Review: Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor

Review: Shadow Speaker by Nnedi OkoraforShadow Speaker (The Desert Magician's Duology, #1) by Nnedi Okorafor
Narrator: Délé Ogundiran
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, climate fiction, fantasy, science fiction
Series: Desert Magician's Duology #1
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hrs 28 mins
Published by DAW, Tantor Audio on September 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Niger, West Africa, 2074
It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren’t what they used to be.
Within all this, I introduce you to Ejii Ugabe, a child of the worst type of politician. Back when she was nine years old, she was there as her father met his end. Don’t waste your tears on him: this girl’s father would throw anyone under a bus to gain power. He was a cruel, cruel man, but even so, Ejii did not rejoice at his departure from the world. Children are still learning that some people don’t deserve their love.
Now 15 years old and manifesting the abilities given to her by the strange Earth, Ejii decides to go after the killer of her father. Is it for revenge or something else? You will have to find out by reading this book.
I am the Desert Magician, and this is a novel I have conjured for you, so I’m certainly not going to just tell you here.

My Review:

Peace bombs. A phrase that only makes sense in the context of the future history of the world that leads to this story, as told by the chaotic trickster the Desert Magician about the coming of age of the titular Shadow Speaker, Ejii Ugabe, and her friend, the rainmaker Dikéogu Obidimkpa. It’s their story, but the Desert Magician is the one bringing it to us. Also messing with them and it at the same time.

The Desert Magician is not exactly a reliable narrator – but then trickster avatars seldom are. After all, the story is more fun for them if they get to mess with the protagonists a bit. More than a bit. As much as they want.

As Ejii describes the world in which she grew up, the Earth as it exists after the ‘Great Change’ brought about by those Peace Bombs, it’s not hard to think that the event was as much of a eucatastrophe as it was the regular kind. A whole lot of things seem to be better. More chaotic, but better. Certainly the climate has improved, even if entire forests sometimes spring up overnight, while the technology imported from other, more advanced worlds has made living with the remaining extremes considerably easier.

None of which means that humans are any better at all. Whatsoever. Because humans are gonna human. But it does mean that there are more possibilities, both in the sense of seemingly magical powers and animals, and in the sense of more opportunities for more people to rise above their circumstances – even if some people are still determined to fall into the traps laid by theirs.

Which leads the Desert Magician to Ejii’s story, and leads Ejii to Jaa, the great general who swept into Ejii’s village of Kwàmfà and struck off her father’s head with her sword, setting Jaa and Ejii on a collision course that will either save the world – or end it.

Shadow speaking, the ability to hear the voices of the spirits, is one of the many gifts that have arisen after the Great Change. Ejii is the shadow speaker of the title, and at fifteen is just coming into her power. A power that is telling her to follow Jaa to a great meeting of the leaders of the worlds that have merged into one interconnected system as a result of the change.

Jaa is going to the meeting to start a war in the hopes of preventing worse to come. Ejii has been tasked with finding a way to make peace. Neither task is going to be easy – and only one of them is right. The question is, which one?

Escape Rating A-: This version of Shadow Speaker is an expanded edition of one of the author’s out-of-print early novels. The original version of which, also titled Shadow Speaker, was a winner or finalist for several genre awards in the year it was published, as a young adult novel. Which it still both is and isn’t.

It is, on the one hand, aimed at a young adult audience because its protagonists are themselves in that age range, being merely fifteen when the story begins. As a consequence of their age, both Ejii and Dikéogu clearly still have a lot of growing up ahead of them in spite of the life-changing and even world-altering experiences that have led them to undertake this journey.

At the same time, Ejii at least is very much on the cusp of adulthood, and this is a journey that forces her to make adult decisions about, with no sense of hyperbole whatsoever, the state of the world. Howsomever, a good chunk of what she brings to those decisions has the flavor of the naivete of youth, particularly in the sense that the world SHOULD be fair, people SHOULD do the right thing, and that if only people would communicate honestly a peaceful solution SHOULD be within reach.

