Genre: urban fantasy

A- #AudioBookReview: Thaumaturgic Tapas by Tao Wong

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Thaumaturgic Tapas by Tao WongThaumaturgic Tapas (Hidden Dishes #3) by Tao Wong
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, foodie fiction, urban fantasy
Series: Hidden Dishes #3
Pages: 140
Length: 4 hours
Published by Dreamscape Media, Starlit Publishing on March 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

With Magic Comes Mayhem
For the Nameless Restaurant, once a discreet hole-in-the-wall meant for a cast of supernatural regulars, the increasing levels of background magic has brought with it that most dreadful of locusts - new customers.
The staff of the Nameless Restaurant are finding the influx of new customers - both mortal and magical - to be a challenge. They're reaching a breaking point and something has to give.
The only question is, will it be Mo Meng's rules on magic or the restaurant itself?
Thaumaturgic Tapas is the third standalone novella in the cozy cooking fantasy series Hidden Dishes.
The Hidden Dishes series is a cozy cooking fantasy perfect for fans of Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Junpei Inuzuka's Restaurant to Another World. Written by bestselling author Tao Wong, his other series include the System Apocalypse, A Thousand Li, Climbing the Ranks, Hidden Wishes and Adventures on Brad series.

My Review:

This third book in the mouthwateringly delicious Hidden Dishes series (after The Nameless Restaurant and Chaotic Aperitifs) was supposed to be titled Sorcerous Plates. Magical chef Mo Meng’s ‘plates’ absolutely are not sorcerous – no matter what each book might be called – but the dishes he serves on those mundane plates are definitely magically delicious. And all without the use of any charms, lucky or otherwise, in his cooking process.

Not that he isn’t using a bit more magic in his cooking than he promised himself he would in the early days of his Nameless Restaurant. When the series began, Mo Meng served a small and self-selecting clientele of mostly supernatural diners – or at least those in the know about the supernatural world.

Until a chaotic visit from a newly awakened jinn changed all that which is the story in The Nameless Restaurant, and now Mo Meng and his human jill-of-all-trades-except-cooking, Kelly, have way more diners than they can handle or the tiny restaurant can actually hold.

Bowing to the necessity that either Kelly or himself – and someday both – need help before they are run literally off their feet, he has placed magical ‘Help Wanted’ signs around Toronto’s magical district. Those signs bear strange fruit in the person of a young demon looking to get out from under his infamous sire’s very large and possibly downright sulfurous thumb.

As long as Damian doesn’t set either the restaurant or its patrons on fire – literally – his help is very much needed as part of this evening’s crew at the restaurant, as Mo Meng has chosen to challenge himself by creating a menu consisting entirely of ‘leftovers’.

Which leads to a lot of small plates attempting to fill some supernaturally large appetites, some upset mundanes who don’t like the lack of a fixed menu, a reservation system, a waiting list and especially the lack of electronic outlets for their ever-present gadgets.

But the real story at the Nameless Restaurant is all about the creation of this quirky community of ultimate insiders, along with the inside joke of a vampire lawyer negotiating a contract between a very young demon and a very old witch, while a pair of government agents look on trying to determine whether it is, or is not, their circus and whether they should or are even capable of doing anything about this particular bit of magical ‘monkey business’.

It’s all in a day’s, or an evening’s, work at the Nameless Restaurant, a truly magical place to spend an evening. If only there were a way to magically pull the meals Mo Meng prepares out of the book and onto one’s own table!

Escape Rating A-: First, this series needs a trigger warning – but not the usual kind. Because reading and/or listening to Mo Meng’s meditations on cooking as well as his descriptions of the ingredients he’s using and the meal he’s preparing are guaranteed to make anyone hungry. This warning particularly applies to listening in the car on the way to the grocery store!

Howsomever, Mo Meng’s thoughts and observations about his long life and experience as a chef, as well as his meditations about available ingredients and exactly how he plans to use them in that night’s recipes are very, well, meditative. In the voice of the narrator of the series, Emily Woo Zeller, I could have listened to Mo Meng for hours – which I did.

Having listened to the first book, The Nameless Restaurant, and this latest, Thaumaturgic Tapas, while having read the second, Chaotic Aperitifs, I would personally recommend that if you enjoy audiobooks at all you get this series in audio if you can. It’s still very good as a book, but the audio adds something special, at least IMHO.

The format of each entry in the series so far is that of a ‘day in the life’ of Mo Meng and his restaurant. He begins the day deciding what he’ll serve that night, shopping for ingredients, and often having a conversation with his front-of-house manager (and jill of all trades), Kelly, about how things are going.

This entry in the series begins with both of them admitting out loud, for each other if not for themselves, that they are being run off their feet and that something has got to give. In this case, what gives is his wish to not add another employee. Mo Meng is immortal and he can use magic to help himself in the kitchen – although he’d rather not. But Kelly is mortal and she can only run but so fast in a tiny restaurant filled with tables.

So change has come, and Damian the young demon sweeps in with it, lowering himself to starting at the bottom – as a mere busboy – even as he battles the pride that seems to be one of his besetting – or perhaps inherited – sins.

Most of the story, however, is taken up with the bustling hours of the evening, when the restaurant is open and filled with customers – as well as with customers’ impatience and egos. But the mundane customers who chafe at the restrictions are mostly there to add a bit of heat and spice to the recipe.

What makes the story are the regular customers, who are not so regular at all. They offer a glimpse into the supernatural community, as well as the continuity of their continuing stories. Also, in this particular case, a bit of ballast, as long-time frenemies, Jotun and Tobias, a frost giant and a dwarf, have an eating contest that leaves them both groaning from over-excess.

That the two ‘creatures’ manage to leave their bill in the hands of the government agents set to watch them adds just the right – and light – note to this charming third entry in this delicious cozy fantasy series.

If you are waiting for the next books in either the Legends & Lattes series or The Kamogawa Food Detectives series, these Hidden Dishes will fill the empty spot while you’re waiting.

Speaking of waiting, it turns out those Sorcerous Plates might be magical after all – or at least in possession of a time travel charm. The next book in the Hidden Dishes series is, once again, Sorcerous Plates.

