Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss

A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna RaybournKills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age, #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Narrator: Jane Oppenheimer, Christina Delaine
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Killers of a Certain Age #2
Pages: 368
Length: 10 hours and 19 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.

My Review:

The wifi wasn’t THAT bad. No, seriously, I took the same trip on the MS Queen Mary 2 last summer, the one that the team from Killers of a Certain Age takes from New York City to Southampton in the early stages of this caper – and the wifi honestly wasn’t that bad. The rest of the ship, at least the parts we saw of it, were very much as described.

No murder though. At least, not as far as we heard!

Then again, Billie and company are very, very good at their jobs, and the whole point of sending in an elite team of assassins is for them to make the murder look like it never happened. Not that Pasha Lazarov isn’t very, very dead when Billie’s done with him and his teddy bear, but that his death doesn’t look like a murder at all.

Don’t worry, the teddy bear is fine. Pasha, not so much, but then that was the point. Even if, as Billie suspects, he was the wrong point.

Still, contract complete, case closed. Right? Wrong, as the team discovers when they make their way to their safe house and discover that the house isn’t safe at all. In fact, it’s on FIRE.

And suddenly, so is this story. Because someone in their organization has sold them out, put a target on their backs while aiming them at the wrong villain for the wrong reasons even as the real monster plans to toy with them as they chase the true mastermind around Europe while that mastermind plots revenge, mayhem and a gigantic payday steeped in blood and decades in the making.

It’s all about the ‘one that got away’. For the traitor, it’s about a future they let slip out of their hands. For the villain, it’s payback for the murder of their father – who truly was an evil bastard – at the righteous hands of Billie and her team. For the team, it’s about a case they were never able to close and a luminous piece of looted Nazi art that they were never able to restore.

Until now. If they survive. If, instead of age and treachery beating youth and skill, age and skill can manage to beat youth and treachery one more time.

Escape Rating A-: The first book in this series, Killers of a Certain Age, was both an absolute surprise and an utter delight. Just as “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” – a catchphrase whose origins Billie and her team are just the right age to remember and appreciate – nobody expects a quartet of sixty-something women to be an elite team of assassins. Not unless they remember the movie Red with Helen Mirren playing a character who could easily have been one of Billie’s aliases, or who have fallen in love with The Thursday Murder Club series, whose main character is also quite a bit like Billie and is also played by the same actress in the upcoming TV series.

While that was not as big a digression as it could have been, that digression is a bit on point for this story.

The main story here, as it was in the first book, is told from Billie’s first-person perspective as she and her team are in the midst of the case at hand – even as that case goes utterly off-kilter and entirely out-of-whack. Not that even at the outset it was as ‘in whack’ as it should have been.

But the case does itself digress on occasion, to cases and contracts and errors and omissions in some of the team’s earlier contracts, told from an omniscient third-person perspective. At first, it seems as if those trips down memory lane are for context about their past and their skills, but as the net closes in so too do those memories as various nooses tighten and the past catches up to the present.

At the same time, the case in the present is a wild thrill ride, interwoven with a whole lot of tips and tricks about hiding in plain sight and escaping without a trace and the way that even their oldest tricks still work fantastically well because the weakest point in ANY security system, even the most technically advanced and supposedly unbreakable, is always the human factor. And those haven’t changed at all.

Initially, the story moves just a bit slowly, as, well, cruise ships are wont to do. But the reader catches Billie’s nagging suspicion that something isn’t right fairly early, and we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop right along with her.

When it does – or actually when it catches fire – the story is off, not just to the races but to a whirlwind tour of both sides of the Mediterranean in pursuit of a dead woman with a plan for revenge so cold that she’s willing to take out her own family to see it done.

And still, and yet, and at the heart of it all is the ride or die sisterhood of these four women who will and have, killed and nearly died for each other over the course of four decades – and their bickering willingness to argue and fight and still protect each other and the hostages to fortune they have all gathered along the way – sometimes in spite of themselves.

Just as I wasn’t expecting that first book, I wasn’t expecting this to turn into a series. Hoping, certainly, but not expecting. Which means I’ve been waiting for this with the proverbial bated breath, was absolutely thrilled to get it, and was utterly absorbed by it in both text and marvelous audio – switching back and forth so I could find out how they got out of this mess that much sooner.

All of which means I’m left in the exact same place I was at the end of Killers of a Certain Age. I had a ball with Billie and her found family, and I would love to ride with this crew again. But the story ends in a way that could BE the end. They all do sound like they’ve found the respective happy ever afters that none of them thought they would live to see. Or in Billie’s case, even want.