It’s not that she doesn’t know the world and the people in it are often stupid, self-centered, greedy and downright mean, it’s that she hasn’t yet been jaded enough by her experiences to truly believe that there can’t be a better way. Even though her personal experiences thus far in her life have seldom shown it to her.

Dikéogu is not nearly as mature as Ejii is. He whines a LOT. Not that his complaints aren’t justified, but it’s so very clear that he still has a lot of growing up to do and that expresses itself in a kind of ‘pity poor me’ whining that gets hard to take – particularly in audio as he’s voiced in a higher pitch to distinguish his speech from Ejii’s. Which works very well indeed as characterization while driving me personally nuts as I find high-pitched voices jarring. (I recognize this is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing, but if it is also a ‘you’ thing, you have been warned.)

While the Desert Magician is presenting this story, he’s not an omnipresent presenter. We see the story through Ejii’s perspective except at the very beginning and end. She is the person we follow, although the story is not told from inside her head. Rather, the story unfolds around her and her actions, and we only see what she sees and know what she knows and get as confused as she does at what she doesn’t.

Which means that while the narrator, Délé Ogundiran, does an excellent job of standing in as Ejii’s voice, that won’t be true for the second book in the duology, which will be Dikéogu’s story. Hopefully by the point in Dikéogu’s life when that story takes place, his voice will have dropped.

As much as Ejii comes of age and into her power through her riveting adventures in Shadow Speaker, her world and all the worlds that have become interconnected as a result of the ‘Great Merge’ that was part and parcel of Earth’s ‘Great Change’ also have a great deal of maturing to do – or at least negotiations towards that goal – as this first story ends. Whether the merged worlds will survive that change or destroy each other is part of the subsequent story in this duology that I’m really looking forward to seeing. Or hopefully hearing.

Dikéogu’s story may have started here but his true coming-of-age-and-into-power story, Like Thunder, is coming just after Thanksgiving. And I’ll be very grateful to read it – or hopefully have it read to me like Shadow Speaker – over the holidays.

Review: A Duke’s Introduction to Courtship by Sophie Barnes

Review: A Duke’s Introduction to Courtship by Sophie BarnesA Duke's Introduction to Courtship (The Gentlemen Authors #2) by Sophie Barnes
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: historical romance, regency romance
Series: Gentlemen Authors #2
Pages: 320
Published by Sophie Barnes on September 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
Goodreads

Love caught him completely off guard and forced him to question everything…

When Brody Evans, Duke of Corwin, goes incognito at a printing press, he doesn’t anticipate meeting Mr. Michaels, a charming young man with whom he shares an instant connection. Soon he’s questioning everything he believed to be true of himself, while losing his heart in the process. Accepting the way he feels is not only hard, it’s also illegal and downright dangerous. Until he learns the truth and is forced to wonder whether or not the person he fell for is real, or just an illusion.

Dressed as a boy, Harriet Michaels acquires a job at a printing press so she can support herself and her younger sister. It seems like a good idea until she meets Mr. Evans, the new assistant editor. Her attraction toward him cannot be denied, but it must be concealed if she’s to avoid detection and the risk of losing her job. The more time she spends with him, however, the closer she comes to heartache and ruin. For as it turns out, Mr. Evans is not who he claims to be either.

My Review:

This second book in the Gentlemen Authors series has made the theme of the overarching story of the series more apparent while still giving readers a lovely historical romance. Although the romance isn’t nearly as frothy as readers often expect from a Regency romance – and is all the better for it.

There are two stories being told in parallel. The individual story in each book in the series, beginning with A Duke’s Guide to Romance, is the story of a romance between a duke in dire financial straits of his own making and a woman who has been forced to make her way in the world through her own hard work and and has chosen a rather unconventional way of going about it.

At the same time, the overarching story of the series as a whole is a fictionalized version of how a book made its way from being a glimmer in the author’s – or in this case authors’ – eye to being put in the hands of readers.

As this series began, the three dukes have finally gotten their feet back under them after their fathers’ sudden death in a cow pen explosion. Unfortunately along the way of their grief, they seem to have egged each other on in wasting much too much money, even as they held each other up emotionally.

