Genre: romantasy

#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
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
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: 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
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 February 25, 2025
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.

#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #Excerpt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Excerpts
#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #ExcerptI Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos, #1) by Kimberly Lemming
Narrator: Hazel Addison
Format: audiobook, eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alien abduction romance, Romance, romantasy, science fiction romance
Series: Cosmic Chaos #1
Pages: 304
Length: 9 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hilarious and sexy romance about a woman who gets dropped on a strange planet only to fall for not one, but two, aliens, from the author of That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf.

Dorothy Valentine is close to getting her PhD in wildlife biology when she’s attacked by a lion. On the bright side, she’s saved! On the not-so-bright side, it’s because they’re abducted by aliens. In her scramble to escape, Dory and the lion commandeer an escape pod and crash-land on an alien planet that has...dinosaurs?

Dory and her new lion bestie, Toto, are saved in the nick of time by a mysterious and sexy alien, Sol. On their new adventure, they team up with the equally hot, equally dangerous Lok, who may or may not be a war criminal. Whether it be trauma, fate, or intrigue, Dory can’t resist the attraction that’s developing in their trio....

As this ragtag group of misfits explore their new planet, Dory learns more about how and why they’ve all ended up together, battles more prehistoric creatures than she imagined (she imagined...zero), and questions if she even wants to go back home to Earth in this hilarious and steamy alien romance adventure comedy romp.

My Review:

Today is Valentine’s Day, which screamed for a romance to be today’s book. I really want to claim that aliens made me do this book to celebrate the day, but that’s not my story.

However, it is, it oh so definitely is, Dory’s story. It’s right there in the title, I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com. Because Dory was abducted by aliens, and she is trapped in what the aliens believed was a rom-com.

Dory’s mileage definitely varies on that. Her story definitely turns into the ‘rom’ part of that phrase. It also, certainly does have plenty of humor in it. But part of that humor is that the aliens intended to set up a rom-com without having an actual feather of a clue as to what either ‘rom’ or ‘com’ truly mean to humans. Or, for that matter, to the Sankado, the species they’ve already abducted.

So Dory isn’t trapped in a rom-com. She does, however, totally and absolutely, get ensnared in the romance part of that equation. Times two.

And it’s a screaming ‘O’ of a blast every wild and crazy step of the way.

Escape Rating B: I picked this one up because a) that spoileriffic title and b) the author’s Mead Mishaps series was incredibly fun (start with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon and be prepared to both blush furiously and ROFL while doing so.) Not to mention c) the book comes out on Tuesday, today is Valentine’s Day and the perfect timing of the whole thing could not be ignored. At least not by moi.

The trope this story wallows in is a familiar one. Of course it’s the ‘Aliens Made Them Do It’ ™ plot device – the one that the author is using and not the aliens making them do it. Also, the author is using it correctly while the aliens flubbed nearly all of their attempts – which is part of the fun of the thing.

The thing about this particular trope is that it screams for a ‘dubcon’ (that’s dubious consent) warning that can literally be seen from outer space. Dory, along with her partners Sol and Lok, clearly do consent to everything in the moment, but the reader can easily get hung up and thrown out of the story on the question of whether it’s true consent because the aliens have drugged all of them to create that consent at the outset.

Dory occasionally throws herself out of her own story because her desires in the moment and her resulting behavior are contrary to everything she ever knew about herself.

Some readers will be totally squicked out. Some will be all into the scene. Because I was listening to a chunk of the story, I was both blushing furiously (listening to a third party describe a sex scene is just weird) and getting a bit weirded out by just how much the way her partners talked sounded like grooming her to accept things she otherwise wouldn’t.

(BTW the audio narration was FINE, I only switched to the ebook because I was all in and reading is just plain faster.)

In the end I concluded that Dory was just discovering that she was really into the kink of it all and that was okay. But your reading mileage may go through some rough patches along the way and it may definitely vary.

The part of the story that’s just purely funny – in a very wry and totally satirical way – is the way that the particular aliens who got them ALL into this mess created said mess through bureaucratic insanity, academic pomposity, and shoddy research. They created the initial mess, dug themselves a hole and threw the first results of that mess into it, realized that they’d screwed up and then dug some more and made the hole bigger.

Anyone who has ever done research or worked in either a big bureaucratic organization or in academia is going to see the situation for the hilarious and rueful set up that it is and just laugh until tears run down their face because it’s true and awful and truly awful and so very much more common than anyone wants to admit.

But this is still Valentine’s Day so I need to get back to the romance. While the aliens may have been trying to set up a rom-com, in truth this is a sex-into-love romance times two. Dory and her partners create a really hot triad. And in an entirely different kind of warning, while this trio does set fire to the sheets, there is actual fire but no actual sheets. The sexytimes, as Dory herself would say, are “hot as balls” and the scenes never, ever fade to black.

Whether or not that’s your thing, it certainly turns out to be theirs. Even if it’s not you’ll still want to slap the alien meddler who is not just watching, he’s taking notes. Dory certainly does – and who can blame her?

In the end, there are multiple facets to this wild romp of a romance. There’s the meddling aliens who screw up and set off the whole entire mess. There’s the incredibly hot romance between Dory and her two sexy partners, who fall in love while an incompetent research intern meddles with their lives every step of the way.

