Grade A #BookReview: Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Grade A #BookReview: Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess KiddMurder at Gulls Nest (Nora Breen Investigates #1) by Jess Kidd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Nora Breen Investigates #1
Pages: 325
Published by Atria Books on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears
1954: When her former novice’s dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda’s letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests—but when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it’s time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.

My Review:

For a cozy mystery, Murder at Gulls Nest is a bit twisty and occasionally downright creepy, but in the case of this particular case – that’s a marvelous thing!

Nora Breen has come a long way to arrive at little Gore-on-Sea on the Kentish coast. All the way from more than 30 years as a nun, out of the convent and straight into the room that her former novice occupied in a somewhat rundown boarding house just before she disappeared.

A disappearance which has led to Nora being out in the world for the first time in decades, having entered her monastery in the post-World War I years after a personal tragedy, and emerged in 1954, not long after an entirely different war whose scars are still healing, both on the country and especially on its people.

She’s just a bit overwhelmed – but she’s also very determined. As well as downright nosy – a predilection that was considered a flaw in her former vocation. But out in the world that gets a considerably more mixed reception. The local police inspector in Gore-on-Sea – and in fact the entire police station – also believe it’s a flaw, and an annoying flaw at that. Nora, on the other hand, is having a bit too good of a time figuring out how to interrogate her fellow boarders without making them feel like they are being interrogated. Even though they are.

Which doesn’t stop Detective Inspector Rideout from relying on Nora’s nosiness, her stubbornness, and her imagination fired up by years of reading detective mysteries, to help him solve a puzzling series of murders at that boarding house, Gulls Nest. Murders that the coroner would much rather sweep under the rug as either suicides or accidents even though Nora is convinced that there is a murderer hiding among the eccentric guests.

And that her missing friend was the murderer’s first victim.

Escape Rating A: Murder at Gulls Nest turned out to be one of the creepiest cozies I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading – but a pleasure and a delight it certainly was. This is the first book in a series, so Gore-on-Sea could certainly get cozier, but as the place stands right now it seems like a good place to get murdered in.

This story, and the series, begins in one of the usual ways that classic mystery series begin when the sleuth is an amateur – meaning that Nora’s first case is entirely personal at the outset. In Nora’s particular case, that she has come to discover the fate of one of her novices allows Nora to both reminisce about her time in the monastery and ruminate on the life that brought her there and the compulsion that pulled her out.

And we do get more than enough to get what she came from and where she’s coming from, even though it’s an experience that seems just as much a part of the past as the mid-century, post-war setting in the kind of seaside holiday town that was on its way out then and of which there are only remnants now.

What draws Nora into the mystery as a whole, and the reader right along with her, are the downright eccentric denizens of Gulls Nest, from the opiate-addled landlady and her ‘wild child’ young daughter to the retired traveling puppeteer, the smooth black marketeer and the dour housekeeper who is so clearly a candidate to be either the murderer or the scapegoat.

As the residents drop one-by-one, the motive for the murders gets murkier and murkier. Not that there weren’t plenty of possible motives and suspects for each individual murder, but the question of who benefits from ALL of the murders drives Rideout and Nora into a reluctant investigative partnership that pushes the story forward even as Nora pokes her nose into people and places that seem as if they couldn’t possibly be relevant until they finally are.

It’s a relationship that works in spite of the initial inclinations of the people in it, and it develops from suspicion to annoyance to grudging respect to friendship in a way that feels organic to the characters and sets an excellent foundation for the series.

I had a grand time with Nora Breen as she stuck her ‘coulter’ – meaning nose – into places she probably shouldn’t but that someone absolutely did need to stick some kind of oar into. I loved her investigative technique of nosiness with a bit more heart and understanding than her own reading of detective novels had led her to expect. I found the murders appropriately twisty, the motive at the heart of it all just a bit heartbreaking, and was happy to see order restored and chaos put properly in its place.

That this is the opening of a series was definitely the icing on a very tasty murder cake that only occasionally held a hint of bitter almond. Exactly how Nora is going to manage to keep herself on in Gore-on-Sea (and OMG that name is both a hint and a hoot under the circumstances) I can’t wait to see who and/or what she digs into next!

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne HillermanShadow of the Solstice: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel, 10) by Anne Hillerman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, thriller
Series: Leaphorn & Chee #28, Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #10
Pages: 336
Published by Harper on April 22, 2025
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In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.

The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice? When the outsiders’ erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone–and the woman’s daughter doesn’t seem to care. Darleen’s curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client’s grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen’s information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.

My Review:

The advantage of a mystery series in which there are not just one but two highly qualified investigators is that it is possible to focus on two separate crimes and NOT have them merge into a single perpetrator or gang of perpetrators at the end.

Navajo Nation Police Lieutenant Jim Chee has been investigating a rise in disappearances across their jurisdiction. Not that adults don’t occasionally walk away from their lives no matter where they live, but this rise is considerably more than the usual, with more families than are usually left behind in such cases left bereft by the limbo of their probable loss.

At the same time, Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is investigating complaints about an unapproved and downright dangerous structure being built by a visiting “meditation” group on land that they have rented from a well-known local family.

This may not sound like all that big a deal, but a) they don’t own the land, b) the owner refused permission for them to build, c) they didn’t get their plans approved and d) the structure is a sweat lodge meant to be used for meditation and healing ceremonies and its construction is so dangerous as to be downright deadly in the wrong circumstances. Which is exactly what they’re planning to hold. That the whole setup not just looks and sounds and more importantly ACTS like a cult setting up for something either dangerous or suicidal or both makes the owners’ feel unsafe and makes Bernie’s hackles rise accordingly.

Into this already potentially explosive mix throw the possible arrival of the Secretary of Energy, probably to give a speech that will run directly contrary to Navajo Nation policy, with all the chaos that a visiting dignitary could bring – as well as the tensions arising from the lack of certainty about whether she will or she won’t.