Grade A #BookReview: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuireAdrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10) by Seanan McGuire
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, urban fantasy, young adult
Series: Wayward Children #10
Pages: 147
Published by Tordotcom on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.
Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.
Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.
It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.
It wasn't her.
Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.
But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.

My Review:

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a bit of an origin story. Readers of the Wayward Children series first met the ‘Drowned Girl’ Nadya in Beneath the Sugar Sky. But that’s the story where her door finally opens for her AGAIN, because she’s sure that she wants to go BACK to Belyyreka, the world under the lake where she’s already built a life that fit her with people that she loves dearly – whether they are human people or not.

This is Nadya’s origin story, how she came to be the girl who loved turtles, found a door at the bottom of a pond, and grew up in a world that her heart called home. Only to be saved, and damned in the same instant, to return to a place she was never intended to fit.

Let’s just say that it’s a good thing that we already know how her story ends – from Beneath the Sugar Sky – because this one doesn’t have a happy ending – not for Nadya and not for the adopted parents who made her so damn sure in the first place that even the possibility of drowning was an improvement.

However, Nadya’s life in Belyyreka, the marvelous middle of the story, is terrific. It’s easy to see why her heart brought her there – and why it eventually let her go back.

Escape Rating A: The Wayward Children series, taken as a whole, is a story about acceptance. Individually they are stories about square pegs who are being shoved into round holes – all too often by their parents. Sometimes there’s a tragedy, often there’s merely a tragedy in the making that doesn’t get made because a door opens.

Even if that door leads to an entirely different sort of tragedy. The difference is that the worlds behind the door allows each of the children to choose their fates. Which is often, as is the case with Nadya, the one thing they’ve lacked on this side of the door. Choice.

In Nadya’s case, among the many choices that have been made for her is one that she is perfectly capable of having made on her own, even at age 9. Nadya was born with one and a half arms. While she’s aware that having two full arms – with hands – would be more convenient – it’s not how she was made and she hasn’t felt less than. Merely different.

Her adopted mother seems determined to make Nadya feel ‘less than’ at every turn, and has fitted her with a prosthetic arm that isn’t even all that functional. It’s a burden and not a help – exactly the way her ‘Mom’ wants her to feel, along with feeling grateful for having her lack pointed out to her and supposedly remedied.

In a way, it’s a bit like Jack and Jill from Down Among the Sticks and Bones in that each of their parents wanted a perfect child, a perfect girly-girl or a perfect tomboy, and didn’t care what either of the twin’s preferences might be.

The world that Nadya falls into is a world of water – a world under the water. She’s not a mermaid like Cora, the other ‘Drowned Girl’ at Miss West’s. Belyyreka is a world of water with weight, where heavy water forms lakes and streams, lighter water forms the air, and giant turtles tug boats from one to the other.

It’s a world where Nadya chooses to be part of a household, she chooses to let the river give her the gift of a water hand, she chooses to contribute and grow up and into herself. It’s not a perfect life, no life ever is – but it’s the life that Nadya chose even with its dangers and its trials. It’s a happy, fulfilling life – one that’s interrupted by a ‘rescue’ she never wanted. This would be a much more difficult read if I didn’t already know that Nadya found her door again and dove back through – although I wouldn’t mind learning what she found there if the series ever goes back to Belyyreka.

(Speaking of Belyyreka itself, the eARC I read spells it Belyyreka but the blurb spells it Belyrreka and I don’t know which is correct. If someone who has a final copy would let me know which is correct, I’d appreciate it!)

The Wayward Children series is a series about, not just love, but mainly about acceptance. Acceptance of self and also finding a place where that self is accepted instead of excepted. It’s for all the children and former children who didn’t quite fit but managed to find or make a life where they did. And especially for those who didn’t, who still need to find a place their hearts can call home.

If this series calls to you, or if it’s been recommended and you’re wondering where to dive in (whether isn’t even a question, the answer is an enthusiastic YES!) Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear would be an excellent place to start, second only to the first book in the series, Every Heart a Doorway. Nothing that occurs in this story relies on any previous knowledge of events – because it happens before all of them – especially the events in Beneath the Sugar Sky. The one thing that one does get from Every Heart that isn’t in this book is a marvelous introduction to the way in which this world that all the doors open from is set up, but the people of Belyyreka explain that to Nadya more than well enough for someone new – as she herself is – to fall right in.

If you’re still looking for your door, step through Nadya’s and see what you’ve missed.

A- #AudioBookReview: Free as a Bird by Hailey Edwards

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Free as a Bird by Hailey EdwardsFree as a Bird (Yard Birds, #3) by Hailey Edwards
Narrator: Stephanie Richardson
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy, witches
Series: Yard Birds #3
Pages: 119
Length: 3 hours and 35 minute
Published by Black Dog Books, Tantor Audio on September 10, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

When an old friend reaches out to Ellie, asking for help locating her missing coven members, she’s ready for her big comeback. Witchlight is financing the op, and it feels damn good to be official again.

But when her friend’s lies begin to unravel, Ellie realizes she’s let her ego lead her into a trap. And she’s brought her coven down with her. With the girls’ lives on the line, Ellie has to decide what’s more important—reliving her glory days or saving her best friends from a permanent retirement.

My Review:

There’s that quote that goes “All happy families are alike…” something that is probably a bit true even in tiny Samford, Alabama, where more of the families than even they know has at least a bit of witch blood nestled in their family tree.

Because that’s the way the witches planned it, long, long ago.

Even so, the families of Witchlight Hub Ellie Gleason and the members of her coven are just a bit different from most, as Ellie, Betty, Flo, Ida and Joan are all practicing witches, and their happy families have more than a few paranormal members, including Betty’s adopted sons, shifters all, and Ellie’s husband Wally, whose soul was cursed by a black witch into an (in)animate object. Currently that object is the bell around a mischievous kitten’s neck – so his lack of animation is occasionally up for debate.

Ellie and “her girls” have settled into retirement, more or less, sorta/kinda, however reluctantly. Ellie still itches for the “good old days”, or perhaps that for the “powerful old days”, when they all – at least together – had power to burn and more official, sanctioned missions than they could handle.