Howsomever, the first book started because there was something rotten at the heart of their organization that, let’s say, interfered with their pending retirements. They got dragged into THIS case because there was something that was rotten at the heart of their organization that interfered in an entirely different way with their retirements.

When this case gets wrapped up, they make a new and better deal for the retirements they all actually seemed to want this time around. Which doesn’t mean that they got all the rot out of the organization this time around. In fact, I’d kind of be surprised if they had. And very happy about it – possibly much happier than they’ll be if I’m right.

A- #BookReview: Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Murder by Memory by Olivia WaiteMurder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman, #1) by Olivia Waite
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, science fiction, science fiction mystery
Series: Dorothy Gentleman #1
Pages: 112
Published by Tordotcom on March 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A Memory Called Empire meets Miss Marple in this cozy, spaceborne mystery, helmed by a no-nonsense formidable auntie of a detective.
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.
Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…

My Review:

Some versions of the opening line for the blurb are way, way off. A Memory Called Empire meets Miss Marple is so far off as to be misleading. (The Becky Chambers version of the blurb is somewhat better.) I’m going to do my damndest to correct that misdirection as Murder By Memory is just a terrific cozy mystery that just so happens to be set on a spaceship.

Although that’s misleading too. The HMS Fairweather is more like a space-liner. Or, really, like that cruise line that almost-but-didn’t-quite manage to launch, the one where people were intended to move in and live on the cruise ship as it traveled around the world.

The HMS Fairweather is a lot like that Life at Sea concept, except that it really did launch and its intended journey is for considerably longer than three years. It seems like it’s been traveling for more than three centuries when this story takes place – with no end in sight.

It isn’t a generation ship and it doesn’t seem to have a destination. It’s an endless journey – and an endless life. The passengers do age and eventually die – well, at least their bodies do. Their consciousness gets uploaded and downloaded from one body to another – and life goes on.

The ship is a world unto itself, a surprisingly large and fascinating one. But humans are gonna human, even in the vastness of space, and that’s where Detective Dorothy Gentleman comes in.

Literally, as her sleeping consciousness gets dropped into someone else’s body, in the middle of the ship’s night, while all the passengers and crew – except for Dorothy and this one intrepid and/or intriguing individual who is for some reason out and about while everyone else is tucked away safe and sound in their quarters.

Except, of course, for the other person who is not where they should be, the woman whose sudden death triggered Dorothy’s own return from the sleep between lifetimes. Leaving Dorothy with a job to do and a problem to solve while wondering exactly how unethical it is to borrow someone else’s body after they’ve just used it to commit murder.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those stories where my one and only complaint is that I really, really, REALLY wish it had been longer. Because what we got was a whole lot of cozy, murderous fun and Dorothy Gentleman is a marvelous take on the lone detective chasing clues and unraveling puzzles in the middle of the long, dark night.

While I wouldn’t have gone within a parsec of the blurb’s description of Marple meets Teixcalaan, I absolutely would describe it as a combination of two books, the SF mystery plot of Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man combined with the secrets within secrets of life aboard a spacefaring cruise ship of Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis. Not that The Spare Man isn’t also set on a space cruise, but that ship doesn’t have the same vibe that living aboard the ship has in Floating Hotel and Murder by Memory.

So much of A Memory Called Empire is wrapped up in the high-stakes, deeply corruptive, politics of Teixcalaan and its imperial history and ambitions that it just doesn’t feel like any kind of match for Murder by Memory, which is, in spite of the murder, much lighter and frothier. (If the Chambers comparison is to her Wayfarers series and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, well, that’s somewhere in the virtually towering TBR pile and I haven’t gotten there yet.)

Dorothy Gentleman is good at her job – and it’s fun to watch her work. That she is working from within the body of her primary suspect adds just the right touch of grounding in the SFnal setting to make the whole thing just that much better AND more convoluted at the same time.

Because the solution to this mystery is a grand case of following the money. It’s just that the money that Dorothy is following has been both stolen and hidden in ways that are only possible in SF even though the motive is one of the oldest and most human – greed. While the final piece of evidence is found in the most science fictional way possible.

Dorothy herself starts out as just a touch noir – as she has been unlucky in love and seems determined to conduct her investigation the same way she intends to conduct her life – alone. That she is surprised by both the support of her new and remaining family AND that love might just have found her again made the story end on a high and hopeful note.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Dorothy’s adventures aboard the Fairweather. The setting is already delightful, and more time will just add more delicious layers. Dorothy herself is a fascinating character, someone who has lived a long life and turned her nosy nature to good use. That we’re inside her head for this story, hearing her true – and often wry and witty – thoughts as she works her way through the mystery made the whole thing just that much better and absolutely worth a read.