Last but not least, there’s the two sets of sentient beings, alien to each other, who have been thrown together against their wills trying to make the best of it – in spite of yet more alien meddling. That’s clearly going to be the throughline for the entire Cosmic Chaos series, as this story ends with that incompetent research intern failing upwards into a promotion that Dory and her friends are sure to make certain he regrets at every turn. Or at least I certainly hope so and am looking forward to finding out.

The true level of Cosmic Chaos in this story has to be experienced to be believed, so I’m going to leave you with this excerpt from the opening of I Got Abducted by Aliens… so that you can experience a bit of Dory’s voice for yourself. One last thing, that lion, to quote Dory, “THE FUCKING LION!” turns out to be the very best wingman a displaced human could EVER have.

Excerpt from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming

“Fuck, I’m dead?” I snarled, gazing down at the desert. A bright light was pulling me farther into the sky. Which was probably good, right? I’m not the religious type, but I think the general consensus is that up is good.

“All right, not all bad, I guess?” I turned to have a look around, taking in the sights before— “THE FUCKING LION!” I screamed, trying to kick away my murderer. The sandy-brown fur of its mouth was stained a telltale red. I put a hand to my throat, flinching when pain erupted. My hand came back covered in blood. “All right, so you definitely didn’t miss. What is going on?”

The lion ignored me; instead his eyes remained transfixed by what he saw above us. I stilled and looked up to see the clouds shimmering. A darker spot opened up in the sky. A greenish light sparkled out of it until the force pulling me sped up to a breakneck pace. The light became blinding, and I . . . I must have fainted.

The next thing I knew, I was in a tank. My body felt too heavy to move. There was a tickling sensation on my neck. Reaching out, I tried to touch the glass front of the tank but couldn’t reach it. When I cried out, bubbles floated uselessly out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure how long I was floating as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Muffled chirping met my ears. I struggled to open my eyes, but the room was so damn bright.

Why . . . why do I smell cotton candy? Am I having a stroke? I thought that was burnt toast. Dammit. I knew I should have taken that CPR class. What smell meant you were having a stroke?

A sharp zap to my neck shocked me awake. Birds were chirping all around me. I struggled to get up. Something dug into my arms, so I thrashed. Strings lined with suction cups snapped off my arm with little pops. The birds’ chirping grew angrier as I pulled my other arm free. I blinked and looked around to see what looked like . . . owls?

“What the fuck?” I asked. Mutant-looking owls with large fluffy ears fluttered around me, chirping and fussing. Their feathers ranged in color from simple blacks and grays to the colorful blue and orange plumage you would normally find on a tropical bird. Which, frankly, is a wild range of colors for one species to have. I wonder if it’s gender-based.

Focus.

Macaw-like beaks took up a third of their face. Their flapping wings ended in tiny three-fingered hands. One of them was dressed in a white robe and it was trying to probe me with some horseshoe-looking gun thing.

I smacked it away from me and got to my feet. “One of you better start chirping in English,” I warned. Fear and rage caused the threat to come out in a stuttered shout.

The birds were unaffected.

Unfortunate.

I touched my neck, unsure if I’d truly died and gone to some bird hell. But all I felt was smooth skin. When I inspected my hand, not a drop of blood was found. I checked the other side; still nothing. “If I’m not dead, how am I healed?”

The room was lined with rows of cylindrical tanks filled with green liquid. I peered closer at their contents to see the face of a sleeping woman floating in the tank. Her round face looked serene. Long braids fanned out around her face. A few tapped their beaded ends against the glass. The hair rose on the back of my neck as I took in each tank, noting that every one of them held a person. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up from the nightmare. Yet when I looked around again, the pods and their occupants remained. Worse still, I noticed that all of them were women.

Reality sank to the pit of my stomach. I was on an alien spaceship. Those aliens only felt the need to capture women, and I’d just woken up on an operating table. If this wasn’t hell, it was about to be.

Screaming, I stumbled away from the nearest alien, then snatched a tray off the counter next to the table where I’d woken up. Glass vials and unsettling-looking tools crashed to the floor when I flung it at the nearest alien. Two slightly bigger Owlish came at me with what looked like cattle prods. I grabbed hold of one and kicked off its owner, then swung wildly at its partner. The bird’s squawk was cut short when my stick hit the side of its head, sending the creature flying back. Not knowing what else to do, I just swung at any of the little aliens that came within striking distance.

Farther into the room was a dome-like door leading to a hallway. I leapt over two of the Owlish, caught my foot on one, then tripped and fell on my ass. The fall knocked the stick out of my hand; it ricocheted off the ceiling and slammed into a glass case lining the wall. Blue goop spilled out all over my hair. It weighed down my wild red curls until they felt like rivers of slime. “No! No strange alien goop in my hair, dammit!” I wailed, scrambling back on my feet. “Fuck, my ass is gonna die. I’m so gonna die.”

One of the Owlish squawked like a penguin and stomped closer to me. I jumped up, shoving it aside before I sped down the hallway. My vision blurred, causing me to stumble against the wall. The slime dripping down my head grew hot, and the skin where it touched tingled. “Oh, gross. This better not be poison,” I said, wiping it away quickly.