So when Leslie Brower,  their former boss at Witchlight, also a retired witch and leader of her own coven in nearby Mobile, calls Ellie to tell her that HER coven members have gone missing and that she needs the help of Ellie and her coven to investigate the disappearances, Ellie is all in. It’s one last shot at an official mission and she can’t wait to get to it.

The rest of the coven may be doing it for Ellie instead of for any last grab at glory, but that’s the point of the story in more ways than one – they are all in it together, whatever may come.

Even if what’s coming is a sharp turn way, way, way into the dark side of the force – fueled by their deaths.

Escape Rating A-: All happy families may be alike, but the lives that follow from those happy families may follow diverging paths. As a result, happy endings are NOT all alike, and that’s the story of this last entry in the Yard Birds series. A series which turns out to have been Ellie Gleason’s journey all along and is marvelously narrated from her first-person perspective by Stephanie Richardson in the audio versions.

The problem for Ellie is that the shape of her happy ever after got thrown out of whack when a black witch cursed Wally into a plastic fish. He’s still with her, but he’s also not, both at the same time. Part of her restlessness and unwillingness to deal with being retired is that those good old days of power were the days when Wally was human in body as well as in spirit.

When this entry in the series begins, Ellie is as restless as she has always been. The coven’s powers have waned over their long lifetimes, and they don’t have enough magical ‘juice’ to be active Witchlight agents. But Ellie keeps their collective hand in, as has been demonstrated in the first two books in the trilogy, Crazy as a Loon and Dead as a Dodo. They may have lost a good bit of their magical mojo but their brains are still plenty sharp and capable – even if they are all one bad fall away from joining Betty in the mobility scooter brigade.

What made the case that brings Ellie to Mobile so fascinating, as well as such a perfect wrap for the series, is the way that it isn’t about the whodunnit, which was obvious early on. It’s about the “whydunnit” in a way that holds a mirror up to Ellie. Leslie is who Ellie might have been, who she was in danger of becoming, someone who can’t accept the things she cannot change and goes the worst route possible to stave them off. Ellie could have been the perpetrator in the right/wrong circumstances, which makes this every bit as much of a wake-up call for her as it is a dark and satisfying urban fantasy adventure for the reader.

The ending of Free as a Bird is the right one, bittersweet and cathartic as it gives Ellie – and her friends – something that no one ever thought Ellie would accept, that the life she has, right here and right now, in tiny Samford IS her happy place, even if she’s reached that place via a road she never thought to travel.

The saga of the Yard Birds has come to a somewhat surprising – especially to Ellie – conclusion. I’m going to miss Ellie and her dear friends and coven mates – as well as Stephanie Richardson’s voice in my ear telling me every single thing going through Ellie’s head along the way. Ellie may have finished with her adventures – although this reader/listener certainly wouldn’t mind hearing from her again – but the author and the narrator have teamed up on quite a few more books that I’m planning to pick up the next time I’m looking for a reading/listening pick-me-up!

A+ #AudioBookReview: Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken BebelleBlood Jade (Phoenix Hoard, #2) by Julia Vee, Ken Bebelle
Narrator: Natalie Naudus
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dragons, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Phoenix Hoard #2
Pages: 448
Length: 14 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on July 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The follow-up to Ebony Gate , the critically acclaimed debut of Vee and Bebelle's Phoenix Hoard series.
IT TAKES A KILLER TO CATCH A KILLER
Emiko Soong, newly minted Sentinel of San Francisco, just can't catch a break. Just after she becomes the guardian for a sentient city, a murder strikes close to home. Called by the city and one of the most powerful clans to investigate, she traces the killer whose scent signature bears a haunting similarity to her mother’s talent.
The trail will lead her back to Tokyo where the thread she pulls threatens to unravel her whole world and bring dark family secrets to light.
Meanwhile, the General rises in the East and Emiko must fight the hidden enemies of his growing army who are amped up on Blood Jade, while keeping her promises to her brother Tatsuya as he prepares for his tourney.
Her duties as Sentinel and her loyalties collide when she must choose between hiding her deepest shame or stopping the General’s relentless march.
Phoenix Hoard#1 Ebony Gate#2 Blood Jade

My Review:

Blood Jade is the second book in the dark, compelling, utterly marvelous and occasionally downright infuriating Phoenix Hoard trilogy that began with the fantastic Ebony Gate. If you love fantasy, especially contemporary set fantasy that features hidden worlds operating within our own, if you adore flawed heroines filled with angst and doubt who still get the job done no matter what or who might be stacked against them, I can’t recommend this series highly enough.

But I do absolutely recommend that you start with Ebony Gate, as the Phoenix Hoard reads like one story divided into three parts and this one is the damn middle. I promise it’s worth the ride and the read – especially if you’re still jonesing for a book to assuage even a bit of your Green Bone Saga book hangover – as I certainly still am.

The first book, Ebony Gate, was the set up and the introduction. The Jiārén, the descendants of the Eight Sons of the Dragon, hide their true operations behind magic in the world that we Wàirén only think is ours.

Emiko Soong has done her best and her damndest to leave that world; her father’s world and her father’s machinations, behind – even though she knows she’s probably just fooling herself. The question is how much.

The answer, as Emiko learns in Blood Jade is that she’s been fooling herself a LOT and that she hasn’t truly moved outside her father’s influence at all. He’s just been watching from a distance and letting her make her own mistakes for a while.

Which she has certainly done. She’s also made real friends and a life of her own in San Francisco – some of which may have also been a mistake. Or at least it feels like one when her two worlds collide and she goes back home to Tokyo, to the center of her father’s power.

But now she has a power of her own as the magical ‘Sentinel’ of her adopted city, San Francisco. A power that will either make her, or break her, mend her or shatter her. If she can manage to survive leaving the seat of her power, the very real threats against her friends AND her family, and her father’s forever secret, always hidden, and all too often damnably right, plans for her, for the future of their clan, and for their people.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve had this book for almost half a year. I hung onto it for several reasons. One, because I wanted the time to savor it. Two, because this is the middle book in the trilogy and damn I wanted to have the final book in my hot little hands before I started this one (which I do), and three, I wanted the time to listen to the audio read by Natalie Naudus because she embodies Emiko perfectly.