A+ #BookReview: The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine AddisonThe Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3) by Katherine Addison
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Cemeteries of Amalo #3, Chronicles of Osreth #4
Pages: 352
Published by Tor Books on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Thara Celehar has lost his ability to speak with the dead. When that title of Witness for the Dead is gone, what defines him?
While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.
Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.
Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.

My Review:

Once upon a time, I picked up the first book in this series because its central character, Thara Celehar, was instrumental in enabling The Goblin Emperor Maia to ascend his throne – alive and in one piece.

The Goblin Emperor is a story of high-stakes political drama and low-places skullduggery, the battle of a reviled outsider to assume the ultimate insider’s position as Emperor. Which he does, in part thanks to Celehar.

But Celehar himself is not a political operative. He’s not even an insider of the religious hierarchy that he himself inhabits as a prelate of the deity Ulis, and more importantly in his calling as a Witness for the Dead.

A calling which has gifted him with the ability to literally speak to the spirits of the recently departed, to help them pass on by carrying out their final wishes, by getting justice for those who have been wronged by the ones they left behind – and by, if necessary, forcing the spirits that have refused to leave to GO.

But in the previous book, The Grief of Stones, in the process of sending on a ghoul who has refused all previous attempts to get it to cross over, Celehar achieves his aim, stops the series of murders that the ghoul has perpetrated – but loses his gift in the trauma.

As this story opens, Celehar is reckoning with that loss of purpose, as he does not know what to do with himself without his duties. He’s also more than a bit worried about his living situation, as his income depends on him doing a job he literally no longer has the ability to perform.

While this uneasy situation settles – even if Celehar doesn’t – his superior in the temple hierarchy has given him an assignment as a sort of ecclesiastical troubleshooter in the city he once served.

The thing about Celehar, as modest and utterly self-effacing as he is, is that he’s an excellent troubleshooter because he’s such a magnet for trouble that it can’t resist finding him no matter what duty he’s ostensibly performing. Which is precisely what happens in The Tomb of Dragons, as in the midst of carrying out his duties to his archprelate he is kidnapped and literally tossed into a witnessing that is so deep and so vast it has the potential to topple the empire itself.

Thara Celehar has vowed to witness for 192 murdered dragons before the Emperor himself. Unless, of course, Celehar gets murdered first.

Escape Rating A+: I’m in a bit of a conundrum, as this series FEELS – emphasis on FEEL – like a cozy fantasy mystery even though the things that happen – especially the murders and the politics and the political murders – aren’t all that cozy. I think it’s that Thara Celehar is a very cozy and comfortable sort of person – in spite of just how uncomfortable he often is within himself.

I think that Celehar is what makes the series feel so cozy because he’s honestly just going about his day, doing his job, living his small life. It’s just that the way he does his very best to get his tasks done – no matter how seemingly mundane they are at the outset, feels safe and comfy because that’s what he’s looking for.

Even though, as this story begins, he’s really worried about what will happen to him if his calling doesn’t come back. So we feel for him.

But as he goes about his day and his work and getting dragged out of his rooms by his friends who won’t let him wallow by himself, things just seem to happen to him. Often big, huge, empire-shattering things. Nearly always in spite of himself.

As much fun as it is watching Celehar navigate ecclesiastical bureaucracy and 50 years of dead red tape – and it is surprisingly absorbing and, well, comforting – the center of this story is the case that he is literally dropped into, where he’s pushed down a mineshaft and ends up witnessing for all those dead dragons.

The initial circumstances are harrowing, but it’s the way that Celehar handles those circumstances that literally and figuratively calls back to his small but significant contribution to The Goblin Emperor – as well as bringing the emperor himself, Edrehesivar, back to the story in person.

The dragons’ case is groundbreaking, heartbreaking, and potentially as deadly for Celehar as it has already been for the dragons themselves. The easy thing would be for Celehar to pretend his conversation with the dead dragon never happened – but his conscience and his honor won’t let him do that.

It’s his quiet courage, his need to do the right thing, that gives this story both its tension – as that decision is contested on all sides – and its heart and soul as he perseveres in spite of the forces arrayed against him.

That his steadfastness is rewarded made The Tomb of Dragons the perfect ending to The Cemeteries of Amalo series. But if it turns out that this is not an ending after all, this reader would be thrilled to return to the world of The Goblin Emperor with Thara Celehar again. And again.