I burst into the first room I encountered to see that it was full of bigger penguin-looking bird aliens and slammed the door shut. “Nope.”

I swore all the way down to the next room and locked myself behind the door. Then I looked around to see that I had made a poor, poor decision, as this room was full of so many more Owlish, some with the cattle prods, and, of course, the motherfucking lion.

My murderer was floating in a ray of light on a table, completely unaware of its surroundings. Flapping noises beat on the door at my back and the Owlish in the room began chattering angrily. Those with cattle prods advanced.

. . . Fuck this.

“You know what? If I have to die”—I raised a finger to all the bird fuckers in the room—“we’re all gonna die.” I grabbed the nearest Owlish and threw it at the others charging forward.

Excerpted from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming Copyright © 2025 by Kimberly Lemming. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

#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+

#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana CostaShoestring Theory by Mariana Costa
Format: eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy, time travel romance
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A queer, madcap, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers time travel romance with the future of the world at stake, this charming fantasy tale is sure to satisfy fans of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree.
The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former Grand-Mage of the High Court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a ramshackle hut by the sea, trying to catch any remaining fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom’s ruin. For he played his part – for as the King, Eufrates Margrave, descended further and further into paranoia, violence and madness, his Grand-Mage – and husband – Cyril didn’t do a thing to stop him.
When Shoestring wanders away and dies one morning, Cyril knows his days are finally numbered. But are there enough left to have a last go at putting things right? With his remaining lifeblood, he casts a powerful spell that catapults him back in time to a happier period of Farsalan history – a time when it was Eufrates’s older sister Tig destined to ascend to the throne, before she died of a wasting disease, and a time when Cyril and Eufrates’s tentative romance had not yet bloomed. If he can just make sure Eufie never becomes King, then maybe he can prevent the kingdom’s tragic fate. But the magical oath he made to his husband at the altar, transcending both time and space, may prove to be his most enduring – and most dangerous – feat of magic to date…
Featuring a formidable Great Aunt, a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance, an awkward love quadrangle and a crow familiar called Ganache, this charming story is imminently easy to read and sure to satisfy fans of fanfiction who like their fantasy lite.

My Review:

I picked this one up for the cat. Which is fair, because from a certain perspective, this whole story is, in fact and for real, all about Shoestring the cat. Even though, like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, Shoestring is dead, to begin with.

If you’re also here for the cat, I will give you one spoiler, a spoiler that I seriously wished I had at the beginning. Because at the end, Shoestring will be just fine. Really, truly. (Not knowing that gave me some terrible approach/avoidance problems when I began reading the story. I was having as hard a time dealing with Shoestring’s apparent death as Cyril was.)

In a terrible future that should never have been, Cyril has been barely surviving as what used to be the Kingdom of Farsala literally rots all around him. It’s been years with bad air, almost no sun, and a starvation diet for both himself and poor Shoestring.

Cyril’s only reason for continuing this meager, guilt-ridden existence is to catch fish for his familiar, Shoestring. Everyone else he ever cared about is dead. From a certain perspective – namely Cyril’s – it’s all his fault.

But Shoestring’s passing is the cosmic kick in the pants that Cyril needed. Without Shoestring, he’s faced with two choices. He can either wither away into death, as all mages do when their familiars die, or he can get off his magical ass and go back and fix things.

Or at least try, making this whole marvelous story a fix-it fic, set in a magical world that needs a hell of a lot of fixing. The only problem is that Cyril isn’t really the right person to get the job. But he is the right person to keep his loved ones alive – and they absolutely are.

Escape Rating B: I had some mixed feelings about this book, in spite of how much I generally adore fix-it fics. Part of that can be laid at the feets of poor Shoestring, as I was nearly as heartbroken at his early, first-chapter death as Cyril was.

And, I’ll admit, I’m used to the protagonists of fix-it fics – which I usually love – being somewhat more competent hot messes than it seems Cyril could ever possibly be. He does not look before he leaps. It often seems as if he doesn’t even look after he leaps. Or at all. He doesn’t act – he reacts – and generally cluelessly at that.

Which is how his country got in the mess it did in the first place. Because Cyril is the heir to the Grand Mage of the whole entire kingdom and he’s supposed to be a whole lot more capable than he has ever demonstrated being. His great-aunt, Heléne, the current high-court witch, is that great and it seems from Cyril’s barely-adult perspective that she always has been.

But Heléne is slowing down, and Cyril hasn’t been stepping up. Which is why everything went pear-shaped. Because he didn’t see the rot in the kingdom at a point where it could be stopped. This time around, he has to do better, to be better, and at the beginning, he isn’t.

He does, eventually, and with frequent application of several boots to his ass, get better enough to figure out what went wrong the first time around – but he’s a bit slow on the uptake. Frequently. Often.

Which is why the comparisons between Shoestring Theory and Legends & Lattes fall spectacularly apart. They are both cozy fantasies – but they take vastly different approaches to both the coziness and the fantasy.

For one thing, Viv in Legends & Lattes is very competent and gets shit done. It’s just that what she wants to get done is very cozy in that her goal is to open a coffee shop. She has doubts, she has fears, she backslides in her ambition to eschew her old, violent ways as a mercenary – but she gets the job done because of herself.