The bills have come due. Ruinously so. Which is where their romance novel, A Seductive Scandal, comes in. They need a plan to make money even though most careers are closed to them, socially speaking. It’s just not done.

In the wake of Jane Austen’s recent death, there’s a vacancy in the publishing landscape that readers are crying out for someone to fill. The three dukes undertake to write a romance novel, à la the late Austen, and succeed beyond their wildest dreams as far as the readability of the book is concerned.

Their next step is to get the damned thing published, which is where this story begins. The Duke of Corwin, Brody Evans, walks by a printing press’ office and spies a ‘Help Wanted’ ad for an assistant editor, beginning immediately. He takes the job, planning to slip their manuscript into the slush pile after several days of doing the work and ingratiating himself with the owner.

He comes to enjoy the job far more than he ever imagined. He’s being paid a pittance from his perspective, but he’s being paid to READ ALL DAY. What’s not to love?

His enjoyment of the job is both increased and confounded by his surprising attraction to the company’s print compositor, Harry Michaels. Harry is the best the printing press’ owner has ever seen at the job, fast, efficient and accurate. He comes early, stays late and makes the whole place hum with productivity.

And he has a secret. Harry Michaels is really Harriet Michaels. A masquerade that she absolutely must keep, because she needs the money to support herself and her younger sister and knows that no job suitable for a woman will pay as much as any job reserved for men.

Which means that Harry must resist Harriet’s attraction for the new assistant editor, ‘Mr. Evans’, no matter how much she wants to give in, even as Mr. Evans’ attraction to Harry Michaels makes him question everything he thought he believed about himself, and wonder just how high a price he’s willing to pay for love.

Escape Rating A: A Duke’s Introduction to Courtship isn’t nearly as frothy a confection as A Duke’s Guide to Romance, and honestly it’s all the better for it. (Not that a good frothy romance can’t be utterly scrumptious as the first book is, but too much of a good thing usually results in a tummy ache – or in this case a headache – from overindulgence in too many sweets.)

We’ve already seen the situation that Brody and his friends are in. It’s not exactly life-threatening, but it is serious from their perspective. First of all, they’ve all been really stupid and they all regret it. They all miss their fathers who were taken from them MUCH too soon. What allows the reader to have sympathy for a group of men who are fantastically well off but merely not as rich as they could be comes down to the way they approach their situation. They are not thinking of themselves but rather of the people who depend on them, and that’s a position that is easier to respect.

What makes this entry in the series work, and also be more serious at the same time, is Harry/Harriet Michaels’ considerably more dire straits. Harriet and her sister are on the knife-edge of poverty. Harriet’s masquerade as Harry makes their situation survivable but just barely. All it will take is one slip and they’ll both be off to the workhouse or working on their backs. Or dead and that seems the most likely. A fact that is brought home to Harriet when Lucy gets sick and Harry is beaten and robbed on the way to fetch a doctor. A doctor that Lucy still needs but that Harry can no longer afford to pay after the robbery.

Harriet is caught between a rock and a hard place, or perhaps a better description would be between Scylla and Charybdis, with sea monsters to either side and slippery rocks underfoot the whole way.

The way that Harriet’s necessary deception leads to Brody’s soul searching added something very special to the whole story, giving his portrayal considerably more depth than might have been expected. Not that this particular scenario hasn’t happened before, and hasn’t been used well, most recently in Jane Dunn’s An Unexpected Heiress, with Cat Sebastian’s Unmasked by the Marquess and even the classic movie Victor/Victoria using the same idea to terrific effect.

Brody’s decision that he loves Harry and damn the consequences, and his subsequent confusion and even sense of betrayal when Harry turned out to be Harriet after all gave the story its final bit of tension AND made Brody’s stake in the situation come much closer to equal Harriet’s than might have been expected.

I’ve written more about this book than I expected because it turned out to be several cuts above what I expected when I started it. I expected froth and fun. What I got went a bit deeper on multiple fronts and still managed to deliver a very satisfying happy ever after at the same time.

I’m really looking forward to the final book in the Gentlemen Authors series, A Duke’s Lesson in Charm, coming next month. Especially since this book should finally reveal to readers just how well the ducally-written romance does at the booksellers!