#BookReview: Chaos by Constance Fay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
#BookReview: Chaos by Constance FayChaos (Uncharted Hearts, #3) by Constance Fay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Uncharted Hearts #3
Pages: 344
Published by Bramble Romance on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Lore Olympus meets Winter's Orbit in this pulse-pounding romance between a space mercenary and a super soldier whose mind-control breaks when she touches him.
He's a mind controlled killing machine, until her touch frees him
Engineer Caro Ogunyemi thinks she has everything in control. Sure, she has a dark secret in her past and aim so bad that she can’t shoot the side of a spaceship when she’s right in front of it, but those are minor details in the life of a space mercenary. When Caro embarks on a solo mission infiltrating a prison planet that is run by the deadly Pierce family, she embraces the opportunity to prove she’s a hero.
It's there that Caro meets Leviathan, a super soldier with a chip in his head that turns him into a mindless killer. He’s drop dead gorgeous with an emphasis on drop dead, until she touches him and renders his chip inert. The danger begins when she lets him go.
In the heart of enemy territory, where love is at stake, life is treacherous and time is short, Caro and Leviathan must figure out how to recover his agency, protect her crew from Pierce’s sinister machinations, and stage a prison-break before Leviathan is lost to her―and himself―forever.

My Review:

First of all, consider the title to be a hint. In fact, consider the individual titles of ALL of the books in the Uncharted Hearts series to be ginormous hints. Just as there were so many calamities in Calamity that the ship was ultimately named for the phenomenon, and the operation in Fiasco turned out to be a complete one of those, so too the ‘rescue mission’ that ace tinkerer Caro is bamboozled/emotionally manipulated into results in complete and utter chaos.

Which does not mean that Caro doesn’t, in the end, get the job done. Because she absolutely does. She just doesn’t get that job done in anything like the way she thought she would. Then again, the job isn’t remotely like what she was sold/told it was, either.

She thinks she’s rescuing two of her crewmates from a job gone wrong. And she does in the end. But they might not have even needed rescuing if she hadn’t concocted a truly lame plan to turn herself in to the rich, rapacious megacorp family that she’s been on the run from for years.

They should welcome her back, right? To pick up her old, truly ethically disgusting chip hacking job right where she left off when she ran away when her gorge rose past her naivete. So, Caro is still more than a bit naive. But she’s a whole lot better at hacking than she used to be.

Or she would be if she could get the tools to work for her – which they suddenly aren’t. Which is where the chaos enters into the picture. When she discovers that her old work has been repurposed to hack the mind of a man who looks like all of her hottest dreams in one gorgeous package, the chaos of the whole situation enters her heart as well.

Now she has more people to rescue than she planned on – and some of them aren’t aware enough to be aware that they need rescuing until Caro and her glitchy ability to glitch whatever she touches glitches them – and for once and always in a really, really, really good way.

Which provides a whole ‘nother avenue for that pesky chaos to enter the picture.

In the end, Caro’s success hinges on the one thing she absolutely never would have counted on in a million years. That the result of one of the terrible ethical lapses she fell into when she was young and dumb coming back, not to haunt her but to help her, in the form of her very own Murderbot.

Escape Rating B+: As Caro herself says, very late in the story, “Comparisons are toxic”. Which is something I wish she’d said a whole lot sooner, as it’s a truth that I REALLY needed to keep in mind while reading this third book in the Uncharted Hearts series.

Because, much as Caro herself did, I couldn’t stop comparing Caro to the protagonists of the previous entries in this series, Temper and Cyn. And Caro kept coming up wanting in my mind – just as much as she did in her own.

At the same time, this was a really compelling read, filled with plenty of the titular chaos, a plot that careened from one high-stakes, high-tension crisis to the next, injected with just the right amount of romance and sexytimes to grease the story into a fast and furious adventure.

But, but, but the plot hinged on Caro’s complete and utterly infuriating obliviousness to the macguffin that was literally just under her skin the whole time. That everything is going to hinge on the weird bugs and their even weirder bites that Caro is exposed to in the opening scenes is so screamingly obvious to the reader and this reader at least wanted to scream at Caro in return until she caught on. Which she eventually did but DAMN that took a frustratingly long time.

Once she does figure out what’s going on and starts to USE both the ‘glitch’ and the prodigious brains she always brings to the table the story kicks into high gear. But I did want to grab her and shake her for quite a while.

Moving right along – just as the story eventually did – there is still a LOT to love in Chaos and in the entire Uncharted Hearts series, starting with an utterly chaotic prison break scene that is straight out of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie – or at least it is if you swap a combination of the Incredible Hulk and the Winter Soldier for Peter Quinn – which might, come to think of it, have been an upgrade to the movie. (Your intergalactic mileage may vary.)

But seriously, the hulk that Caro calls Levi and gives her heart – as well as her very willing body – to is just the kind of scarred and wounded hero that this series redeems every time – even as he reclaims the better parts of himself and redeems the heroine as well.