Chee has been left in charge of whatever is going to happen, if it’s going to happen, because the station captain had a heart attack right after the potential visit was announced. He’s torn between duties, cases and family while his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, has turned over a really big rock and a much more dangerous snake than she expected has crawled out to strike at a bigger prize than anyone imagined.

Escape Rating A-: As much and as long as I have loved this series, it took me a bit to get into this particular entry in it for reasons that I think were a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing. I was looking for more of an escape than I got this time around, as this story took me away in geography but not so much in other ways.

In other words, everything that happens in this story felt very close to ‘real’ life, and I wanted to be further away than that. Also, I was really, seriously worried for one of the characters and I needed to find out that she’d be okay before I could relax into the story. Once she managed to rescue herself, the rest of the story grabbed me and didn’t let go until the end – which was more than a bit of a nail-biter.

What made this one both so real and so fascinating was the way that even though the two cases don’t merge into one in any of the usual ways, they were both motivated by a lot of the same things – none of which were the ostensible causes of the crimes themselves.

Both crimes are about greed and manipulation, about taking advantage of people’s desire for a better life to line the pockets of the perpetrators at the expense of as many people as possible. That one is a Medicaid scam in Phoenix and the other is a cult subjugating its members even as it bilks them of their money is merely window dressing on the true motives of their perpetrators, which are to take advantage of people – and the government in the case of the Medicaid scam – and line their own pockets.

That one perpetrator is coldly, cruelly sane while the other believes he’s getting messages from a higher power – or at least pretends to – doesn’t mean that they’re not operating from surprisingly similar playbooks in the end.

And ending which administers just desserts to both, even though it’s not remotely possible to truly balance the scales in either case. Which comes back, again, to just how closely reality bites this fictional setting.

Over the more than OMG 30 years that I’ve been following this series (the series began in 1970 with The Blessing Way but I didn’t get hooked on it until the early 1990s) the more I’ve enjoyed getting to know these characters and have loved watching them grow and change over the years. When the series began, the ‘Legendary’ Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn was the protagonist and young Officer Jim Chee was his sometimes reluctant sidekick. Now Chee is the lead investigator, his wife and fellow officer Bernie is NOT his sidekick but an investigator in her own right. They face a whole new set of challenges, often separately on the job but together in their relationship, while behind them a new crop of officers is learning the ropes and their world is changing – as the world does. (And if any of this sounds familiar that might be because the original stories are the basis for the TV series Dark Winds.)

But humans are always gonna human, there will always be more problems for them to face and crimes for them to solve, and I’ll always be looking forward to the next book in the series whenever it appears. Hopefully, that will be this time next year.

A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. HarrisWho Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr, #20) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #20
Pages: 384
Published by Berkley on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The gruesome murder of a prominent nobleman throws an already unsettled London into chaos in this electrifying new historical mystery by the USA Today bestselling author of What Cannot Be Said.
August 1816. England is in the grip of what will become known as the Year Without a Summer. Facing the twin crises of a harvest-destroying volcanic winter and the economic disruption caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British monarchy finds itself haunted by the looming threat of bloody riots not seen since the earliest days of the French Revolution. Amidst the turmoil, a dead man is found hanging upside down by one leg in an abandoned chapel, his hands tied behind his back. The pose eerily echoes the image depicted on a tarot card known as Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The victim—Lord Preston Farnsworth, the younger brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions—was a passionate crusader against what he called the forces of darkness, namely criminality, immorality, and sloth. His brutal murder shocks the Palace and panics the already troubled populace.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, learns of the murder from a ragged orphan who leads him to the corpse and then disappears. At first, everyone in the dead man’s orbit paints Lord Preston as a selfless saint. But as Sebastian delves deeper into his life, he quickly realizes that the man had accumulated more than his fair share of enemies, including Major Hugh Chandler, a close friend who once saved Sebastian’s life. Sebastian also discovers that the pious Lord Preston may have been much more dangerous than those he sought to redeem.
As dark clouds press down on the city and the rains fall unceasingly, two more victims are found, one strangled and one shot, with ominous tarot cards placed on their bodies. The killer is sending a gruesome message and Sebastian is running out of time to decipher it before more lives are lost and a fraught post-war London explodes.

My Review:

One of the things I utterly adore about this series is the way that each book is firmly fixed in its time and place, and that that foundation in its there and then shows the exact opposite of ANY vision we might have in our heads about what the Regency period was like. Especially if that vision owes its glitter and sparkle to Bridgerton, Georgette Heyer or even Jane Austen.

Weymouth Bay with Approaching Storm. Painting by John Constable (1816)

This particular entry in the series shines a light in darker places than usual, as it takes place in the summer of 1816, which, basically, wasn’t. Not that the summers of 1817, 1818 and 1819 were all that summer-y either. Although the sunsets were spectacular for years afterwards.

What made the situation so much darker and chillier, as this book explores rather, well, darkly, is that they didn’t know WHY clouds and storms blotted out the sun for days and weeks on end. It’s not totally unreasonable for people to have thought the world was coming to an end.

Because they were freezing and starving and it seemed like it would never end.

Not that already weren’t entirely too many people starving and shivering because Britain’s post-Napoleonic War economy was a wreck. The war was over – YAY! BUT, the soldiers were demobilized and thrown back into the population without pensions. The government was going through a period of austerity – for everyone but themselves, of course – and jobs were scarce.

And the government – and so many of the upper classes – were just so certain that it was the fault of the poor themselves that they were poor, and if they were just forced to be good, upright citizens who knew their place and didn’t question their betters that conditions would miraculously improve.

(And doesn’t that sound so very familiar?)

So when Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, gets called to the sight of the gruesome murder of one of those upper class so-called reformers, it’s clear exactly which rocks he’s going to be turning over to find out whodunnit. Because he’s certain that whoever the killer might have been, it’s not going to be the easy solution that the Crown demands in order to, well, keep order among the lower classes while hoping to satisfy the upper classes that justice is being done.