Review: An Unsuitable Heiress by Jane Dunn

Review: An Unsuitable Heiress by Jane DunnAn Unsuitable Heiress by Jane Dunn
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical romance, regency romance
Pages: 350
Published by Boldwood Books on May 22, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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'Do you realise, Corinna, just how hard it is for a young woman of irregular birth, without family, fortune or friends in the world? Marriage is the only way to get any chance of a life.' Following the death of her mother, Corinna Ormesby has lived a quiet life in the countryside with her cantankerous Cousin Agnes. Her father's identity has been a tantalising mystery, but now at nineteen Corinna knows that finding him may be her only way to avoid marriage to the odious Mr Beech. Deciding to head to London, Corinna dons a male disguise. Travelling alone as a young woman risks scandal and danger, but when, masquerading as a youth, she is befriended by three dashing blades, handsome and capable Alick Wolfe, dandy Ferdinand Shilton and the incorrigible Lord Purfoy, Corinna now has access to the male-only world of Regency England. And when she meets Alick's turbulent brother Darius, a betrayal of trust leads to deadly combat which only one of the brothers may survive. From gambling in gentleman's clubs to meeting the courtesans of Covent Garden, Corinna's country naivety soon falls away. But when she finds her father at last, learns the truth about her parentage and discovers her fortunes transformed, she must quickly decide how to reveal her true identity, while hoping that one young man in particular can see her for the beauty and Lady she really is. Sunday Times bestselling author Jane Dunn brings the Regency period irresistibly to life in a page-turning novel packed with romance, scandal, friendship and colour. Perfect for fans of Jane Austen. Janice Hadlow, Gill Hornby, and anyone with a Bridgerton-shaped hole in their lives.

My Review:

We tend to think of the Regency period, popularized by Georgette Heyer’s glittering comedies of manners and romance, and the Napoleonic Wars, producer of so many dark and brooding romantic heroes to be separate – when they absolutely were not, as is brought home to both the reader and the Earl of Ramsbury in the opening chapter.

An Unsuitable Heiress opens with that self-same Earl feeling a bubble of utmost joy in the news that Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and, considerably more important for the Earl, that his only son and heir is NOT on the battle’s long casualty lists. Only for that hope to crash to the ground a few mornings later, when he receives a dispatch that his son was killed in action in the waning hours of the war.

His title will go to a cousin who, at least as the story begins, is not worthy of it. The title and the lands that go with it are entailed, and no one has any choice in the matter. But the Earl has been fortunate in his fortunes, and has personal holdings he can bequeath wherever he wishes. He wishes to leave his personal holdings to his illegitimate daughter.

He just has to find her before his own heart gives out. Literally.

But Corinna Ormesby is not sitting around waiting to be found. Corinna has left the cousin who reluctantly took her in, out of fear that she’ll be forced into a marriage that will take away what little independence of thought and mind she possesses, and kill her dreams of a life of her own choosing.

So she runs away – by borrowing her best friend’s clothing and pretending to be a man. Because young men have the freedom to go where they want – if they can afford it – and work how they choose. Without requiring a chaperone at every turn. Without being coddled and ‘protected’ in every instance.

As a young woman, as Corinna Ormesby, her life is never, ever her own. As a young man, as mere Cory Ormesby, ‘he’ can buy a ticket on the stage and take ‘himself’ to London to teach drawing at a school to make ‘his’ way, and take the opportunity to search for the mysterious father whose name ‘he’ never knew.

She sees her chance, and she takes it. Straight into a fight with a man three times her size beating his horse, and from there, into the coach of a group of young dandies who are happy to take her under their wing, show her the town, help her find her father and give her the chance she needs to become the person she was always meant to be.

As long as her ruse holds up.

Escape Rating B: If Someone to Love by Mary Balogh (the first book in the Westcott series) and Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian had a book baby, it would be An Unsuitable Heiress. (I’ve just realized that this works on two levels, as An Unsuitable Heiress IS a blend of the two books and that by certain measures all of the heiresses in all three books are judged to be a bit – or more than a bit – unsuitable as their respective stories unfold.)