On the surface – and after that initial bobble of cluelessness – the story in Chaos is a whole lot of science fiction romance adventure and excitement. But there’s more if you think about it for a bit. The ‘verse of the Uncharted Hearts series is often likened to Firefly, and that’s a description that still very much works three books in.

The thing about the comparison to Firefly that’s definitely held up and flown away with in Uncharted Hearts, is that the ‘verse in Firefly is really, really FUBAR’d, and so is the universe of Uncharted Hearts. The individual entries in this series, at least so far, absolutely show the plucky underdogs of the Calamity poking the evil, rapacious, megacorps in the collective eye with a big sharp stick and getting away with it – for now.

But those megacorps are truly evil examples of the old adage about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely – and they really do rule their ‘verse. I hope that the crew of the Calamity can somehow manage to acquire a big enough ‘stick’ to poke them all where it will really, really hurt – no matter how unlikely that seems in anything like our reality.

I certainly intend to follow any continuing adventures of Temper and company – and this book absolutely does read as though there will BE more – to find out!

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#BookReview: The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
#BookReview: The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 272
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Seven struggling customers are given the unique opportunity to take home a “blanket cat” . . . but only for three days, the time it’ll take to change their lives.
A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers the unique opportunity to take home one of seven special cats, whose “magic” is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket.
In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.
But like all their kind, the “blanket cats” are mysterious creatures with unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t really what they need. Three days may not be enough to change a life. But it might just change how you see it.

My Review:

The idea seems a bit, well, absurd – but in a good way. That a person would ‘rent’ a cat for three days and then return the cat. Actually, that’s not the absurd part. There are lots of reasons why someone would want a cat as a short term rental, and quite a few of them are covered in this collection.

A family who wants to give a visiting elderly relative one last good memory of the household by temporarily replacing a cat who passed away months ago. A person who lives in a pet-free apartment who takes their vacations with a cat because they aren’t permitted to keep one at home. A family pretending all is well when it really, really isn’t. A child who needs a friend and companion who won’t judge – unlike everyone around him.

Still, the idea of this loosely linked collection should seem familiar, as there are suddenly a lot of similar books available, translated from the original Japanese or Korean. The ideas are similar, the stories are a bit of magical realism on four paws, about lives that are changed for the better with the introduction of a magical cat. Or even just a bit of magic, as is the case with the best known book of this type, Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Generally speaking, I have at least liked all of the books of this type I have picked up so far. Some more than others, of course, but generally have closed the book with a smile on my face even if there’s also a bit of a tear in my eye. And that’s true with or without the inclusion of a cat or two.

Because of the cats, however, this particular set of stories at first seemed a lot like We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, because the ‘Blanket Cats’ of these stories are also short-term placements – although there’s no hint of a prescription.

Instead, the blanket cats are trained to be rented by one person or family after another, able to feel ‘at home’ wherever they are placed as long as they have their own personal ‘comfort blanket’ and their prescribed diet. It shouldn’t work, and I’ll admit to wondering if it would in real life, but as a story convention it’s enough.

However, the cats really aren’t. Enough that is. Because in the individual stories it feels like the individuals and their situations are beyond saving and the poor cat gets caught in the middle. These kinds of stories are often ‘sad fluff’ in that there’s a lot of grief in the beginning but part of the magic, with or without cat, is that the change in perspective brought by the cat or the magic or both allows the humans to see things a bit differently and things do get better.

The stories in this collection just felt very, very sad, and there wasn’t that same catharsis that there was in We’ll Prescribe You a Cat or The Full Moon Coffee Shop.

Escape Rating C: I left this collection feeling even sadder than I began. As I wasn’t feeling well to begin with, this may have been the wrong book at the wrong time for this reader. And I’m sad about that, too.

A- #BookReview: The Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren Willig

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren WilligThe Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren Willig
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: American History, historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery, true crime
Pages: 352
Published by William Morrow on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Based on the true story of a famous trial, this novel is Law and 1800, as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr investigate the shocking murder of a young woman who everyone—and no one—seemed to know.
At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows. 
Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house—and doesn’t come home. Has she eloped? Run away? No one knows—until her body appears in the Manhattan Well.
Her family insists they know who killed her. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma. 
But privately, quietly, Levi’s wealthy brother calls in a special favor….
Aaron Burr’s legal practice can’t finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections. To defend Levi Weeks is a double a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines.
Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn’t going to let Burr monopolize the public’s attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man’s life—and destroy each other.
Part murder mystery, part thriller, part true crime, The Girl From Greenwich Street revisits a dark corner of history—with a surprising twist ending that reveals the true story of the woman at the center of the tale.