Cyril gets the job done in spite of himself. In the end he does get there, but he faffs around a LOT. If it wasn’t for his friends he wouldn’t manage to get his head on straight. He IS, actually, quite capable – but he’s never been pushed to apply himself until now and it takes him a LONG time to get out of that mindset.

A lot longer than it took this reader to figure out who the true villain of the piece really was, and that Shoestring’s restoration would be part of Cyril’s reward for finally getting his act together.

In the end, I liked Shoestring Theory, but not nearly as much as I expected to. There just wasn’t enough of Shoestring himself in the story, and Cyril turned out to be a surprisingly incompetent protagonist for a fix-it story.

But I did enjoy the way the story turned itself inside out, that all of Cyril’s intentions and memories of that first, terrible, time around turned out to be not what he thought they were, and that he did manage to get to the truth and the whole truth of what went wrong the first time – and that it wasn’t ALL his fault.

So, in spite of Cyril’s frequent faffing around, the one thing he always was that shone through was that he loved deeply if not always wisely, that he had a huge capacity for trust even if it was sometimes misplaced, and that the story, the kingdom and even Cyril himself are finally saved by the depth of his loyalty to those he loves – and the reciprocation of that love and loyalty in full measure in return.

A- #BookReview: Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose Darling

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose DarlingFear the Flames (Fear the Flames, #1) by Olivia Rose Darling
Format: eARC
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: Fear the Flames #1
Pages: 384
Published by Delacorte Press on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An exiled princess teams up with the last man she thought she could trust in the start of a dazzling and unforgettable epic fantasy romance series.As a child, Elowen Atarah was ripped away from her dragons and imprisoned by her father, King Garrick of Imirath. Years later, Elowen is now a woman determined to free her dragons. Having established a secret kingdom of her own called Aestilian, she’s ready to do what’s necessary to save her people and seek vengeance. Even if that means having to align herself with the Commander of Vareveth, Cayden Veles, the most feared and dangerous man in all the kingdoms of Ravaryn.
Cayden is ruthless, lethal, and secretive, promising to help Elowen if she will stand with him and all of Vareveth in the pending war against Imirath. Despite their contrasting motives, Elowen can’t ignore their undeniable attraction as they combine their efforts and plot to infiltrate the impenetrable castle of Imirath to steal back her dragons and seek revenge on their common enemy.
As the world tries to keep them apart, the pull between Elowen and Cayden becomes impossible to resist. Working together with their crew over clandestine schemes, the threat of war looms, making the imminent heist to free her dragons their most dangerous adventure yet. But for Elowen, her vengeance is a promise signed in blood, and she’ll stop at nothing to see that promise through.
An immersive fantasy filled with a sizzling reluctant-allies-to-lovers romance, a world to get lost in, dangerous quests, dragon bonds, and an entertaining band of characters to root for, Fear the Flames marks the stunning debut of Olivia Rose Darling.

My Review:

Historically and fictionally speaking, there seem to be two types of prophecies. Some prophecies are vague and mysterious and mysteriously vague – think of Nostradamus – and resemble 20/20 hindsight, in that they are only able to be interpreted after the fact – which one would think would be a bit beside the point by that point!

Then there’s the other kind, the prophecies that seem really specific – which they kind of are. But they’re specific because they are self-fulfilling. The classic example is Oedipus Rex. The poor man was prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother – but it only comes about because dear old dad tries to prevent it from coming about. There’s also that truly dreadful prophecy about Harry Potter and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that totally and utterly derails Potter’s whole, entire life.

I’d say I’m digressing but I’m actually not, because Princess Elowen of Imirath’s life was thrown into an equal and equally painful amount of chaos and destruction by an equally terrible prophecy that was brought about by the direct actions of her very own dear old dad attempting to thwart it.

At the celebration of her first birthday, Elowen was gifted with a quintet of dragon eggs. The eggs were positively ancient and assumed to be merely curious fossils at this point in their long existence.

But we wouldn’t have a story if that were true – so of course it’s not. The eggs hatch into not one or two but FIVE baby dragons who instantly imprint on and bond with the equally tiny princess. The prophecy that goes along with the event foretells that the bond between the little princess and her dragons will either doom her country, or bring it to even greater heights of glory – and nothing in either of those fates says anything about the fate of her father, the man who currently sits on the throne of Imirath. Whether doom or glory is coming – he seems to have no part in it at all.

Out of fear and jealousy, to save his country and his throne – or so he believes – King Garrick of Imirath, little Elowen’s father – does his absolute worst to thwart the prophecy. He should have known better.

Fear the Flames is the story of more-than-once-beaten and bloodied Princess Elowen coming home to deliver a brutal lesson that she’s spent her entire life preparing. In many stories, revenge is a dish best served cold, but for Elowen, the only way to achieve both justice and vengeance is in a blast of dragon fire.

Escape Rating A-: Romantasy as a genre, like its sister from another mister Science Fiction Romance, has to straddle the line between its two genres and has to dig itself deeply into that fence line to the point where its feet touch the ground on both sides. Which, all too often, ends up with splinters in some VERY uncomfortable places – even when it’s successful at that endeavor.