I also kept it as a Hanukkah present to myself because I knew it would be excellent – which it absolutely was. But I knew even before I started that I’d need time and space to deal with all the feels before I even made a stab at writing up what I thought and felt.

And, very much like Emiko herself, I realized that I had to rethink a whole lot of the story when I reached the end. Just as her relationship with her parents wasn’t quite the way she thought it was, neither was my relationship with this book.

Before I start on my own personal thoughts and feelings, one thing needs to be said up front. Blood Jade is the middle book in a trilogy. Middle books, frequently, often and absolutely in this case, are walks through dark places. If you think of Frodo and Sam’s trip through Mordor in the second half of The Two Towers, well, that’s pretty much the archetype of a middle book. Not that the first half of that middle book in the Lord of the Rings is that much less grim, just that it’s hard to imagine anything more grim than walking through Mordor.

In Blood Jade, Emiko is walking through her own dark places, in many cases made all the darker because she’s walked them before. She’s always been the ‘Broken Blade’ of her clan, her powers blocked off or non-existent, and she’s always been a disappointment to her parents and her teachers, the flawed daughter of a powerful house with no power of her own.

Returning to her father’s orbit, doing her best – which is in fact very, very good – to keep both her brother Tacchan and her friend and ally Fiona Tran protected from the very real threat to their lives also forces her to deal with the reality that her own people see her as broken, see her as ‘less than’ at every turn, see her as a failure at everything she tries.

Except being her father’s hatchet-woman, a role she has chosen to reject. A rejection that is seen as yet another failure on her part. Emiko has a LOT of angst to deal with in this story – and because the whole saga is told from her first person perspective, we’re inside her head experiencing it right along with her. It’s a LOT, it’s all justified and it’s HARD.

In Emiko’s dysfunctional family and their interpersonal relationships I found a lot of my own buttons being pressed, which made the first half of the book a difficult read – or in this case listen – for me in spite of the excellence of the narration. (I can’t say enough good things about Natalie Naudus’ voicing of this story as well as Ebony Gate. She’s just awesome even if I’m angsting over some of what happens nearly as much as Emiko is.)

Emiko’s family is utterly dysfunctional in ways that are baked into their society. The amount of abuse the children suffer through is way too much like the Antivan Crows in the Dragon Age videogame series, AND, it’s also a reminder that it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to keep a dynasty going through inheritance because the later generations don’t have the same kind of drive their elders needed to in order to survive their real struggles and manufactured struggles through torture simply don’t instill the same needs and values. (Come to think of it, that was also a part of the mess in Tuesday’s book, Echo, in spite of the vast difference in their settings.)

What made me rethink how I felt about the whole book, what makes Emiko rethink everything she’s ever believed about her relationships with both of her parents, is a huge spoiler but at the same time is something I’ve been expecting since Ebony Gate. It’s a revelation that also beautifully sets up the third book in the trilogy, Pearl City, coming in July. I have an eARC but I’m doing my damndest to resist the temptation to read it RIGHT NOW because I’m holding out for the audio that I hope will be recorded by Natalie Naudus because she HAS to take up Emiko’s mantle one more time.

A- #AudioBookReview: Dead as a Dodo by Hailey Edwards

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Dead as a Dodo by Hailey EdwardsDead as a Dodo (Yard Birds, #2) by Hailey Edwards
Narrator: Stephanie Richardson
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy, witches
Series: Yard Birds #2
Pages: 97
Length: 2 hours and 50 minutes
Published by Black Dog Books, Tantor Audio on February 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Ellie has done her best to keep the spark alive in her marriage to Wally, but she has limited options with her husband cursed into the body of a vintage novelty toy. She thought everything was going okay, aside from the fact he’s battery-operated and bursts into song whenever his motion sensor is triggered, but he’s done being a collector’s item.
When the Middles turn up with a half-dead coworker on her doorstep, Ellie jumps at the chance to help her nephews find who’s responsible to avoid the problems at home. As the attacks grow deadlier, and the rift between her and Wally grows wider, Ellie has to focus on saving herself if she ever hopes to save her marriage.

My Review:

Someone is targeting the shifters of the Sweetwater Pack as this second entry in the Yard Birds series. Ellie and her coven may not be part of the pack, but they are allies and two of her nephews absolutely are members. It’s not a surprise that those same nephews bring the hacked up victim right to Ellie’s door because he’s sure the coven can heal the victim – if she can be healed at all.

But that drags Ellie out of the funk she’s in and straight into a case that probably isn’t any of her business. Not that THAT’S ever stopped her. She wants to investigate and not just because she’s constitutionally incapable of keeping her nose out of other people’s business. Ellie’s having a personal crisis of her very own and she’d much rather handle someone else’s troubles than deal with it. Thankyouverymuch.

At least for a while. As a distraction. Until she can get down off her high horse and work on the mess that a curse has made of her marriage. Before it’s too late. Even if it already should have been – and if Ellie wasn’t a witch, would have been.

The case that Ellie, with able assistance and enablement from her nephew Zander, is a relatively simple one. Bloody, deadly and messy, but ultimately a bit stupid and easy to resolve.

Fixing her relationship with her husband is going to be a whole lot more complicated – and potentially heartbreaking. But a witch’s gotta do what a witch’s gotta do – no matter how much it’s going to hurt them both.

Escape Rating A-: This whole series, at least so far, is all about female power in its various forms. The members of the Witchlight coven may be entering their ‘crone era’, even if Flo is holding the signs of that back through sheer force of will and gallons of botox, but it’s not just them. In this second entry in the series (after Crazy as a Loon), it’s obvious that most of the paranormal and supernatural groups in Samford are run by women, including the Sweetwater Pack of shifters. A mixed pack whose alpha may be five foot nothing in human form but shifts to a whole lotta BEAR when her pack is threatened.

As it definitely is in this story.

The males in this story serve as helpers, assistants, annoyances and even outright ornaments, as exemplified by Ellie’ s beloved husband Wally, who is literally hanging on the wall as a battery-operated singing fish novelty toy.