Even if it isn’t. And won’t. Unless Devlin gets his hands dirty with yet another investigation that some members of his own family would prefer he left well enough alone. Even if that well enough isn’t well at all – and they know it.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve not been remotely coy about the fact that I love this series, and this entry absolutely did not change my mind one iota. Over the course of 20 books in 20 years – and counting – it just gets better and better.

Over the course of the series I’ve realized that I’m mostly here for the historical fiction aspects of the series. Not just the way that the author illuminates this time and place that we think we know, but also the way that we walk London’s streets with Devlin and feel the cobblestones under our own feet.

At the same time, the mystery is always important and not merely in the sense of figuring out both whodunnit and why it was done. Murder is a disruption to order – to the way things ought to be. The Regency period, with its incapacitated king and its overly self-indulgent regent who will be king, was a period where order was already disrupted. And that’s before one factors in the disruptions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Meanwhile, the seeds for the Industrial Revolution have already been sown, and revolt and rebellion are bubbling up from the so-called lower orders who have seen their disruptions and results in nearby France and in the far away but less bloody and more successful United States. Change is in the wind – even if that wind is not blowing the skies clear enough to grow crops.

The disruptions caused by murder in this series, particularly this murder, are intended to show what’s lurking in the depths that is usually covered over by government propaganda and social expectations.

Because the victim in this particular case was believed to be a ‘good’ if somewhat priggish man who was working for the ‘betterment’ of the country even if he was a bit overbearing about it all. But someone knows that facade was just that, a false front that they are determined to strip away. This is a fascinating case because the point of it is NOT to capture a villain, but to expose exactly how much of a villain the murder victim really was – and to uncover his confederates in that villainy.

Justice, such as it turns out to be in this case, has already been had. And this entry in the series is all the more interesting for its purposes to have been so turned around and yet resolved as satisfactorily as possible.

I was all in on this one from the very first page, and finished the story in a bit of a sad catharsis because I was glad to see it resolved but that resolve is equivocal in exactly the way that it should be and that was marvelous in its way.

One final note about this story. I’m surprised to have a readalike for this that is not historical fiction or mystery, but if you’re interested in the effects of the year without a summer, there’s an award winning science fiction short story, “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer, that deals with the effects of a similar situation on one small community and its lovely and hopeful in ways that make it a good follow up to Who Will Remember.

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

#BookReview: A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic by J. PennerA Fellowship of Bakers & Magic (Adenashire, #1) by J. Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, foodie fiction, romantasy
Series: Adenashire #1
Pages: 288
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A human, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bake-off…
In the heart of Adenashire, where elfish enchantments and dwarven delights rule, Arleta Starstone, a human confectionist works twice as hard perfecting her unique blend of baking and apothecary herbs.
So when an orc neighbor secretly enters her creations into the prestigious Elven Baking Battle, Arleta faces a dilemma.
Being magicless, her participation in the competition could draw more scowls than smiles. And if Arleta wants to prove her talent and establish her culinary reputation, this human will need more than just her pastry craft to sweeten the odds.
While competing, she'll set off on a journey of mouthwatering pastries, self-discovery, heartwarming friendships and romance, while questioning whether winning the Baking Battle is the true prize.
Escape to for a delightful cozy fantasy where every twist is a treat and every turn a step closer to home.

My Review:

It sounds like the start of a joke, that opening line in the blurb, “A human, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bake-off…” It’s not a joke at all, it’s the start of a heartwarming cozy fantasy – even if it’s not quite correct in the particulars.

The elf strides in, the dwarf bounces, a fennex skulks in and the human rushes in at the very last second, still not convinced that she belongs in the contest or has even half a chance of making it past the first round.

The elf, the dwarf, and the fennex ‘belong’ in the competition because they all have magic. Although the Langheim Baking Battle began as a competition for elves and there are still plenty of people around who believe that the tone has gone WAY DOWN since they started letting in members of other magical races.

It’s not that entry is technically restricted to those with magic, but everybody ‘knows’ that non-magical bakers like Arleta Starstone somehow never make it into the contest. They must not be considered good enough. Or the game is rigged.

Of course the game is rigged, and Arleta knows it. Because it’s part of the story of her whole entire life that no matter how good her confections are, she’s always going to get the worst spot in the local market and she’s always going to pay the most for it and her potential customers are always going to expect her to discount her prices because ‘everyone’ knows that magical baking is ‘better’.

Whether it is or not. In Arleta’s case, it’s definitely not. Winning the Langheim Baking Battle would prove that to everyone who has ever looked down their magical nose at her – even if they’ve had to look up to do it.

But Arleta has been beaten down too much for too long to even think she has a chance. However, her ogre neighbors, her unofficial adopted fathers Verdreth and Ervash, are certain she has an excellent chance if she just puts herself in the running. So they do it for her.

And with the help of a little bit of unintended misdirection, she gets in. And then proceeds to try and get herself out. But between her dads pushing her from behind, and a very handsome elf encouraging her – and facilitating her participation with travel and transport – she can’t quite make herself refuse.

Although she keeps trying all the way to Langheim. And once she’s standing on that stage, adding her little bit of special savory goodness to the sweetest of recipes, she has all the chances she needs to make it to the top.

With more than a little help and encouragement from the friends she makes along the way.

Escape Rating B: This first book in the Adenashire cozy fantasy series (there are at least three more!) is definitely one of those “book baby” situations. As in, if either Legends & Lattes (or Can’t Spell Treason without Tea) and The Great British Bake Off had a book baby, it would be A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic.

And it would be delicious. There would also be delicious recipes in the back – because there are.

This first entry in the series has a bit of heavy – but delicious – lifting to perform in order to get to the sweet, gooey, tasty center of things. As the series opener, there’s the intro to this fantasy world and especially to Arleta’s home village of Adenashire. Then there’s the plot centered around the Baking Competition, which is where Arleta’s new friends – and the main characters of the other three books – get introduced. And last but absolutely not least there’s the romance between Arleta and the literal elf of her dreams, Theo.