Which is pretty much the case in Fear the Flames. I have a couple of tiny quibbles, but for the most part Fear the Flames works and it works well. From my own personal perspective, it seemed that although it does successfully straddle that line between fantasy and romance, the foot on the romance side of the equation is just a bit more firmly planted. Your reading mileage, of course, may vary. I certainly found it impossible to put down!

The Elowen we meet at the beginning of her story is the product of long years of torture and darkness at the hands of her father and his henchmen – as well as a daring and desperate escape. She’s reached adulthood as queen, not of her birthright Imirath, but of the tiny hidden kingdom of Aestilian. But her little kingdom is a refuge for many fleeing from her father’s increasing tyranny, and with each new immigrant comes greater danger of either discovery or simple starvation. Or both.

To protect her people, Elowen leaves her kingdom to forge an alliance with neighboring Vareveth, seemingly in a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend as the hand of Imirath’s tyranny stretches further each year.

All of the above is political, and very. Just the kind of epic political warfare that epic fantasy is known for. Elowen’s rise from prisoner to power has the shadows of grimdarkness looming over it in the grandest of style.

And then there’s the romance, a fantastic – in more ways than one – story of enemies to lovers, with all the steamy intensity of forbidden passion and ringed round with the spikes and thorns of an epic betrayal.

That all of this – and it’s compelling pretty much every step of the way – is just the beginning of a truly sweeping story of love and revenge will leave readers panting for more. Which they’ll get in Wrath of the Dragons, coming not nearly soon enough in 2025.

A- #BookReview: A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison SaftA Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
Format: eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dark academia, epic fantasy, fantasy mystery, fantasy romance, romantasy, gaslamp
Pages: 384
Published by Del Rey on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.
Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.
The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.
But there are other dangers lurking in the forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for one another—they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.

My Review:

While it’s true that “academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small”, that insight is merely the start of this epic sapphic romantasy. Lorelei Kaskel and Sylvia von Wolff have been rival proteges of Professor Ingrid Ziegler for years, vying for their mentor’s time, attention and praise even as they follow slightly different academic paths to the same goal.

A goal that is about to be realized, only for that realization to fall into another familiar saying, that “having a thing is not so pleasurable as wanting”. Both women should have been careful what they wished for, because this particular “ring” comes with a very large and deadly curse.

The kingdom of Brunnestaad has just, seriously just, extremely recently and still somewhat resentfully, been united under its young ruler into a slightly shaky and somewhat fractious union of formerly independent kingdoms that, for the most part, would much rather go back to being independent and all too frequently at war with one another.

King Wilhelm needs a project that will rally all those factions under his banner. Alternatively, he needs a common enemy to accomplish the same thing. A royally sponsored, scientific/magical expedition to find a legendary source of magic and power SHOULD do the trick – and make him unstoppable after all that power is, naturally and of course, delivered to him on a silver platter by the members of the expedition.

All of whom are his best friends, the aristocratic children he grew up with, who all banded together against their feuding, warring parents. He trusts them and he is counting on their personal loyalty even more than their oaths to his unsteady crown.

“Back in the days when wishes still held power”, this story’s lyrical equivalent of “once upon a time”, all of his friends would have been utterly loyal, all of the members of the expedition would have been completely trustworthy, and the fabled Ursprung would have been found easily and without delay and its power would have been granted to him immediately and its presence alone would have been more than enough to solve all of his kingdom’s problems without need for war or bloodshed.

But wishes no longer have such power – not even a king’s.

Howsomever, two members of the expedition are not even among the king’s trusted intimates. The expedition leader Ziegler, who Wilhelm has pretty much held hostage in the capital for years of planning – and her protegee Lorelei Kaskel, a prodigious and prickly scholar who Ziegler plucked from the ghetto her people have been forced to live in for centuries. Kaskel herself is is the ultimate outsider, her people are hated, feared and reviled at every turn, their status is the backbone of nearly every bit of the folklore that she studies, and no one ever lets Kaskel forget it.

In other words, Kaskel is a Jew – although her people are never quite called by that name – this world is in the equivalent of the Middle Ages in its pervasive anti-Semitism, and Kaskel is never allowed to forget that she is at the university on sufferance and is a ready scapegoat for anything that might go wrong.

Only it won’t just be Kaskel who will pay for her mistakes. Her friends, her family, her entire community can be put to the torch if she fails or falls. It’s happened before, and it will inevitably happen again.

When Ziegler is murdered on the very first evening of travel, all the responsibility and all the consequences fall hard on Kaskel’s shoulders. She knows the murderer was one of their company. She knows she’ll be executed if the expedition fails, and she knows that every single person has multiple motives for the crime and that they will all seek to undermine her authority and her decisions at every turn.

She has one hope – and it comes from a source that she isn’t sure she can trust with anything except the sure and certain knowledge that neither of them killed their mentor. Her only ally is her academic rival, Sylvia von Wolff. Together they will find both the source of magic AND the murderer.

All they have to do is stick together – a task that is both much easier and much, much harder than even their long-standing and bitter rivalry would ever have led them to expect.

Escape Rating A-: This book is a lot – and a lot of it is very, very good. Like staying up half the night to finish good. But there were just enough things that drove me crazy to keep it from tripping over the line from A- to A.

Which is going to require more than a bit of explanation.