Poor Wally has been cursed into the body of a plastic ‘Walleye’, literally, figuratively and frustratingly for both Ellie and Wally. (I really want the story of how that happened, and more about how Witchlight hubs operate when they’re not theoretically retired AND stories about the hijinks and adventures that Ellie and her coven got up to back in the day. If those stories already exist I’d appreciate it if someone would tell me!)

But all that female empowerment means that there were bound to be some males in town, whether human or shifter, who can’t hear the word “NO!” when it’s shouted in their faces – or beaks, or muzzles – and who can’t stand being beaten by a woman. Of course they’re just dead certain they’re entitled to be in charge because they have pricks. Or are pricks. Or both.

I did figure out the pattern to the attacks on Sweetwater long before Ellie and Zander did. Then again, she’s used to her and her coven and the other females in town being in charge of things. Out here in the real world, it just isn’t so and women get attacked just for being women all the damn time.

I’m going to try to climb down off my soapbox now but it’s not easy.

So the case Ellie has to solve was relatively simple, which makes it the perfect foil for Ellie’s personal issues – which are not going to be easy to resolve at all. Although, come to think of it, those issues are also about power, specifically the imbalance of power that has swum into Ellie’s marriage.

This story, the whole series in fact, is told from Ellie’s first person perspective, so we’re inside her head as she wrestles with her NEED to keep what she has of Wally SAFE. His form is fragile and easily broken or even stolen. But his heart and mind are EXACTLY what they were before the curse, meaning that inside that fish is a grown-ass adult who needs what we all need, purpose and independence. He’s starting to see Ellie as his jailor more than his wife and their marriage won’t survive that. And Ellie knows it even if she’s having a damn hard time figuring out what to DO about it.

Which is where the heartbreak and angst come into the story by the bucketful, and which the reader experiences even more fully and practically personally if they’re listening to Stephanie Richardson’s narration because she’s channeling Ellie’s internal voice perfectly. We hear Ellie, we feel for Ellie, and DAMN it’s hard to be there with her. (It’s what the story needs, but it’s still hard.)

The investigation may be over, but it feels like Ellie’s worries and woes have just dug in a little deeper as this story ends. I can’t wait to find out how, and for that matter if, everything works out in the third book in the series, Free as a Bird, which I know I’ll be listening to SOON even though I really, really don’t want this series to be over.

A- #AudioBookReview: Crazy as a Loon by Hailey Edwards

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Crazy as a Loon by Hailey EdwardsCrazy as a Loon (Yard Birds #1) by Hailey Edwards
Narrator: Stephanie Richardson
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy, witches
Series: Yard Birds #1
Pages: 133
Length: 4 hours
Published by Black Dog Books, Tantor Audio on July 4, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Ellie Gleason has protected the town of Samford, Alabama for decades. It’s not as glamours as her glory days as the WitchLight Hub, but it keeps her active during her golden years.
Life is good.
Well, it’s okay.
Fine.
It could be bloodier with a smidge more gore, but retirement is meant to be low-key. It’s not like her fragile bones could handle the strenuous hunt for monsters anymore, even if her current duties are dull as dishwater.
But when her great-nephew shows up on her doorstep in tears—or is he her great-great nephew?—begging for help, Ellie straps on her beloved shotgun, Bam-Bam, and gets the coven back together.
Sure, Betty just had a hip replacement, and Flo would rather flirt than fight, and Ida is busy with her anniversary plans, and Joan is…Joan. But Ellie is certain she can whip the girls into shape in time to defeat the creature preying on kids at a nearby summer camp. She might even have them home in time for dinner.

My Review:

Ellie Gleason isn’t, really, and neither are the rest of her friends. Well, maybe Joan is just a bit. Crazy as a loon, I mean. None of them are crazy, loony or otherwise, no matter how much Ellie might fake it by running around the tiny town of Samford, Alabama in her housecoat with ‘Bam-Bam’ strapped to her back.

Bam-Bam is her shotgun. And nope, still not crazy.

Because when you’re still patrolling as a working member of Witchlight – even if you are in your second century – it’s better to be armed as well as dangerous. Which Ellie and the rest of her coven certainly are. Even if it takes them a little longer to get to the scene of the crime.

Or, for that matter, to the point of any discussion, because they’ve been together so damn long that there are plenty of times when the pointed barbs and the old grudges take over the planning of any and every op.

It’s mostly small town stuff – because they’re not the top tier of Witchlight operators no matter how much they all still wish they were kicking ass and taking names and riding monsters to the rescue. So when this case literally crawls into their laps, they’re all a bit giddy with the adrenaline of the chase.

Even if the person at the heart of the mess is a child under their protection. Particularly because another member of their family is doing their damndest to keep it from them.

They may not be what they used to be – but when one of their cubs is threatened it brings out the mama bear in every single one of them. Even if not one of them shifts into an actual bear. That’s okay. After all, one of their sons is bear-shifter enough to handle THAT part of the job.

Escape Rating A-: I picked up this book and audiobook, in fact this whole, entire series, on a recommendation from Caffeinated Reviewer. I caught her review of the third book in the series, Free as a Bird, and had to ask myself where had this been all my life and how had I missed it?

Based on this first book, this series is an absolute hoot from beginning to end. It was also the perfect book for this week as it is a hilarious pick-me-up with a heart wrapped around found family and lifelong sisterhood.

The combination of elements got me from the opening paragraphs. Because this takes off from the same premise as one of my favorite urban fantasies, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, but goes about it differently.

That book, and I still mourn that it was only ever the one, took off from a question about what happens to all those young, limber, kickass urban fantasy protagonists if they survive to middle age and even older. Marley Jacob got herself a kickass sidekick and went about her own personal kickassery through negotiation and mediation once the years caught up with her.

Ellie and her coven have just kept on kicking – even as they also kick against the inevitable slowing down of age. They use magic to slow down slowing down – and then they do too much and pay the price later. But they all refuse to quit even as they are forced to change gears.

They’re a LOT like the sisterhood of retired spies turned assassins in Killers of a Certain Age – complete with the sharply pointed banter and the lifelong grudges. So if you liked that and want to give urban fantasy a try, you’ll love Ellie and her Yard Birds.