My Review:

This fascinating combination of historical fiction, true crime AND mystery tells the story of the first sensational murder trial in what was then, in 1800, these new United States. We don’t know much about the victim, Elma Sands. They didn’t then, either, which is kind of the point. Sometimes it’s still the point. Trying a case in the press doesn’t require much knowledge of either the victim or the accused, then or now.

But the case – this case is still notorious over 200 years later.

First, because it was the first. Firsts always have a bit of cachet. Seconds, not so much. This wasn’t just the first murder trial, it was also the first such trial to have a full transcript. And if you’re thinking that Pitman shorthand wasn’t introduced until 1837, decades after this trial, you’d be right.

But shorthand did not emerge, fully formed, from the head of Isaac Pitman. The court record for this trial practiced an earlier version of shorthand, and recorded the trial verbatim, admittedly with a few idiosyncrasies.

What makes this case still fascinating, perhaps even more so than it has been over the intervening centuries, are the names of two of the three members of the council for the defence. You know them. Once I name them you won’t be able to see them without filtering that image through their portrayals in Hamilton. (This trial is even alluded to in the play in the fast-talking lyrics of “Non-Stop.”

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton acted as two-thirds of the defense of Levi Weeks, the man accused of murdering Elma Sands. I’m not saying they formed a team, because that’s a HUGE stretch. By 1800, those two towering figures of American history were at odds. And they were over the course of the trial as well, each attempting to use the notoriety of the trial to further their respective causes in the upcoming election of 1800. Each doing their best and worst so score off against the other because they could – and couldn’t bear not to.

That a young woman was dead and a young man’s life hung in the balance never stopped these lifelong enemies from taking pieces out of each other even while their client languished behind bars and the press raised a hue and cry over ALL their heads.

Escape Rating A-: Of all the books I’ve read this week, this is the one I found the most fascinating and the one I’ve shoved at the most people. It’s a captivating story, sometimes in spite of itself, because of the way that it combines U.S. history and politics, mystery, true crime and the still inspirational voice of the play Hamilton and weaves it together into a compelling mess of a story.

I call the story a mess not because the author didn’t do a terrific job of making it all make as much sense as it’s ever going to – because she absolutely did. But rather, the historical record itself is really, seriously messy as a murder investigation and as a legal case, the question of who really done it has NEVER been resolved, the circumstances under which the case was conducted are basically insane, and the only available evidence for anything at all – except of course for the dead body – are entirely circumstantial and don’t hang together into any cohesive narrative.

Which is why no one ever hung for the crime.

The story, in the end, is at the intersection of two clichés. One, attributed to Mark Twain in multiple iterations, is the one that goes, “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” Even today, reading the story, the mind cries out for a logical conclusion, but there’s not enough there to come to one. Which leads to the other screaming cliché, the one where “assume makes an ass out of you and me”. There are a LOT of asses here. It seems as if all the attempts at making sense of this thing, both then and now, start with an assumption that doesn’t hold up.

But as fascinating as the truly messy trial process is, between the in-over-his-head-and-drowning-fast prosecutor and the resulting exhaustion of the judge, the jury and everyone involved, what makes the story sing (pardon the irresistible pun) is the rivalry between Hamilton and Burr. The transcription of the trial does not indicate which of the three defense lawyers made which statements or asked which witnesses which questions. Nor are there any records of Burr’s and Hamilton’s arguments over how the defense should proceed in the days before the trial. But the heated discussions and the hidden thoughts between the rivals feel true to the characters we believe we know – even if or especially because we’re hearing them in Leslie Odom Jr.’s and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voices.

Particularly as we hear in those voices the echo of Hamilton’s words to Burr over and under their every debate about justice versus expediency, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”

#BookReview: A Scandalous Affair by Leonard Goldberg

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: A Scandalous Affair by Leonard GoldbergA Scandalous Affair: A Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Leonard Goldberg
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Daughter of Sherlock Holmes #8
Pages: 272
Published by Pegasus Crime on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the latest Daughter of Sherlock Holmes novel, Joanna Holmes must confront a shocking case of blackmail that threatens the highest levels of His Majesty’s government, as this USA Today bestselling mystery series continues.

In the latest installment of this acclaimed series, Sherlock Holmes’s daughter faces an elaborate mystery that threatens the second most powerful man in His Majesty’s government. His position is such that he answers only to the king and the prime minister.

During the height of the Great War, Joanna Holmes and the Watsons receive a late-night, clandestine visit from Sir William Radcliffe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who brings with him an agonizing tale of blackmail; a case so sensitive that it can only be spoken of in the confines of 221B Baker Street.