Both what made this work, and what didn’t, was in the characters. On that one famous hand, we have Lorelei Kaskel and her rival turned frenemy and eventual lover, Sylvia von Wolff. We see the story from inside Kaskel’s head, and we get to see what makes her tick – as well as what ticks her off – from the opening of the story.

But the more we learn from her and of her, the deeper both she, and the story, get. It was clear to this reader that Kaskel’s Yevani people were this fantasy world’s equivalent of the Jews. It’s in the in-world history, in the treatment of her people at this point in world time, it’s in the pervasiveness of anti-Yevani (read as anti-Semitic) folklore. And the language they speak in the ghetto is definitely Yiddish.

In other words, these are my people and it was easy for me to see Kaskel’s perspective and even share it.

That she sees the ease with which Sylvia von Wolff, not merely an aristocrat but the descendant of actual kings, moves through the world, the way that opportunities are handed to Sylvia on a platter and seemingly all her transgressions are swept away, and that it all makes her downright angry is totally understandable. That she believes that everyone looks down on her all the time and that it makes her encase herself in ice as the only defense mechanism she has feels all too real, because they all DO look down on her and her ability to fight back is very much limited by her circumstances.

Which is exactly what makes the romance between Lorelei and Sylvia so much of an opposites attract, wrong side of the tracks affair and makes it so hard for Lorelei to believe is even possible. It has that darkly delicious air of the forbidden and taboo with actually being either of those things in any moral sense.

On that infamous other hand, the thing that made this story not quite hit that “A” mark was the other characters. The story is so focused on Lorelei’s and Sylvia’s dance of romance and hate that the other characters don’t get enough “air time” to be anything more than archetypes – and generally hateful ones at that.

This story is, among its many other parts, a fantasy mystery, and we don’t get enough of any of the other characters to even care whodunnit and why as long as we get to watch Lorelei and Sylvia play “come here go away” games.

At the end, the solution to the mystery felt a bit anticlimactic, while the solution to the political shenanigans didn’t have quite as much depth as it might have because we just don’t have enough outside of the romance.

So if you’re here for the sapphic romantasy aspects of the story – this is one that will keep you up half the night just to see if they manage to get past the obstacles in their way. If you’re here for either the mystery or the epic fantasy, you’ll still be glad to know whodunnit and why, but the romance is definitely the more satisfying side of the story.

A- #BookReview: The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian HuangThe Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang
Format: eARC
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy romance, historical fantasy, M/M romance, magical realism, romantasy
Pages: 312
Published by Mira on March 26, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?”
In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue.
In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead.
And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they’ve met before.
Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them.
As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love—a power that transcends time itself…but one that might consume them both.
An unpredictable roller coaster of a debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a genre-bending romantasy that challenges everything we think we know about true love.

My Review:

Three roads converge in the midst of a labyrinth. Three fates collide in never ending repetition. No matter where or when the tragedy recurs, nothing ever makes a difference in the ultimate outcome.

In other words, no matter where you go, there you are.

An emperor and a clerk in 4 BCE, an innkeeper and a mysterious stranger in 1740, a medical student and an artist in the now. Three times, three places, three romances, three tragedies.

Different incarnations, different times, different lives but the same results. Because this isn’t just a story of love lost and found, but a story of love lost because it has been betrayed, over and over again. An eternal triangle that hinges on the heart of the one who always remembers everything, and yet can’t stop himself from repeating the same old mistakes. Over and over and over again.

Because even death seems incapable of doing their spirits apart. Perhaps next time, because even if nothing else is certain, there will certainly be one.

Escape Rating A-: This story walks three paths, and at first it doesn’t seem like one has much to do with the other. It reminded me of stories about walking a maze of trials that leads to a central point, a trail of trials that no matter which path is walked that ultimately leads to the same place – and all too frequently the same goal or battle or contest or tragedy. A progression that, as the path is walked and the spiral gets tighter, allows brief glimpses into the spirals on either side.

But at the beginning, the relationship between Dong Xian’s precarious climb up the ladder in Imperial China, He Shican’s nighttime wanderings in the woods around his remote inn in the mid-18th century, and River’s drug-induced hallucinations of the circuit party scene in today’s Los Angeles don’t have a connection that the reader can see.

It’s only in the dreams, nightmares and drug-induced ecstasy that the characters experience in each of the timelines that the stories begin, hazily at first, to reach out for each other – even as the contemporary characters in this never-ending story, River and Joey and Winston, come together and ultimately drive each other away.

Each of the stories begins slowly, but as they draw towards their individual conclusions that are all the same tragic ending, the inward spirals get faster and faster and tighter and tighter – like the loop of a noose closing around the throats of ALL the stories, leaving the reader breathless at the end.

An ending which may not be one at all.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started this book, although a friend’s absolute rave about it induced me to give this debut novel a try. And I’m glad I did because in the end I was completely blown away by this sexy, queer romantasy AND that it’s the author’s first.

I can’t wait to see what he does for an encore!