The fun of this story is in Corinna’s eye- and mind-opening introduction to what life is like as a man, or at least a moderately well-off or well-sponsored man, in the Regency period. But that’s not where the drama of this story came in – although that’s certainly where I expected it to be.

At first I saw Corinna as a bit of a sister to Charlotte Sloane in the Wrexford and Sloane series, which also takes place in this same period. They initially seemed like kin not just because Charlotte Sloane frequently dons young male attire in order to have the freedom to go where she wants and do what she needs, but also because she makes her living under a male pseudonym. (At the point I currently am reading in the series, she is kicking and screaming, at least internally, as her increasingly rising profile and finances curtail her freedom to do as she wills and as she must.)

I expected a bit more drama, or at least a bit more of that same kicking if not the screaming, over the reveal of Corinna’s true identity, but as plucky as she is, she’s just not that sort. I also thought that there would be more drama and pathos when Corinna and her father finally did meet, but that was also more of a whimper than a bang – as his heart gave out soon after.

The drama in this story, as the blurb very much alludes to, comes in the long-simmering sibling rivalry between the cousin who inherited her father’s earldom and his younger brother, who just so happens to be one of the group of friends that took ‘Cory’ under their collective wing.

A rivalry which traps Corinna at its center, as cousin Darius wants Corinna in order to get possession of the other half of what he sees as HIS inheritance – no matter how many people he has to ruin along the way – while his younger brother Alick just wants Corinna. Although in the best romantic tradition, he hasn’t figured that out yet.

That Darius has already found a very unsuitable heiress – or at least countess – of his own makes his plans to ‘ruin’ Corinna just that much more dastardly. That this story manages to drive itself into a happy ending in spite of its characters’ actions just adds to the fun, and makes for a delightfully frothy conclusion to the story.

Review: A Duke’s Guide to Romance by Sophie Barnes

Review: A Duke’s Guide to Romance by Sophie BarnesA Duke's Guide to Romance (The Gentlemen Authors #1) by Sophie Barnes
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: historical romance, regency romance
Series: Gentlemen Authors #1
Pages: 276
Published by Sophie Barnes on August 29th, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
Goodreads

He only wanted to purchase a novel, now he’s falling madly in love…

Anthony Gibbs, Duke of Westcliffe, needs an income. Bills must be paid, appearances kept, and arrangements made for his sisters' debuts. In short, he must either marry or seek employment, neither of which sounds remotely compelling. But then he meets Ada and she suggests a third option. Now he's penning a novel while losing his heart to the bookish miss, a woman he cannot afford to marry unless he’s prepared to make some difficult choices.

Ada Quinn has no connections, no dowry, and consequently no prospects. Her plan for the future is limited to her skill as a bookbinder. Until Mr. Gibbs walks into her uncle’s bookshop and starts to romance her. Handsome, thoughtful, and utterly charming, Mr. Gibbs is precisely the sort of man Ada always dreamed of falling in love with. Until she discovers he’s not who he claims to be and that he intends to marry another.

My Review:

Three years before our story begins, Anthony Gibbs, Duke of Westcliffe and his friends Brody Evans, the Duke of Corwin and Callum Davis, the Duke of Stratton survived a life-changing catastrophe by working through their collective shock and grief together when their aristocratic fathers were killed during a rare instance of random bovine combustion.

Meaning all of their fathers were caught in the literal crossfire while purchasing livestock when a cow pen exploded. (Fertilizer really is highly explosive, and the primary ingredient in fertilizer is manure. Which is what naturally falls out of a cow’s backside to rest on the floor of their pens.)

Ahem. Apologies. I couldn’t resist.

While sticking together solving one set of problems by sharing their grief, it created another, as they spent the past three years frittering away their time and wasting their money in pursuit of one distraction after another while neglecting their responsibilities, their estates and the increasingly empty state of their coffers.

The bills have all come due, they are all swimming up the River Tick. They are individually and collectively skint – or at least heading there fast. And keeping up appearances is damn expensive all by itself, without the added costs of deferred maintenance on their estates AND making sure their dependents are taken care of.