An unknown individual has come into possession of salacious photographs, which not only sullies the family name, but may force the chancellor to vacate his seat on the War Council where his advice is most needed. The blackmailer has in their possession revealing photographs that show Sir William’s granddaughter in romantic encounters with a man other than the aristocrat to whom she is engaged to marry. Should the pictures be released to the public, the wedding would be immediately called off, and the prospect of the granddaughter ever finding a suitable husband would vanish.

Sir William's family has been forced to pay exorbitant sums for several of the photographs, but even more salacious pictures remain in the blackmailer’s possession—and will no doubt carry greater demands and threats. Scotland Yard cannot be involved, for fear of public disclosure. It thus falls on the shoulders of Joanna and the Watsons to expose the blackmailer and procure the photographs before irreparable harm comes to the chancellor and his family.

My Review:

The affair, in fact, was considerably more scandalous than first presented – and that situation was plenty salacious enough.

All the more so as this eighth entry in The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series takes place during the winter of 1918, as German bombs are dropping all over London. The United States had entered the war mere months before, and the Germans were hoping to break the back of the Allies before the U.S. could bring their far superior numbers to bear. History knows how that worked for both sides, but in the winter of 1918, the residents of London sheltering in basements and Underground stations certainly did not.

A scandal at the highest levels had the potential to rock a government that needed stability and clear thinking to wrap up the “Great War”. So when Mrs. Joanna Blalock Watson, along with the Doctors Watson, her husband and father-in-law, were called to the home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on a case, they all knew it had to be an important one.

Or at least a case that has importance because of who is caught up in its web. The Exchequer controls the purse strings of the empire, visiting a scandal upon the Chancellor’s own household will have far-reaching consequences – even if the scandal itself is merely the exposure of a reckless young woman’s thoughtless behavior.

Because her illustrious grandfather is being blackmailed to keep her scandal out of the press. One salacious photograph – and 5,000 pounds sterling – at a time. (That’s $100,000 in today’s money and the amount was for a single installment of which many more were sure to come.)

At first the case seems not simple but at least obvious. The young woman in the photos appears to be just a bit ‘out of it’, whether due to the unwitting consumption of too much champagne or the unknowing ingestion of the early 20th century equivalent of ‘date rape’ drugs. She appears to have been posed in various compromising positions without any awareness of the hidden camera capturing her ‘shame’.

It’s only as Joanna digs deeper into the case that she learns that very little of what she’s been presented with is as it first appears – and that none of the narrators of the tale with which she’s been presented have been remotely reliable.

And that the spider at the heart of this web has been playing a much longer game than even the Great Detective himself might have imagined.

Escape Rating B: I picked this up this week because I’ve read the whole series so far (I am STILL a sucker for a Holmes story), and while I’ve had mixed feelings, on balance I’ve generally liked the stories – usually with a few quibbles along the way. And this week I’m still battling a cold that just won’t go away so I was looking for a story that I’d be able to get into from the outset and knew that this would fill that bill admirably.

As it mostly did.

The mystery was certainly more than twisty enough – even though AND especially because it was clear from the outset that the young lady in the photos was holding back information that Joanna would need to solve the mystery. Although most of that turned out to be unwitting because, well, she was. Or at least extremely naive. Or both. Definitely both.

Because the young woman is intended as the victim, I felt like I was supposed to feel for her. And I did at first, but in the end I didn’t. It’s not that she was foolish, because that happens. And she certainly was very foolish. But she was also very complicit, and that’s when I stopped feeling for her as much as the story wants the reader to feel. Because it all felt like the problems of the rich and she’s going to be well taken care of no matter how responsible she is for the mess she’s gotten her family into. It felt like the case was only important because its exposure would cost her grandfather his position, which was only of such supreme importance as it was because of the war. And I wish the story had gone down that path because it would have made more sense.

At the same time, the true villain of this piece was a very smart, very small, very grey little man who was clearly a sociopath. He was so nondescript as an individual that his evil was much, much bigger than he was – to the point where I don’t know how he contained it all. Also, he remained so much in the shadows that we only get glimmers of a sense of his nature through his acts and it just wasn’t enough.

Not that it wasn’t interesting and different to have a tiny little figure be such a towering villain – so to speak – and not that it’s not good to see something different in villainy than a whole lot of bwa-ha-ha monologues and grandstanding, but he really was a bit of a whimper even though he was really, really adept at making other people whimper.

In the end, this wasn’t bad at all, and I did get caught up in it more than enough to ignore my cold for a couple of hours, but it didn’t reach the heights of either the first book in the series, The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes, or my other favorite, the next most recent book, The Wayward Prince.