#BookReview: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human by Kimberly Lemming

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human by Kimberly LemmingThat Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human (Mead Mishaps, 3) by Kimberly Lemming
Format: eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: Mead Mishaps #3
Pages: 353
Published by Orbit on March 5, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When I was a little girl, my Ma used to read me stories every night. Some were epic adventures with high stakes and exciting twists while others were of princesses trapped in towers guarded by fierce dragons. The pitiful princess would be stuck inside all day pining for her prince charming to come and rescue her. I always hated those stories. I couldn't imagine why the lazy thing didn't just get up and leave. Ironic since I was now stuck in that same situation. Turns out, when a dragon holds you hostage, he doesn't just let you get up and leave.Who knew?
When I thought I saw hope on the horizon, that hope was smashed to bits by - you guessed it - another damn dragon.

My Review:

Technically, this final entry in the Mead Mishaps trilogy is not, strictly speaking, a mishap involving any mead. Also, Dante wasn’t drunk. High as a kite and sick as a dog, but not drunk. Not that he didn’t drink something he shouldn’t have – but only because the human he was trying to save drugged him.

In other words, the eventual romance between Dante the Storm Dragon and the human Cherry does not exactly get off to a promising start.

Which is the story of Cherry’s current life when the story begins. Because yes, that’s Cherry Hotpepper, the missing and presumed dead sister of the heroine of the place where this whole thing started in That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon.

In an absolutely delicious and utterly heartbreaking bit of the irony behind ALL the entries in this series, at the point where Cinnamon Hotpepper saved that demon – and ultimately ALL the demons – she was doing her damndest to avoid having adventures because Cherry loved adventures SO MUCH and Cherry was gone.

So Cinnamon had the adventure that Cherry would have loved, pretty much in spite of herself. When we first meet Cherry, she’s imprisoned in a dragon’s keep with the dragon literally curled about the base of the keep keeping her prisoner – and has been for five long, annoying, boring years with nothing to do but plot an escape that the dragon thwarts over and over and over again.

But he doesn’t harm her. He doesn’t touch her, not even in his human form. More frustrating still, he doesn’t even TALK to her. Cherry is bored, bored, bored. Cinnamon would have loved being locked in a literal ivory tower – particularly as good food and interesting libations are on tap courtesy of the dragon’s little frog-servants – while Cherry is ready to claw her way out by her fingernails.

Which is when Dante flies to her rescue. Or that’s his intent, at least. But Cherry has had it up to the top of her head with all her curls piled on top of it with dragons. She doesn’t trust Dante – at all.

Dante, however, is certain that Cherry is his true, fated mate. He’s stoned, she’s sorry not sorry, and he’s watching his arms crawl away and talking to bananas. Which is the point where explanations and consent go out the window and he bites her – giving her some of his magic and triggering the mating bond.

It may have been the right thing to do – and he certainly wasn’t responsible for his actions – but now that it’s done there’s no takesy-backsies. Not that even wary, suspicious Cherry wants to go quite that far.

But a little romance first would have been a much better way of wooing the woman that Dante has already made his wife. It’s too late for that to be first, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a chance if he can figure out how to do it second.

He’ll need just a little bit of help from his friends back in Boohail – and get more than a little bit of hindrance from his dragon sister, an enchanted, talking sword, and a cat who is all demon.

Escape Rating B: In the end, I enjoyed this nearly as much as I did the previous books in the series, That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon and That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf.

But I’ll admit that the early stages gave me more than a few qualms that the other books didn’t. Because this book has a serious problem with consent that the previous books carefully and artfully handled – particularly that second book about the love potion and the werewolf.

Fated mate stories can easily turn just a bit squicky, as the fated mates themselves generally have no choice in the matter – but it’s mutual. In this particular fantasy world, the demons and other non or not-quite humans have fated mates – but humans don’t work that way. Making a huge portion of each of these stories about the demon partner getting their fated partner onside, because they are already all in and the human can still walk away even if the demon can’t.

That’s out the window in this book. Dante has no choice, Cherry is it for him. But he takes away her ability to make a choice for herself while he’s admittedly under the influence of the drug she gave him. So she inflicted him with a temporary condition that he’ll get over in a few hours while he inflicted her with a permanent one that will alter her entire life.

It may turn out for the better – but she doesn’t know that in the beginning. All of his attempts to persuade or seduce her consequently didn’t feel either right or romantic because she has been compromised. In the end he’s going to ‘win’ unless she kills him first – which might kill her into the bargain.

So I wasn’t feeling the romance nearly as much as I did in the other two books because it always felt predetermined. Not that Dante is exactly at fault for what happened thanks to the drugs, but it still took the romance out of things for this reader.

Howsomever, what did work for me, very much, was the weepy, teary, heartstopping reunion between Cherry, her sister Cinnamon, and their sister-of-the-heart Brie, the heroines of those first two books. Cherry’s absence – and presumed death! – casts just a bit of a pall over the whole series because Cin and Brie have Cherry-shaped holes in their hearts and their lives.

Seeing those holes filled, and finally, finally learning about the emptiness that led that original dragon to keep Cherry prisoner for so long, brought the book AND the series to a VERY satisfying conclusion!

#BookReview: That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf by Kimberly Lemming

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf by Kimberly LemmingThat Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, 2) by Kimberly Lemming
Format: eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: Mead Mishaps #2
Pages: 288
Published by Orbit on February 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Cheesemaker Brie has the world’s worst luck in love, which is how she ends up falling for a lactose intolerant werewolf, in this raunchy, laugh-out-loud rom-com fantasy by the genre’s freshest new voice, Kimberly Lemming.