In Westcliffe’s case, those dependents include his two younger sisters, who have just reached the age for their first Seasons in the ‘Marriage Mart’. Seasons that are critical for their futures, but are guaranteed to put an equally critical drain on the family’s remaining cash.

All three of the 20-something Dukes entertain the possibility of marrying for money. It would not be an uneven trade, but a marriage of convenience would make for a shatteringly awful life. Particularly as the woman who has set her cap at Westcliffe is a conniving, manipulative harpy.

Which is when Ada Quinn walks into Westcliffe’s life. Or rather, he drops a book into hers. Literally. Onto her head. And both of their wits are addled ever after – but in the best way possible.

Westcliffe’s conversation with Ada in her uncle’s bookshop sets all of their lives into glorious motion. First, and most important for the series as a whole, their conversation puts the idea into his head that he and his friends can save their finances by writing the kind of novels that made the late Jane Austen famous. Readers are crying out for more books like hers, but the author has recently passed away and no one has taken up her pen.

Second, and most important for the protagonists of this first entry in the series, Westcliffe and Ada bring each other to sparkling life in a way that neither expected or planned on. In a way that seems guaranteed to break Ada’s heart, as she is all too aware of the disparity in their stations.

But, in a romance worthy of Ada’s favorite Austen novels, Westcliffe is convinced that society can go hang and love will find a way. As long as they trust in each other, communicate honestly with each other, and brush all of the harpies away.

Escape Rating A-: A Duke’s Guide to Romance is a deliciously frothy confection, light and fluffy and full of wit and sparkle with just the barest hint of a misunderstandammit to keep the characters on their toes until the very end.

As a Regency, it’s an excellent antidote to follow my recent reads in both the Sebastian St. Cyr and Wrexford & Sloane series, as they both explore and expose the seamy underbelly of the Regency. A Duke’s Guide to Romance, and I expect the rest of its series of Gentlemen Authors will as well, floats lightly on top of the glittering effervescence that we tend to expect in a Regency romance.

At the same time, it doesn’t shy away from the difference in social station between Westcliffe and Ada – at least from Ada’s perspective. As much as she’s fallen in love with the man, it’s clear from their differing perspectives on the potential issues that they face that she is the more realistic of the pair. The silver spoon he was born with, as well as the privilege of having been born male, leads him to believe that all their problems can be swept away easily, where she knows it just isn’t so.

Which leads to the big misunderstandammit that almost derails their happiness, as he keeps forging ahead without informing her of his decisions and change of heart because the world has always bent to his will in a way that it never has to hers.

At the same time, I very much liked the way that their romance didn’t merely invoke Jane Austen’s work but also served as an homage to it as the progress of their romance would have fit right into hers. Something that is highlighted in the way that the romance Westcliffe and company are writing plays into the romance that Westcliffe is experiencing and vice versa.

All in all, A Duke’s Guide to Romance was a very pleasant way to while away a stormy afternoon. I’m looking forward to seeing this delicious series continue with A Duke’s Introduction to Courtship and A Duke’s Lesson in Charm in the months ahead.

Review: Murder at Kensington Palace by Andrea Penrose

Review: Murder at Kensington Palace by Andrea PenroseMurder at Kensington Palace (Wrexford & Sloane, #3) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #3
Pages: 359
Published by Kensington Books on September 24, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Wrexford and Sloane must unravel secrets within secrets—including a few that entangle their own hearts—when they reunite to solve a string of shocking murders that have horrified Regency London...
Though Charlotte Sloane’s secret identity as the controversial satirical cartoonist A.J. Quill is safe with the Earl of Wrexford, she’s ill prepared for the rippling effects sharing the truth about her background has cast over their relationship. She thought a bit of space might improve the situation. But when her cousin is murdered and his twin brother is accused of the gruesome crime, Charlotte immediately turns to Wrexford for help in proving the young man’s innocence. Though she finds the brooding scientist just as enigmatic and intense as ever, their partnership is now marked by an unfamiliar tension that seems to complicate every encounter.
Despite this newfound complexity, Wrexford and Charlotte are determined to track down the real killer. Their investigation leads them on a dangerous chase through Mayfair’s glittering ballrooms and opulent drawing rooms, where gossip and rumors swirl to confuse the facts. Was her cousin murdered over a romantic rivalry . . . or staggering gambling debts? Or could the motive be far darker and involve the clandestine scientific society that claimed both brothers as members? The more Charlotte and Wrexford try to unknot the truth, the more tangled it becomes. But they must solve the case soon, before the killer’s madness seizes another victim...