The case here, and there certainly is one, does a great job of introducing Ellie and her sisters and setting up their family situation – which is just a bit complicated – while giving them a case that is close to their hearts even as it shines a light on just what sorts of things can go wrong in a world where the paranormal exists but still has to keep itself under wraps.

And then the case managed to tie itself back into the reason they all got involved in the first place, as both the evil they fight and the reason they’re fighting it come from the same place – a mother’s love.

The story is told from inside Ellie’s snarky head – and I loved every minute of it. The narrator, Stephanie Richardson, captured the essence of Ellie perfectly, so I’m very happy that she is the narrator for the whole series so far.

I only have two quibbles about this whole experience. One is that I wish there were more. Which there is, of course, as the second and third books, Dead as a Dodo and Free as a Bird, are already out and I already have them.

But the second is that I hope those later books resolve a niggle left over from this one. They did solve the case. They absolutely did. But there was a dangling potential co-conspirator left in their midst. I may be wrong about their co-conspirator status, but there was something rotten left in the heart of the family that got a rug pulled over it. I hope that rug gets pulled back in the books ahead.

I’m certainly there for it. I definitely want to hear as much more from Ellie as I can get!

#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. GreenBuried Memories (Ishmael Jones, #10) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #10
Pages: 219
Published by Severn House on October 25, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Returning to the small town where he crash-landed in 1963, Ishmael Jones is in search of answers. But his investigation is de-railed by a brutal murder.

"I think something very bad and very dangerous has come to your little town, Inspector . . ."
As long-buried memories from his hidden past begin to resurface, Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny feel compelled to return to the small country town where Ishmael crash-landed in 1963; the place where his memories began.
Norton Hedley is no ordinary town. Apparitions, sudden disappearances, sightings of unusual beasts: for centuries, the place has been plagued by a series of inexplicable events. Ishmael's first task is to track down local author Vincent Smith, the one man he believes may have some answers.
Ishmael and Penny aren't the only ones seeking the mysterious Mr Smith. When their search unearths a newly-dead body in the local mortuary - a body that's definitely not supposed to be there - Ishmael becomes the prime suspect in the ensuing murder investigation. His only hope of discovering the truth about his origins lies in exposing a ruthless killer.

My Review:

Ishmael Jones is as he has always been. The problem is that he’s been the same, absolutely unaging, for 60 years now. And he doesn’t remember who – or more likely what – he was before that. Before 1963, when his alien space ship was blown out of the sky over Earth and crashed in a field near the tiny village of Norton Hedley.

Which doesn’t seem to have changed much either in the intervening 60 years.

A situation that is quite a bit more worrying than Ishmael’s own unchanging face, because he at least knows why THAT’s happening. Or not, as the case may be.

But Norton Hedley, a place where people come and go and live in hope for a good tourist season every year, seems to be a haven for the uncanny. After all, that’s what has brought Ishmael and his partner Penny to the village.

Because Ishmael and his unchanging appearance began – at least as far as his memory goes – with the crash landing of his alien spacecraft in the woods surrounding Norton Hedley in 1963. He’s returned because his previous two cases, Night Train to Murder and The House on Widows Hill, have provided him with some scattered but ominous clues about who and what he used to be.

And he needs to know. Because he needs to know if he’s a danger to Penny. Or anyone else on Earth who doesn’t deserve it.

In his research about Norton Hedley, or the research the coyly named black ops group, the Organisation, has done on his behalf, he – and they – have learned that Norton Hedley has been weird central for years. Not just the years since his ship crashed in 1963, but for centuries. Millenia even.

Something in, on, or more likely under – like the thing that was under The House on Widows Hill – has been creeping its creepy way along into the lifeblood of the town for eons uncounting. It might have the answers he’s been searching for for decades.

And it might not want to let him know.

Escape Rating B: This series has been one of my Halloween reads since I first discovered it, so it seemed appropriate to finish it up this Halloween. As I’ve already read the final book in the series (so far), I’ll have to pick something else horror-adjacent next year.

The author is an acquired taste – one that I acquired decades ago. It’s the snark. It’s always been the snark no matter what the ostensible genre or subject of ANY of his many series might be. If you like his voice, then when you’re in that mood nothing else will do. But if you’re not, you bounce off, and bounce hard. Your reading mileage may vary.

The concept of this particular series throws a whole bunch of speculative fiction tropes into one hell of a blender. The series began, back in The Dark Side of the Road, as English country house mysteries where the supernatural agencies turn out to be merely human – but with a touch of the paranormal or extraterrestrial for spice and added bodies.

Over the course of the series it has turned into Ishmael’s quest to learn enough about who or what he used to be to figure out just how he can continue to stay one step ahead of all the various secret agencies that would like to use him up in one way or another. Even more important, he’s thoroughly invested in keeping Penny safe – if necessary from himself.

At first, what made this series work as well as it does – at least for this reader – was the revelation in each case that no matter how weird things got – often very – that the enemies were always human after all.

What has kept me going this far have been the questions about Ishmael’s past and Penny’s future. While Ishmael has been unchanging for 60 years, the series has been set in a sort of ‘perpetual now’. Days and weeks pass but seemingly not years. This entry in the series is one of the first that confronts head on the problem of Ishmael and Penny’s relationship.

Not that they have problems, but that together they have a problem. Penny is an ordinary human, she will age, and Ishmael will not. Short of a deus ex machina – and not that there haven’t been plenty of powerful machina around over the course of the series – this can’t end happily. Howsomever, I already know that it does not end in the next book, Haunted by the Past. And in spite of the ominousness of that title, it doesn’t dive nearly as deeply into Ishmael’s past as Night Train to Murder, The House on Widows Hill and Buried Memories have done.

So, I have begun to wonder if the author is planning to end this series at all. I wonder even more whether or not he should. I’d rather just think of Ishmael and Penny in that perpetual now, continuing on their quest to find evil humans at the heart of supernatural hoaxes, raging together against the dying of their light.