The world Adenashire inhabits is a place where magic is what makes the world go around, and anyone who doesn’t have magic is definitely considered lesser. Humans CAN have magic, some do, but Arleta doesn’t happen to be one of them. So Arleta faces prejudice at pretty much every turn and she’s internalized all those feelings of being ‘less than’ to the point that she expects to be trodden upon at every turn.

The Baking Competition is a chance for her to get out of that mindset – if she can. And it’s a hard slog every step of the way that is not helped by the voice in her head telling her that she it’s wrong to accept help from anyone. That we don’t know where THAT voice originated gave me fits and explains the B rating. It’s not that feelings like that don’t happen to plenty of people and don’t cause internal strife and dramatic tension, it’s rather that they don’t come completely out of nowhere and Arleta already had more than enough pushing her down without piling that on. (YRMMV – your reading mileage may vary)

The competition – and all of the baked in tension of those shenanigans – is lots of fun with lots of stress for everyone. Anyone who loves cooking and baking contest shows is going to find that part a hoot!

Then there’s the romance, which is as sweet as Arleta’s baking while also playing back into the baked in prejudices of this world AND manages to check off a whole bunch of the more fun romantic trope boxes along the way and fill them with flowers. And a cat. Mustn’t forget Faylin because that cat won’t allow that for an instant.

All in all, there’s a LOT to savor in this story. Including those recipes in the back. There’s a recipe for Salted Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies that I’m planning to try. I loved the setting and the setup, enjoyed the baking competition but probably not as much as someone who is really into those shows, adored the group of found family that gathers around Arleta in spite of herself AND finds its way to Adenashire afterwards. I was looking for a sweet treat of a fantasy and this definitely satisfied that craving, so I’ll be back with the next book, A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons, because I can’t resist either part of that combination!

#BookReview: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

#BookReview: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac FellmanNotes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy, relationship fiction, science fiction
Pages: 336
Published by Tor Books on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.
In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.

My Review:

The story begins at the end, which doesn’t mean that either the narrator or the reader is in any way spoiled about how it began. Because that’s the point of it from the beginning.

Griffon Keming is trying to understand who his parents really were before they became his parents, now that their larger-than-life personas are no longer there to get in the way of that knowing. And because they’re gone, and he misses them, he’s trying to process that grief and that absence and memorialize them – at least for himself. Or perhaps in a way that’s JUST for himself, as a way of bringing them back to life one last time.

But he only knew his parents after the point in which they came into each other’s lives, when he was fifteen and they were into their forties. The places and events that made Zaffre and Etoine Keming, and the things that made them famous, were already behind them. Already memories and nightmares that may still have influence but they have no desire to exhume for either the enlightenment or the amusement of their adopted son.

So, in the wake of their passing, in what was once Zaffre and Etoine’s New York City apartment, Griffon discovers the writings his father left behind. An angry, angst-filled, sometimes ranting and raging diary of his decades of sobriety, and a manuscript that Etoine had titled Autoportrait, Blessê in his native language, Stephensportois.

But that autobiography wasn’t so much an autobiography of Etoine as it was an attempt to immortalize Zaffre, the woman he loved so much that, once upon a time, he killed a king for her.

Escape Rating B: There are multiple avenues of approach to Notes from a Regicide. The above was the way I got into this book and found my way through it, but it may tell a different story for each reader.

For some, the most obvious point of entry may be that Griffon, Etoine and Zaffre were all trans, and this is the story of the family they created together out of love and choice. A family that was far from perfect but that worked for them and that nurtured Griffon into a healthy adulthood after a childhood filled with physical and emotional abuse.

It can be interpreted as three broken people who made each other strong in their broken places – which were legion and not limited to Zaffre’s neurodiversity, Etoine’s alcoholism and the mental contortions Griffon forced himself to go through in order to protect his birth father from the consequences of his abuse of his own child. No one comes out of any of those things unscathed.

And then there’s the part that initially caught my curiosity, the question raised by the title. Who was the ruler, and where, and why were they murdered? That’s where the story slips into speculative fiction – somewhere on the border between science fiction and fantasy.

Because Stephensport is one of those places that’s on no map we know, that perhaps may have or will exist in a bit of a fever dream – or a drunken hallucination. And the story of Stephensport is the story of a bloody revolution that arose in paranoia and ended in exile, that brought down a tyranny and ended a dream and a nightmare at the same time.

Exactly how a reader will feel about Stephensport and the rebellion that Etoine accidentally fomented and Zaffre willingly fostered will depend a lot on how much one wants to believe it happened versus just how unreliable a narrator one believes Etoine to be. And I’m not at all sure but fascinated either way.

And if part of that fascination is related to T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series that begins with the chilling and awesome folkloric horror of What Moves the Dead, set in the equally fictional country of Ruravia, that’s just fine with this reader.

In the end – as it was in the beginning – Notes from a Regicide is two things for certain. It’s a passionate love story between two beautifully damaged people, Zaffre and Etoine, because that’s the way Etoine wrote his Autoportrait. And it’s a son’s last love letter to the parents of his heart.

A++ #BookReview: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

A++ #BookReview: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson BennettA Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery, urban fantasy
Series: Shadow of the Leviathan #2
Pages: 465
Published by Del Rey on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.

My Review:

There is something rotten in the state of the Empire. There are PLENTY of somethings ROTTING in the state of Yarrowdale, some naturally so, some deliberately so, some neglectfully so and some, even, all of the above. It’s a matter of which is which, which is what has brought Ana and Kol from their previous assignment to this rotting backwater on the edge of the Empire.

In a situation where the words “rotting”, “backwater” and “edge” should all be taken as many ways as possible – which is just the sort of situation that Ana Dolabra revels in solving.

Din’s first case assisting the eccentric genius (The Tainted Cup) began with the gorge-revolting sight of entirely too much corpse, as the victim had died as the result of a tree taking root in his stomach and growing downwards to root in the floor of the room in which he died even as the tree grew upward to entwine its branches with the ceiling.