Brie’s never been particularly coordinated…or lucky. Who else would accidentally throw a drink at someone’s head only to miss entirely and hit a stranger behind them? And who else would have that stranger fall madly in love with them because it turns out that the drink she threw was a love potion? Yeah, probably just Brie.…

Running her cheese business and dealing with a pirate ship full of demons that just moved into town was hard enough. Now on top of it, she has to convince a werewolf that she’s not really his fated mate. Though even she’s got to admit…having a gorgeous man show up and do all her chores while telling her she’s beautiful isn’t the worst thing to happen to a girl.

My Review:

Unlike Cin in the first book in the Mead Mishaps series, That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, Brie wasn’t quite THAT drunk, and she wasn’t even aiming at the werewolf. She caught him anyway, and thereby, quite literally, hangs a tail.

The tail that Felix, the werewolf of the title, can’t stop himself from wagging whenever Brie is anywhere near him – at least when he’s furry. There are plenty of other things bobbing and weaving when she’s around when he’s NOT furry.

But is obviously still very, very happy to see her.

I just started in the middle, didn’t I? That’s actually kind of apropos, as That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf is the second or even more on point, the middle book in the Mead Mishaps series that began with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon.

Back to Brie, drinking at the local watering hole in Boohail, fending off the smarmy, amorous and utterly clueless advances of one of the local get-rich-quick-scheme types who’s after her for her small plot of land and not for any of her other abundant assets.

A man who won’t take “no” for an answer in the most teeth-grinding and utterly self-absorbed way possible. (I thought at this point we had a possible ‘Gaston’ situation here, but he’s not quite that bad and certainly can’t convince nearly enough people to form a mob to come after anyone with torches and pitchforks – otherwise one of his get rich quick schemes would have worked and he might not be pursuing Brie.) He’s just the unfortunately all too common variety of male who is certain that if he hears a woman say ‘no’ in his general direction that he must have misunderstood – or that she must be misunderstanding herself.

Unfortunately, we ALL know the type.

So he goes out and buys a love potion – does his damndest to get Brie to take it and drink it – and she’s had enough. Up to HERE and over it, and yeets the disgustingly pink potion (think Pepto-Bismol pink because I certainly did) across the room, intending it to hit the asshole in the face.

He ducks, the love potion hits Pirate Werewolf Felix in the face, and we’re back to the hanging – and or wagging – of that tail again.

Because the love potion works, dammit. Felix falls instantly in love with Brie. Which is GREAT because he really is everything that other guy thinks he is. With a cherry on top. Felix is the fulfillment of every single one of Brie’s not so secret yearnings.

What he’s not, or not exactly, or Brie isn’t nearly so certain as Felix is about the whole thing, is consenting. He says he’s imprinted and that Brie is his true, fated, mate, while she says he’s under the influence of a potion and CAN’T really consent and can’t possibly be sure whether she’s his mate or not. He says he is but she doesn’t want to be abandoned again and they’re both trying to be oh-so-damned noble about the whole thing.

Which is when unattached females in Boohail start disappearing and Felix has to do his best and his damndest – and he’s certainly capable of both at the same time – to get Brie as attached to him as he is to her and as permanently as possible.

Of course it’s too late for that. All the way around.

Escape Rating B: I picked this up because DAMN the first book was so much fun that I couldn’t resist collecting the set. (Which means I’ll be reviewing the third book in the series, That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human, sometime in March.)

On the one hand, it’s hard to worry about spoilers with this series, because the titles do generally give the first part of the game away. In that first book, Cin really does get blind drunk and accidentally save a demon.

It turns out that Cin didn’t just save one demon – she saved ALL the demons. And helped a bunch of those demons to take over a pirate ship. And kill a goddess who was really just a different kind of demon in disguise imprisoning ALL the demons and leeching magic from all the humans.

It was a GREAT gig until Cin and Company spoiled it for her. It’s also where this second entry in the series picks up and runs away with the story – and not in any of the directions that first seem obvious. Which, come to think of it, is EXACTLY the way things worked out the first time around!

And just like in the previous book, and just as much fun as that first time around, this second cozy fantasy with sexytimes combines (frequently and often but not nearly as frequently and often as either Felix or Brie REALLY want) two tastes that go really GREAT together. There’s a surprisingly sweet romance between a girl who wants to do the right thing even if kills her and a werewolf who is sure that what they are doing IS the right thing if only she’d stop worrying about the love potion – at least right up until the point he realizes that he really, Really, REALLY should have worried a bit more about the love potion. And on the other hand, the need to foil a terrible plot to fill the worldwide vacancy in the deity department with a new face slapped on the same old trickster.

Mead Mishaps is the kind of lighthearted cozy fantasy romance to read when you’re just looking for a good reading time and to finish the last page with a smile on your face because it’s just a whole lot of fun. That the fun conceals a more fully-fledged than expected fantasy behind the gauzy but transparent curtains of its romance and sexytimes is just icing on an already delicious cake. A cake that foodie Cin would bake with oodles of cinnamon – of course – while Brie might prefer a cheese wheel. But it’s the thought that counts, after all.

I’m looking forward to one more trip to Boohail next month with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human. Because so far this series has managed to tickle both my sweet tooth and my funny bone and I’m happy to be coming back for one more round!