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Candle and Crow by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Candle and Crow by Kevin HearneCandle & Crow (Ink & Sigil, #3) by Kevin Hearne
Narrator: Luke Daniels
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ink & Sigil #3
Pages: 352
Length: 11 hours and 4 minutes
Published by Del Rey, Random House Audio on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles comes the final book in the Ink & Sigil series, as an ink-slinging wizard pursues the answer to a very personal mystery: Who cast a pair of curses on his head?
Al MacBharrais has a most unusual job: He’s a practitioner of ink-and-sigil magic, tasked with keeping order among the gods and monsters that dwell hidden in the human world. But there’s one supernatural mystery he’s never been able to solve: Years ago, someone cast twin curses on him that killed off his apprentices and drove away loved ones who heard him speak, leaving him bereft and isolated.
But he’s not quite alone: As Al works to solve this mystery, his friends draw him into their own eccentric dramas. Buck Foi the hobgoblin has been pondering his own legacy—and has a plan for a daring shenanigan that will make him the most celebrated hobgoblin of all. Nadia, goth queen and battle seer, is creating her own cult around a god who loves whisky and cheese.
And the Morrigan, a former Irish death goddess, has decided she wants not only to live as an ordinary woman but also to face the most perilous challenge of the mortal world: online dating.
Meanwhile, Al crosses paths with old friends and new—including some beloved Druids and their very good dogs—in his globe-trotting quest to solve the mystery of his curses. But he’s pulled in so many different directions by his colleagues, a suspicious detective, and the whims of destructive gods that Al begins to wonder: Will he ever find time to write his own happy ending?

My Review:

When we first met sigil agent Al MacBharrais back in Ink & Sigil, standing in the apartment of his seventh and latest apprentice – along with the corpse of said apprentice AND a caged HOBGOBLIN – we’re instantly aware of several things. Al’s world is just a bit bigger than the one we think we know, he has an absolutely fascinating line of work, and he’s in deep shit.

Or shite, as Al would say. It’s the same substance either way and no one wants to be standing in it as deeply as Al is already standing. And the story has barely begun!

It began in Ink & Sigil with Al hunting down the beings who were trafficking in beings from the fae planes – like the hobgoblin Buck Foi. It middled with an ‘adventure’ in Australia in Paper & Blood, and it ends here, back in Al’s native Glasgow in Candle & Crow, as Al’s mission to end the careers of as many traffickers as possible – no matter what species of sentient being they might be trafficking – ties itself up with Al’s personal quest to learn who cursed him AND why so that he can finally train up an apprentice to mastery and retire before the myriad dangers of his fascinating line of work catch up with him – fatally.

Candle & Crow perches right on that crossroads between “crying because it’s over” and “smiling because it happened.” I’m going to miss Al and his friends, but this was absolutely the right end for this series and I’m happy that I got to see it – and that Al’s office manager, Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite finally got to see the awesome shite that she came to see.

Escape Rating A: First of all – and last of all – Candle & Crow is an ending. Not just to the Ink & Sigil series, but by extension to the whole, entire Iron Druid Chronicles from which it sprang. Consider this a ginormous hint not to start here. It’s not necessary to start all the way back with the first book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, Hounded, and it’s absolutely not essential to have finished that series – because I haven’t and I still loved Al and his crew.

But you do need to start Al’s story with Ink & Sigil. And if you like urban fantasy, it is absolutely worth reading the whole glorious adventure.

I actually read this twice, or rather I read it once and had it read to me once. The first time I read it I was sitting in the train station in Al’s native Glasgow, waiting for the train back to London and eventually home after the close of the Glasgow WorldCon. It was the perfect place to read this story, with the one caveat that it made me regret not having taken the time to visit the Glasgow Necropolis, if only to see how close the book’s description of the tomb of Isabella Ure Elder is to the real thing. (Based on the photo at right, the answer is VERY – admittedly without the “dreich” weather experienced both in the story and, honestly, for much of our trip.).

In the series of mad dashes, long waits, and exhaustion at the end of a glorious trip, I didn’t have the opportunity to write this review before the details flew – or more likely slept – their way out of my head. But Al’s story has been marvelous every step of the way, so I picked up the audiobook and listened to it all again. And loved it again.

However, I have to say that, although the story is obviously the same, listening to Candle & Crow is a MUCH different experience than reading it. (I also wonder whether the author wrote this book, or perhaps the whole damn series, at least in part, just to mess with his audiobook narrator Luke Daniels.)

About that story…some stories start out as a whole, then the layers get peeled back until it’s much bigger on the inside than it looked like from the outside. Candle & Crow goes the other way.

Initially it reads as a loose pile of unrelated threads. There’s Al’s continuing investigation into the curses that have done their damndest to wreck his life. Then there’s the problem that hobgoblin Buck Foi is drinking to keep himself from thinking about. On top of that there’s Al’s attempts to help the police by providing them with evidence of human trafficking – only for the local police to decide that Al only has such information because he’s one of the traffickers and harass him repeatedly over that mistaken assumption.

(This is the point where I need to comment that, as much as I enjoyed most of the narration, the voice used for Detective Inspector Munro would have worked equally well for Dolores Umbridge of Harry Potter infamy. That character grates, the voice used for her grated to the point that chalk on a blackboard would have been an improvement – and possibly at a lower and more tolerable pitch as well. Getting down off my soapbox now. Hem-hem.)

On top of the issues that directly involved Al, there’s also the Morrigan’s desire to step away from her identity as “chooser of the slain” so she can fall in love, Al’s accountant Nadia and her search for a demi-godly purpose that turns to the founding of a new and potentially dangerous religion, and the ever-present question of exactly what sort of deity or superbeing Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite might be when she’s not being Al’s receptionist and just how dangerous the shite she has been waiting around in Glasgow to see might be for Al and his friends.

Al has a LOT on his mind at all times. That discovering the ‘nine ways to Nancy’ turns out to be the perfect metaphor for tying all of the many threads of Al’s story into a neat bow of a perfect ending for the series made for a fantastic conclusion to a marvelous series.