This second case opens with much too little corpse, as all that officials have in the remote. soonish to be (negotiations are ongoing) imperial province of Yarrowdale of their latest assigned case are the right hand, left shoulder, and partial ribcage of the murder victim. The head comes later.

The carnivorous turtles that were clearly intended to handle corpse disposal must not have been quite hungry enough to get the job done before chance threw the remaining bits up and into the path of Imperial Iudex Commander Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol.

It’s all part of just the delightful kind of clever, confounding, murderous puzzle that Ana Dolabra literally seems to live for, as it begins with a diabolical bit of a locked room mystery that sends out roots and tendrils until it blossoms into a vast, far-reaching conspiracy that threatens to topple the Empire.

Only for the entire, province-spanning construct to collapse of its own weight into the person of one small man who has lost sight of his purpose – as well as his mind – in a web of greed of his own manufacture, leaving Ana Dolabra bemoaning the banality of his crime even while she brings down its perpetrator and saves the empire yet again.

As she was made to do.

Escape Rating A++: For this enthralled but still somewhat emotionally exhausted reader, A Drop of Corruption – at nearly 500 pages (I think that estimate is LOW) – represents a lost weekend. I dove into the story late on Saturday and didn’t emerge until Sunday evening, still mired in a book hangover that seems as if it will require every bit as much time to recover from as one of the psychotropic drug binges that aid Ana in her deliberations.

I picked up the first book in this series, The Tainted Cup, because I couldn’t resist the premise. It’s billed as a take-off, or perhaps homage would be a better word, to Holmes and Watson. But it’s set in an epic fantasy world – for epic in multiple senses of the word. I haven’t seen this combination done at all, let alone as well as it is here, since the late Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy series a VERY long time ago.

There has been a recent run on science fiction mysteries, including an SF Holmes and Watson-esq duo in Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, but fantasy mystery, not so much. (The exact opposite is happening in regards to fantasy, SF and romance, as fantasy romance is hugely on the uptick, but science fiction romance is ticking along at the same rate it has always been – meaning some and some really good but not a lot.)

What makes Ana and Kol’s investigations so fascinating – and so much weird fun to watch – are the way that the series combines their very peculiar characters – and Ana in particular is quite peculiar in multiple ways – the way their strengths and weakness shore each other up in a relationship that is clearly NEVER heading towards the romantic, AND the way they stand on the shoulders of Holmes and Watson without ever being slavishly devoted to the portrayal yet STILL managing to sharply delineate the outlines we know, love and expect.

At the same time, those character outlines are firmly set in a fantasy world that is wild and weird and strange in ways that are completely unexpected while still sitting in a frame that practically defines current epic fantasy.

There’s no epic battle between good and evil here. There’s just the evil that men, and women, and other creatures, do. Those evils are committed in a corrupt empire that is rotting from within and without – and those evils are battled by people, like Ana and Din, who are doing their damndest to stem the tide and make sure the Empire remains a place worth fighting for – in their own way.

Layered on top of all that is that there is no wand-waving magic. But there are magical potions, and concoctions, and decoctions, and grafts, and pills in a vast pharmacopeia that literally boggles the mind. It certainly boggles Ana’s mind whenever she’s in need of inspiration, stimulation, or simply something to stave off ennui.

That pharmacopeia serves as both the foundation of the empire and most likely the source of its eventual destruction. That drop of corruption in the title, is everywhere and in everything and is what makes this world go ‘round even as it brings it ever closer to the edge of annihilation. As it very nearly does in this entry in the series.

A series which I dearly hope is not even close to done yet. Because damn but the whole thing is mesmerizing and fascinating and more than reminiscent of a fever dream created by Holmes’ own 7 percent solution – if not something a bit stronger. And I’m absolutely riveted by every single part of it.

(Book three is listed in Goodreads but with no title and no date. Still, that gives me hope!)

So come for the mystery, because it is compelling from the moment its tiny locked room is opened, all the way through its mind-blowing vastness and right into its surprisingly small conclusion even as its consequences spill out to bankrupt a province and change the course of an empire. Stay to watch that drop of corruption cause gigantic ripples in the course of a vast empire. Then wait and hope with me for more in this compelling series.

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. ThompsonOne Level Down by Mary G. Thompson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 196
Published by Tachyon Publications on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Trapped in a child’s body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.
“Brilliant and beautiful! One Level Down is a perfectly executed gem of a book. Deeply satisfying and completely mesmerizing, it’s full of depth, heart, and thought. A remarkable achievement!”—Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop
Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.
Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.
But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot make the technician help her, the only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.

My Review:

For a rather short book, One Level Down tackles some really huge questions about the nature of reality.

The stage in which those questions play out is a tiny human colony in a not too distant future far from Earth. Or so it seems.

Because the colony of Bella Inizio both is and isn’t what it seems – and neither is founder Philip Harkin’s five year old daughter Ella. Come to think of it, Harkin isn’t exactly what he seems, either.

There’s a lot of that going around, like Russian nesting dolls, because that’s what Harkin’s Bella Inizio is, the smallest doll in a nest of simulated worlds built and maintained by Clawhammer Corporation and their rival, Pocket Parts.

As has been seen in plenty of SF stories, colonization is not easy. Golden worlds turn out to be tarnished, Class M planets turn out to have predatory inhabitants, worlds that looked perfect from light years away are discovered to contain deadly pathogens that can’t be seen from space.

That’s the case of the original Bella Inizio. The rich veins of precious minerals combined with a pristine ecology drew the colonists in – and the deadly gastrointestinal disease killed them off. Then Clawhammer swept in – as they did on so many other colony worlds – and made a deal with the remaining inhabitants. They bought the mineral rights to the planet, and in return set the colony up in a pocket universe, created to match the colonists’ requirements, safe from the disease that nearly wiped them out but locked away forever in a microcosm of the universe they once explored.

Except that Bella Inizio was owned in its entirely by one single homesteader – Philip Harkin. And his requirements for the pocket world were specially weighted in his favor and under his control – especially control of his daughter Ella, who had remained trapped, under his thumb, at the mercy of his fists, and perpetually five years old in body but not in mind – for the entire 58 years of the pocket world’s existence.