But I was more than entertained enough that I’ll be back for the next outing in this series, whatever and whenever it turns out to be!

A+ #BookReview: Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Greenteeth by Molly O’NeillGreenteeth by Molly O'Neill
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fairy tales, fantasy, historical fantasy, retellings
Pages: 304
Published by Orbit on February 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle-sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce. Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she’s worth saving.
Temperance doesn’t know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor. Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny’s lake and Temperance’s family – as well as the very soul of Britain.

My Review:

This is a book that I came into with no idea of what I was getting into. I had the blurb but that wasn’t much – or rather I didn’t glean all that much from it. Going in, I knew a whole lot more about the witch, Temperance, than I did about the titular narrator, Jenny Greenteeth. That this is the author’s OMG fantastically excellent and totally wonderful DEBUT meant that there wasn’t much in the way of previous work to look at, either.

But I was captivated from the very first page, when we meet Jenny Greenteeth under the lake near the tiny village of Chipping Appleby – and Jenny meets the witch Temperance Crump after she finds the woman weighted down with chains UNDER Jenny’s lake. From Jenny’s perspective, Temperance has obviously been accused of witchcraft. Equally obvious, the accusation is correct as Temperance is trying desperately to hang on to the air bubble she’s conjured so that she can survive this ordeal.

Little do both Jenny and Temperance know that their ordeal has barely begun.

Jenny rescues the witch – because she really doesn’t want witch corpses – or honestly ANY corpses – littering her pristine lake. AND because she’s lonely. Especially because she’s lonely even if she can’t quite let herself admit it.

Temperance allows herself to be rescued – because she’s panicked and desperate and seemingly doesn’t have much of a choice. But even in her panic and desperation – she does. She could let her fear override what little sense anyone would have while drowning at the bottom of a lake after the epic betrayal by everyone in her village. Or she could trust in the one being who is trying to help her – in spite of Jenny’s truly frightening appearance.

Considering that Temperance has just been condemned to death by a group of people just like her who have known her all of all of their lives, trusting in the kindness of a stranger who is really, truly strange is a hell of a leap of faith.

But she does reach out and Jenny reaches back and together they reach forward to someone who can help them take down a much, much bigger problem than either of them ever imagined.

So Temperance the witch and Jenny Greenteeth bargain with the goblin Brackus Marsh and together they form an unlikely ‘fellowship’ indeed. A fellowship that, just like the more famous such company in a much bigger story, goes on a magical quest to banish a great evil by taking a walk through some very dark places indeed.

That, in the end, they discover an even greater magic that elevates their quest and their story into a legend that is even more magical than they – and the reader – ever imagined.

Escape Rating A+: Greenteeth turned out to be an absolute delight of a historical fantasy, mixing a bit of myth and a bit of magic into a lovely story of found friendship and sisterhood.

At first it combines the relatively minor myths of the Jenny Greenteeths and other such creatures with the true but terrible history of the persecution of women who refused to stay in the place society had decreed for them through false accusations of witchcraft.

And I honestly thought the story was going to be about that juxtaposition – about the magic of the world, magic like the Jennies and the Fae Courts – going out of the world in the face of increased population and rational thinking while at the same time false accusations of witchcraft were being thrown around willy-nilly.

Then the story started developing layers – and I started recognizing the layers that had been there from the beginning.

I was barely familiar with Jenny Greenteeth – and mostly from T. Kingfisher’s excellent Thornhedge. But there are Jennies underneath a lot of fantasy if you can catch them out of the corner of your eye – like the grindylows in Harry Potter and the ‘Red Jennies’ in Dragon Age as well as more than few actual Jennies keeping an eye on some of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children. There are also Jenny-like creatures in many, many mythologies around the world. Stick your face in any pond, anywhere, and there’s probably a Jenny lurking somewhere under the reeds.

So Greenteeth turned into a story about sisterhood and found family among the unlikeliest creatures, a story about the magic going away, and a story about a woman reclaiming her life, her village and her family with the help of some very unusual friends.

And then it went down into the dark of a dangerous magical quest, the last gasp of powers that are fading fast and set them and itself against an evil that plans to swallow the world. Then it went to a place out of a bigger and brighter legend entirely and I was left gasping at the end in awe and relief.

If Thornhedge and Spear by Nicola Griffith had a book baby it would be Greenteeth – and I wasn’t expecting that combination AT ALL. But it was utterly, fantastically, wondrous and I adored every page of it. I hope you will too.

That this is the author’s DEBUT novel is completely amazeballs. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next, because whatever it is, I feel like I’m already ready to set out on the journey.

A+ #BookReview: Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

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

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

But that’s NEVER the case, is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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