. To the point where it feels like there’s about three books worth of ramifications teasing at the edges of this one story. And I want all of them. Really, truly.

In the end, this does resolve all of its issues on the microcosm level. Davina’s secret is mostly kept. The Linde family secrets are mostly kept but there are plenty of problems left to deal with another day. The criminal issues of the one country’s Lord’s Council are mostly resolved because most of the perpetrators end up dead. The territorial claims of the witches and the ‘left behind’ internal refugees of the caldera region are mostly left up in the air – in a few cases literally because witchcraft.

Those territorial claims, and the status of the entire caldera region, are clearly left simmering. Quite possibly well above simmer, as two explosive elements of that conflict have banded together with what will likely be catastrophic results in a future story. One I’d really, really, REALLY like to read!

#AudioBookReview: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B+ Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie BurgisWooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy, #1) by Stephanie Burgis
Narrator: Amanda Leigh Cobb
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy romance, gaslamp, romantasy
Series: Queens of Villainy #1
Pages: 304
Length: 8 hours and 34 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In a Gaslamp-lit world where hags and ogres lurk in thick pine forests, three magical queens form an uneasy alliance to protect their lands from invasion…and love turns their world upside down.
Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.
When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…
Little does Saskia know that the "wizard" she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he's in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

My Review:

They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, and that’s certainly true when Archduke Felix of Estarion arrives, in the dead of night, at the castle belonging to Saskia, the Witch Queen of Kitvaria. He’s hoping for a sanctuary that he desperately needs. She’s in conference with her allies, Queen Lorelei of Balravia and Queen Ailana of Nornne, the other two so-called Queens of Villainy, and they’re all making some pretty villainous comments – about him.

The thing is, the queens may know each other – however reluctantly at least on Saskia’s part – but they don’t really have a clue about Felix. They think they do, because his chief minister, former guardian, ex-father-in-law and torturer of long standing has been committing plenty of greedy, grasping, outright rapacious moves in his name, but Felix has had no voice and no say. He’s been a prisoner in his own castle, under constant guard and equally constant torment as well as honest-to-badness torture, ever since his “dear guardian” got himself proclaimed Felix’ Regent and took control of, well, everything.

Felix managed to escape, and planned to throw himself on Saskia’s mercy, only to discover – there’s that eavesdropping again – that there is no mercy to be found. He has no one to turn to and nowhere else to run. However, while his uncle may not have allowed him to be educated in anything useful, he has let him study useless things like literature, letting Felix lose himself in libraries for hours on end. Felix isn’t stupid – and he’s very desperate.

Which is why he decides to take advantage of Saskia’s distraction and hide himself in plain sight – not as either the Witch Queen’s prisoner or her hostage – but as her dark wizard librarian. In spite of being, well, technically, neither of those things. But dark wizards are allowed to hide their faces behind a mask – or deep in their dark cloaks. Librarians can hide in their libraries. Saskia needs a magical cataloger and is happy to hire the mysterious stranger who has just wandered into her castle, seemingly as the answer to ALL her prayers.

As it turns out he actually is – even the prayers that she never even thought to utter – or believed she was worthy of even thinking about voicing.

Escape Rating B+: Definitions of villainy are clearly in the eye of the beholder, making the title of both the book and especially the series a delightful bit of irony. Because there’s nothing wrong with witchcraft, unless calling it that is an attempt to make the magic that women practice lesser than that of men. Which is exactly what labelling Saskia the “Witch Queen” of Kitvaria is intended to do.

But the Queens of Villainy of the series, including Saskia the Witch Queen of Kitvaria, are only villainous in the eyes of all the men who are frightened by their power and offended by their ability and are desperate to find a way to knock those queens down so they can step all over them.

Something that’s not going to happen as long as they stick together and OWN their power. Once they ALL figure that out, the story is utterly glorious. But it takes a bit to get there.

Because at the beginning, the “Witch Queen of Kitvaria” is not exactly the “Queen of All She Surveys”. She’s not even the “Princess of Quite a Lot”. As the story opens, Queen Saskia acts more like Mistress Doormat in spite of her ascension to the throne.

Which is the point where I need to reveal that I began this book in audio. I thought it would be fun. And it eventually is. Howsomever, the wonderful thing about audiobooks, particularly when the story is told in the first person singular and the reader gets to sit inside the protagonist’s head, is that when the story is told well, when the narrator is a good match for the character, and, most importantly, when it’s a head that the reader enjoys being in, the experience is fantastic. This particular audio hit two out of three. The story is told well, and the narrator, Amanda Leigh Cobb, was an excellent narrator for Saskia – but Saskia’s head, particularly for the first third of the story, was a place that I didn’t want to be. I wanted to see how things worked out, I adored the premise of the story, but Saskia let everyone push her around to the point where being in her head did not work for me AT ALL. I needed her to just put on her big witch panties and DEAL WITH IT. And that took a while.

So I switched to text at the quarter, Saskia found at least one leg of those big witch panties at the one third point, and from then it was off to the races and the story got totally glorious.

This was even one of those rare cases where the misunderstandammit at the heart of the romance actually worked. Felix couldn’t reveal himself to Saskia until they trusted each other – even though he was all too aware that telling the truth would break that trust. By the time he felt compelled to unmask, he was in a position where she might, deservedly so, break his heart, but was considerably less likely to take his life.

After all, one of Saskia’s magically adorable scene-stealing crows had made Felix “HIS” librarian whether he was actually a librarian or not.

As much as Saskia drove me, well, batty at the beginning (complete with actual, magical, bats) I still felt for her. Not only is she in a really difficult position doing a damn hard job she never really wanted, she also does a terrific job of portraying the dilemma of an introvert stuck in an extrovert’s job – and being caught between the things she wants to do that she’s always been good at, and the things that have to be done that she hates and is terrible at. While everyone around her tells her over and over that she has to become someone she’s absolutely NOT in order to succeed.

The slow-burn romance between Saskia and Felix is utterly lovely, especially because it’s marvelous to see the way they work towards a relationship that is built to be unequal – because she outranks him – and because the story does NOT flip things to make him the leader of their partnership just because that’s the way it’s usually done. Nothing about Saskia or her relationship with Felix is “the way things are usually done” and that’s one of the points of the whole thing.

As is the still developing sisterhood between those three Queens of Villainy. A sisterhood that is already strong enough that they still have each other’s backs – even when one of them massively screws up ALL their plans.

In the end, this worked for me, even if it began in some places I really didn’t want to go. Once Saskia started taking charge of her own life and destiny, in spite of the forces arrayed against her and the voices inside her head telling her that she was doing ALL the wrong things, the Queens of Villainy reminded me a lot of two other stories of women having or seizing power and the little men around them throwing really big, bloody temper tantrums as a result. So if you like the idea of the Queens of Villainy you might also enjoy Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose Darling and The Women’s War by Jenna Glass.

And they might help tide you over while you’re waiting – as this reader will be – for the second book in the Queens of Villainy series, Enchanting the Fae Queen, coming in January 2026.