While she watched her father exert his life and death power over anyone who defied him in any way – but especially over anyone who questioned his treatment of Ella herself.

But Ella had plans and dreams of her own – plans that did not include staying trapped. And she had managed to gain just enough knowledge of the world outside to know that her opportunity was coming – if she could just figure out a way to seize it – and be free.

Escape Rating A-: There are not one but two really big questions that get tackled in this tiny novel. The larger – and more SFnal question – is the one about the nature of reality. The smaller but entirely too real question is about collaboration, and I don’t mean the good, cooperative kind. I mean the traitorous kind that leads to leaving one miserable and desperate little girl in the hands of a monster so that everyone else can have a happy life.

The universe of Harkin’s Bella Inizio is based on a conceptual framework that the universe is a seemingly vast simulation – a ginormous pocket world that is nested within an even bigger pocket world and could conceivably have an infinite number of small pocket worlds nested within it.

This idea gets played with from an entirely different angle in Brenda Peynado’s recent novella, Time’s Agent – but those pocket dimensions are discovered and not made-to-order. It could also be imagined as the kind of holodeck bubble that Moriarty is trapped in in the Star Trek Next Gen episode Ship in a Bottle. Or perhaps the computer simulation that is utilized in the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead.

In other words, this concept has been played with before, this time combined with more than a bit of corporate greed and an even more SFnal solution to the dangers of colonization than was faced in Mickey7.

What tips this particular story over the edge into both WOW and SCARY at the same time is the human dimension. Harkin is abusive to both his daughter and to the other colonists, who are, in their turn, abusing Ella as well so as not to upset their own personal applecarts. Or, to be more charitable – for certainly really awful definitions of charitable – are making the best of their own terrible situation by leaving her to suffer in worse. The way that the reader’s sympathy for them is stripped away at the end was rather breathtaking in its audacity.

As is Ella’s righteous takedown of the whole big ball of wrong in the surprising – but absolutely justified – conclusion.

A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray NaylerWhere the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, political thriller, science fiction, technothriller
Pages: 336
Published by MCD on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.
Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, very much liked his later novella, The Tusks of Extinction, and was hoping for more of the same. Which I sorta/kinda got, but not in ANY of the ways that I was expecting.

I’m every bit as wowed by Axe as I was the other two, but that’s a feeling that I came to in the end even as I muddled a bit through the middle. Which is also very much like both of those previous works. Which is where that ‘sorta/kinda’ qualifier comes in.

There are three distinct locuses (loci?, focal points?) for this story; deep in the Russian Federation, the fringes of the halls of academia in England, and the halls of Parliament in a former Soviet Republic on the fringe of both the European Union and the Federation but currently part of neither.

In a near-future more-or-less dystopian world that may, or may not be on the fringe of multiple states of collapse. Whether that state is the cause of, or caused by, an artificial intelligence takeover of the reins of power is subject to interpretation.

Lots of interpretation, pretty much everywhere.

In the Russian Federation, one man plans – and has so far succeeded – in ruling forever through a process of uploading his consciousness and downloading it into a new host as each of his bodies fail. Or when the apparatus of the state determines that it is a good time for a crisis and a cleansing.

In the West, human governments have come under the control of artificial intelligence created ‘Prime Ministers’, whose mandate is to govern in humanity’s long-term best interests, no matter the short term consequences. The idea was that an AI wouldn’t need to have its wheels or its palms greased, wouldn’t be hungry for power for its own sake, and wouldn’t have a personal agenda or a need to get itself re-elected once it’s been voted into power.

But this isn’t a story about process, although process laid the groundwork for it. It’s a story about people. And that’s where things get interesting even as they fragment across multiple fault lines.

Because, of course, neither system really works – if by work you mean actually function for the good of the greatest number of its citizens. Not that the system in the Federation EVER even gave lip service to that particular idea.

However, the one thing that both systems, the Federation’s quasi-immortal President and the AI PM so-called Rationalization policies do, in their varying ways, is cement a status quo in place. Which is not nearly as good for anyone as the respective powers-that-be would want people to believe.

That’s where our widely scattered group of protagonists – or at least points of view characters come in. An old resistance fighter imprisoned in the Russian taiga, a government functionary in that former Republic, the partner of a cutting edge AI scientist in Britain, and that AI scientist, locked in a prison of her own making back in the Federation, desperate to complete her magnum opus of quantum entanglement.

Each is both observer and observed, acting on their own little piece of a world-spanning puzzle, not even aware of the puppet master pulling all of their strings.

And the puppet master themselves, the spider in the center of the web, whose motivations are not certain, even at the end, whether their goal was to give humanity a chance to try again – or merely to burn it all down.

Escape Rating A-: I have to admit that, at first, I was wondering how this was all going to come together. Then again, I had the same reaction to The Mountain in the Sea so I should have expected it.

The different points of view are worlds apart – which I realized at the end was absolutely the point. Each of the characters represents one of those fabled blind men looking at the elephant in that they can only see a tiny piece of the whole picture.

One of the difficult bits to get over, or past, particular for those of us who live in the West, is that the situation under so-called “Rationalization” isn’t all that much better than the repressive regime in the Russian Federation. No one is actually free, it’s just that the cages in the West are a bit more comfortable and one is considerably less likely to get murdered by the state.

What seems to be driving the story – at least for most of its length – is the story of that genius AI scientist Lilia. She comes back to the Federation to see her father one last time, gets trapped and goes on the run. Much of the drive of the story is wrapped around her, the shadowy figures chasing her, the ones who pretend to be helping her, the ones who are chasing them, the endless cells within cells of resistance and/or state security whose goals are never clear even to themselves.

But she’s a stalking horse – as are all the other human agents on all the possible sides – as the story gets really big and then comes down to one human who has been pulling all the strings – including their own. And that’s the point where it all suddenly made sense as all the systems come crashing down and the metaphor of the title becomes clear.