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Junkyard Roadhouse by Faith Hunter

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Junkyard Roadhouse by Faith HunterJunkyard Roadhouse (Shining Smith #4) by Faith Hunter
Narrator: Khristine Hvam
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, urban fantasy
Series: Shining Smith #4
Pages: 153
Length: 4 hours and 36 minutes
Published by Audible Studios, Lore Seekers Press on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

Shining Smith stands on the brink of achieving her goals, and yet now she could lose everything.

The presidents of four motorcycle clubs are coming to claim blood sacrifice and to ink her with motorcycle club tats. Her new roadhouse and its charter have to meet their approval or the roadhouse has no future, and neither does Shining.

An injured kid shows up at Smith’s Junk and Scrap, but collapses before he can speak.

A note arrives containing a warning and a plea for help, addressed by someone who knows Shining’s most intimate secrets—her history, her plans, and the names of her friends. The sender claims his daughter has been kidnapped by Shining’s enemies. To keep her secrets, he wants Shining to get his daughter back.

In order to rescue the hostage and keep her junkyard, her roadhouse, her people, and the cats alive, Shining Smith will have to suffer, fight, and bargain her way out of danger. All without accidently transitioning anyone—creating an accidental thrall—no matter how much her nanobots want her to.

Lock and load. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

My Review:

When I finished the previous audiobook in this utterly awesome, completely riveting, absolutely compelling series that began with Junkyard Cats four years ago, that story, Junkyard War, felt like a slam-bang ending.

And it kind of was. But as things turned out – thankfully, blissfully and painfully – it wasn’t the end of Shining’s story at all – merely the end of the beginning. Because Junkyard Roadhouse is clearly – and OMG this listener/reader is so, so glad – the opening of a whole new chapter in Shining Smith’s quest to keep her people safe – no matter how much of her world she has to take under her protection in order to make that happen.

It’s a much, MUCH bigger world than we saw in the first book in the series, Junkyard Cats. In that opening story, the world came to Shining in the junkyard she inherited from her ‘Pops’. And it came to take her out and take over everything she had and everyone she had come to love – no matter how reluctantly.

But the enemy that came for her, Clarice Warhammer, is dead. Dead at the hands, and guns of Shining, her friends and allies, and the clowder of sentient battle-cats who are probably the true masters of Shining’s junkyard. Just ask them.

Shining’s reward for taking out Warhammer is three-fold. Warhammer and her nest have been eliminated – with extreme prejudice. So that’s one enemy in the ground. Shining took all of Warhammer’s intel as part of the spoils of war – a vast increase in Shining’s knowledge and insight into the world around her and the enemies that were backing Warhammer and will absolutely see Shining and her allies as a threat.

Because they absolutely are.

But first, Shining gets to collect her reward – a reward for which she has already paid in blood and will again. It’s not really a reward for herself – or at least she doesn’t see it that way. What she sees is the increased responsibility for keeping her people – whether two-legged or four – as safe and secure as she can make them.

So, with the posturing and permission of the motorcycle clubs that control the region, that were her allies in the battle with Warhammer, Shining Smith officially opens the Junkyard Roadhouse, a club chapter house that includes a restaurant and rooms to rent, trading post, and neutral ground – owned, operated and administered in all of its somewhat safe and mostly secure glory by Shining Smith herself and her own entirely independent motorcycle club.

It’s all hers – if she can manage to keep it.

After all, Warhammer was just the tip of a very dirty iceberg filled with powerful enemies – and Shining Smith is already in their sights. What none of them, not the military, not the Gov, not the Hand of the Law, recognize is that they are already in hers – and that hers are considerably more than they ever imagined.

Junkyard Roadhouse marks the beginning of THEIR end – they just don’t know it yet.

Escape Rating A: This is the story I felt compelled to finish last Friday, to the point where, as much as IMHO Khristine Hvam thoroughly embodies the voice of Shining Smith, I switched to the text – grateful that the text was already available for a change – in order to see how Shining got herself and her people out of the pickle she was in, turned it to her advantage, AND set the stage for the next book in the series.

Because Shining CLEARLY isn’t remotely done with the black ops of the military, their supporters in the Gov OR the corrupt Hands of the Law – all of which seem to be legion, planning something big and nefarious and aiming straight for her.

But that’s for later – and this reader is oh-so-happy that there will be a later, because Shining’s story could easily have ended with her victory at the end of Junkyard War.

Whether you experience this series in text or in the marvelous audio rendition, the series and whether or not you will like it rides or dies on the voice of its protagonist Shining Smith. If her blend of bravado and snark, her ability to take charge but her internal doubts about her ability to lead, her impostor syndrome combined with the utter certainty that if she doesn’t do it the job won’t get done – in other words, all the things that made ‘Little Girl’ survive the mamabot to become Shining Smith – if that voice and attitude trips your reading trigger you’ll love Shining.

As her friends and especially her enemies would attest, however, Shining Smith is a bit of an acquired taste – and there are parts of her world that are depressing as hell. The conditions that she has survived certainly depress the hell out of her frequently and often. She just puts on her ‘big girl panties’, gets on her bike and rides out to meet those conditions whenever and wherever necessary and that’s what I love about her and her story.

This particular entry in the series is a bit of a bridge between those initial three books and what’s coming next – and it starts with an excruciating rebirth that sometimes felt like it got lingered over a bit too long. Your mileage may vary but the change from Shining Smith, member of the OMW to Shining Smith, president of the independent Junkyard Roadhouse motorcycle club is both bloody and painful to the point where if I hadn’t already been all in on this series I might have turned off – or at least switched to text which wouldn’t have been quite so… visceral.

Meaning that this is not the place to start your experience of Shining’s truly fucked up future Earth. Start with Junkyard Cats – you’ll be glad you did. I was then, I am now and I can’t wait for more.

One final note on the audio, well, sorta/kinda on the audio. I’ve enjoyed Shining’s voice so much, especially as portrayed by Khristine Hvam, that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to check out whether she is also the voice of Jane Yellowrock in the author’s signature series of the same name. She is, which just threw 15 more books, and counting, onto the top of my TBL (that’s To Be Listened) pile. Which I absolutely did not need but am still incredibly happy about because it will give me something (else) to dive into while I wait for Shining’s next adventure/confrontation/full-scale war.