Even as the ending, in the end, feels like it isn’t. The puppet master has given humanity another chance to get it right. Or at least better. But the closing scenes lead the reader to see that, while things may be better in the short run, over the long haul the humans are gonna human, that the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, and that we have met the enemy and he is us.

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

#BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan BannenThe Undermining of Twyla and Frank (Hart and Mercy, #2) by Megan Bannen
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, dragons, fantasy romance, Weird West, fantasy
Series: Hart and Mercy #2
Pages: 464
Published by Orbit on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy comes a heartwarming fantasy with a best friends-to-lovers rom com twist--When Harry Met Sally, but with dragons!—set in the delightful demigod and donut-filled world of Tanria.
The entire town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbor and best friend, Frank Ellis, to join the Tanrian Marshals. Eight years later, Twyla and Frank are still patrolling the dangerous land of Tanria, the former prison of the Old Gods.
Twyla might look like a small town mom who brings cheesy potatoes to funerals and whips up a batch of cookies for the school bake sale, but her rewarding career in law enforcement has been a welcome change from the domestic grind of mom life, despite the misgivings of her grown children.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) a recent decrease in on-the-job peril has made Twyla and Frank's job a lot safer ... and a lot less exciting. So when they discover the body of one of their fellow marshals covered in liquid glitter--and Frank finds himself the inadvertent foster dad to a baby dragon--they are more than happy to be back on the beat.
Soon, the friends wind up ensnared in a nefarious plot that goes far deeper than any lucrative Tanrian mineshaft. But as the danger closes in and Twyla and Frank's investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realize that her true soul mate might just be the person who has lived next door all along...

My Review:

Twyla Banneker and Frank Ellis are the very best of friends – and have been for more than a decade. They are also next-door neighbors in the tiny town of Eternity, and are partners in the Tanrian Marshals. They are, in every possible way except one, each other’s person all the way down to the bone.

Their deep and true friendship is the bedrock upon which their lives are completely invested. They helped raise each other’s kids. They’ve saved each other’s lives. They’ve killed for each other and they’ve nearly died for each other – many times each.

But there is a gigantic misunderstandammit at the core of their relationship. Frank has always believed that Twyla’s marriage to her husband Drew – now more than a decade dead – was so wonderful that she’s never looked at another man in all the years since. Frank’s marriage ended in divorce about as long ago and he’s certain that Twyla’s marriage was nothing like the clusterfuck he was part of.

Twyla, on the other hand, because her marriage was nothing like Frank thought it was from the outside, never ever thinks of her now 50-something self as being anything more than useful. And she doesn’t want to go there again, ever. She’s not still mourning Drew – in fact she feels guilty that she didn’t all that much to begin with. She loves her now adult children, but she’s happy to have her own space and her own life. She just can’t believe any man would want her at this point in her life and she’s convinced herself she’s fine with that.

And she and Frank have much too much to lose if they even think about being more to each other than what they already are, and rely on, and pretty much live for even if neither of them can admit it.

Which is where they are when one of their fellow marshals is killed in the not-nearly-as-wild-as-they-used-to-be Tanrian Wilds, smothered in glitter. Yes, glitter. Nothing in Tanria, as far as anyone knows, produces glitter as any sort of byproduct. As far as anyone knows.

At least, not until Frank and Twyla find a creature that’s supposed to be extinct, poachers attempting to poach that same creature, and the disgustingly glittery evidence that there be dragons here, and that these dragons spit, not fire, but something considerably sparklier.

Escape Rating B: I both kind of knew what I was getting into and kind of forgot. I read that first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, more than two years ago, and got a bit frustrated by it but in the end mostly liked it. I picked this one up now because the third book, The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, is coming out this summer. I wanted to get caught up.

This series is definitely sitting on one of those genre bending fences – honestly, I think directly on the actual splintering fencepost complete with the point at the top – between cozy fantasy, fantasy romance, and the Weird West.

Not that Tanria is actually the Wild West, even a paranormal/supernatural version of it, but between the dead drudges from the first book, the concept of marshals riding circuits looking for both monsters and poachers, the supernatural storms and the sorta/kinda horses, it has the feel of the Weird West all the same.

The small town vibes of Eternity, where Frank and Twyla live, with their combination of magical and mundane businesses and big city sophisticates far, far away, reads a lot like Tawney in Tomes & Tea (otherwise known as the Can’t Spell Treason without Tea series). Or even the town in Legends & Lattes. But the reference to Tomes & Tea is considerably stronger in this entry in this series because of the dragons. Not so much the glitter, but definitely the dragons.

The romance in this entry in the series, very much like The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, was both the strongest AND the most frustrating – and not just in the sense of the obvious pun. On the plus side, and very much so, the possible/probable friends into lovers romance between Twyla and Frank is a very real source of dramatic tension because it’s such a real and difficult problem. If they get it right, they’ll have something amazing. But they already have something pretty darn wonderful and they’re risking losing it if they reach for more and fail.

That a good chunk of the reason they are such a mess about it is based on a honking huge misunderstandammit of many years’ duration gave me fits. Frank starts out in a hole and can’t seem to stop digging when it comes to how he feels about Twyla and how he assumes she feels in return. I wanted to reach in and knock some heads together rather often.

Very much on my third hand – and I’m sure there’s some creature in Tanria that has at least three – I loved that Frank and Twyla absolutely do have a relationship of equals, both in their friendship and in their working relationship in the marshals. And I particularly enjoyed that this is a romance between people who are mature adults and that it needs to be that way. The romance doesn’t work without the weight of their long friendship to ground it.

The dragons turned out to be the glittery icing on this particular cake. They also turn out to be an important part of both the story and the future of Tanria, but not in ANY of the ways one generally expects in fantasy. And the baby dragons are clearly adorable beyond words and they gave the story a light, glittery heart at the center that was as delightful as it was unexpected.

I came into this one looking for the pun in the title, because I knew there had to be one after the first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. This time around, the pun was considerably less obvious and a bit more directly related to the plot, but it’s definitely there.

The next book in this series is The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, coming in July. Considering that Marshal Rosie is an immortal demigod, I’m really curious to discover just how she’s going to get ‘undercut’ because it’s going to have to be something sharp and special to even make a dent. We’ll find out this summer!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Railway Conspiracy (Dee & Lao, #2) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #2
Pages: 304
Length: 8 hours and 25 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Judge Dee and Lao She must use all their powers of deduction—and kung fu skills—to take down a sinister conspiracy between Imperial Russia, Japan, and China in a rollicking new mystery set in 1920s London.
The follow-up to The Murder of Mr. Ma, this historical adventure-mystery is perfect for fans of Laurie R. King and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films.
London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary. Aided by Lao She—the Watson to his Holmes—along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable “dragon-taming” mace.
The mace’s owner is a Chinese businesswoman who thanks Dee for its retrieval by throwing a lavish dinner party. In attendance is British banking official A. G. Stephen, who argues with the group about the tenuous state of Chinese nationalism—and is poisoned two days later. Dee knows this cannot be a coincidence, and suspects Stephen won’t be the only victim. Sure enough, a young Chinese communist of Lao’s acquaintance is killed not long after—and a note with a strange symbol is found by his body.
What could connect these murders? Could it be related to rumors of a conspiracy regarding the Chinese Eastern Railway? It is once again all on the unlikely crime-solving duo of Dee and Lao to solve the case before anyone else ends up tied to the rails.

My Review:

I was completely enthralled by the first book in the Dee & Lao series, The Murder of Mr. Ma, and have been hoping for a second since the minute I turned the very last page of that first. So I was more than pleased to see this second book appear – even if finishing it has returned me to my earlier state, now hoping for a third book to be published.

Because this second adventure was every bit as marvelous as the first – and in some ways better as we already know these characters but now have the opportunity to plumb their hidden – and sometimes not so hidden – depths.

This second of Dee and Lao’s adventures is set in 1924 London. Both characters are based on real historical figures. Lao’s background and current profession were historically as the series portrays him. From 1924 until 1929, he was a lecturer at the University of London on the subjects of Chinese language and literature. Whether his students were as frustrating, and whether Lao himself was as utterly bored out of his mind as he is portrayed in the story, is not certain, but they certainly leave the fictional Lao ripe to be carried along in Dee’s adventures.

Spring Heeled Jack as depicted in the English penny dreadful Spring-Heeled Jack #2, Aldine Publishing, 1904.

Dee Ren Jie is as much myth as he is historical, but the historical Dee was a magistrate in late 7th century China. How much the historical Dee resembles this fictional interpretation is unknown, but I think it’s safe to say that the original Dee never masqueraded as the English folk hero/demon Spring-heeled Jack – as Lao’s friend Dee often does.

The story combines these bits of history with a compelling, confounding mystery, as all the best historical mysteries do.

Dee has returned to London after a year’s absence as an agent of the then-current Nationalist government in China. But that government is shaky at best. There are movements within China, including but not limited to the Communist Party, to bring the Nationalist government down. And there are forces outside China, great and would-be great powers far from limited to Britain, Russia, Japan and the United States, observing and even influencing events hoping that to destabilize the Nationalist regime so that they can pick up the pieces.

Which is where Dee and Lao and their associates, the redoubtable Sergeant Hoong and young English pickpocket Jimmy Fingers come into this tale, which begins with the return of a precious stolen artifact, middles in a great deal of romantic misdirection practiced successfully upon the supposedly impervious Dee, and concludes with an explosive confrontation on the London Necropolis Railway. (The Necropolis Railway is another bit of history that seems like it must be fiction, but it did really exist!)

When the dust settles, and there’s LOTS of it to settle, the immediate crisis – at least the London branch of it – is over. Dee is left realizing that he’s been a fool. And that while this crisis has been ameliorated it has absolutely not been averted – but that the fight will take him to other shores in other guises. In addition to making a fool out of him, the conspiracy has also made him their scapegoat, and London has become much too hot for him – at least as long as he continues to present himself as, well, himself.

So poor Lao is stuck returning to the boredom of his academic existence, while the country he left behind and plans to return to, is in jeopardy from all sides – including the one that he himself espouses.

It all sounds ripe for another book, doesn’t it? I certainly hope so!

Escape Rating A: I loved this even more than I did the first book, The Murder of Mr. Ma, which means that I need to give another shoutout to First Clue Reviews for their featured review of that first book.

One of the reasons I liked this better leads around and back to the other reason I got into this series. Many of the reviews of Dee & Lao liken them to Sherlock Holmes, especially the more active Guy Ritchie movie interpretations. While I think that is debatable, one way in which Dee & Lao are certainly like Holmes and Watson (and also Barker & Llewelyn) is that Lao serves as Dee’s chronicler as Watson does Holmes, with the same amount of reluctance to participate in the process on the parts of both Dee and Holmes.

Which means that this story is told in Lao’s first person voice. This is his interpretation – with the occasional use of a bit of literary license – of the events. In that regard, the narrator Daniel York Loh does a terrific job of interpreting Lao’s voice, to the point that when I ended up reading the last part of the book because I needed to find out who the true leader of the conspiracy is and how all the issues and conundrums got resolved – I was still hearing Loh’s voice in my head speaking as Lao.

I couldn’t put this one down because of how effectively it combined the pure whodunnit of the theft and murder conspiracy in London with the depth of historical setting and situation that lay behind it and the increasing knowledge of and bond between the characters, this most unlikely band of ‘scoobies’ that includes a government official, a merchant, a scholar, a pickpocket and has increased by the addition of a knife thrower and a dog. Dee pretends they are a circus act and he’s not far wrong in some aspects, but if it is it’s a circus that manifests a well of competence and an ability to improvise on the spot and roll with the punches.

And not just the punches they are administering themselves.

This reader, at least, is already anticipating Dee and Lao’s next adventure. It’s sure to be another fantastic read. After all, thanks to the conspiracy it’s going to have to start with Dee coming back from the dead!