My Review:

The murder that drags Wrexford and Sloane back into the fray after the events of Murder at Half Moon Gate again hits a bit too close to home – at least for Charlotte Sloane. In fact, it’s so close to home – her past home if not her present one – that when Wrex informs her that the recently elevated Lord Chittenden is dead, she performs the only quintessential female act he’s ever seen her do.

She faints. She literally swoons at his feet. And he doesn’t know what to do about it. But then, not knowing what to do about or with Charlotte Sloane, AKA the brilliant satirical artist A.J. Quill, has been a constant state of affairs for Wrex since the moment they met in Murder on Black Swan Lane.

Charlotte has just learned that her dear cousin, one of the few people who accepted her as she was back in a day she hasn’t yet revealed to Wrex, has been accused of murdering her other dear cousin – his twin brother. Charlotte is certain that this accusation is as false as the one that brought Wrexford to her door in the first book in this series.

But there’s no evidence for Nick Locke’s innocence, while the evidence for his guilt is both gruesome and damning. Not even a visit to Nick in Newgate dims Charlotte’s belief that he can’t possibly be guilty – even if does cast a dark pall over her determination to win him free.

Which is when Charlotte realizes that the cost of Nicky’s freedom – if it can be won at all – will be the sacrifice of her own. In order to investigate the possible suspects, a surprising number of whom are women in the upper reaches of the ton, Charlotte will have to finally admit the truth of her own origins, and walk with eyes wide open back into the gilded cage she escaped from in what seems like another lifetime.

Only because it was. A life that she didn’t fit into then, and must return to now. After all, needs must when the devil drives – and there is absolutely a devil driving the rush to Nicky’s judgment. And Charlotte’s own.

Escape Rating A-: I got into the Wrexford & Sloane series because it is an amazing readalike for the Sebastian St. Cyr series without being the same at all – which I know sounds contradictory but bear with me.

Both are historical mystery series, and both take place in England during the Regency. Both feature amateur detectives who are aristocrats, working with female partners with whom they have tension-filled relationships.

But, but, but there are huge differences. The St. Cyr series is exactly what it says on the label. The story is told primarily from the perspective of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, the man who will in the fullness of time become the Earl of Hendon. In the meanwhile, Devlin expiates his demons, many but not all of which he acquired while serving in France during the Napoleonic Wars, by solving murders – generally the kind of murders that no one in the halls of power want solved..

Although Wrexford gets top billing in ‘his’ series, it’s not his journey. Instead, this story is told from the perspective of Mrs. Charlotte Sloane, a widow living in genteel poverty who makes ends at least wave at each other by penning satirical drawings and publishing them under the nom-de-plume A.J. Quill. It’s clear that she grew up in different circumstances, but when the story begins neither Wrexford nor the reader know exactly what those circumstances were or why she left them.

If the St. Cyr series had been written from the perspective of Devlin’s wife, the social reformer Hero Jarvis, it might read something like Wrexford & Sloane, but it isn’t and she doesn’t and as a consequence the two series are looking at the same period through much different lenses.

If you like one you’ll like the other just as much – I certainly do – but they are cousins rather than twins or even siblings. To mix metaphors entirely and get back to Sloane and her cousins at the same time.

The other thing that makes the two series different, and has been a huge factor in the Wrexford & Sloane series so far, is that Wrexford, unlike Devlin, is a man of science rather than politics, and this case, like the previous two books, is steeped in that world that seemed to be changing and discovering every day.

And yet asks the same questions that are still being asked today. Questions about possibility vs. morality, whether the ends justify the means, how far, how dark and how deep an experiment should be allowed to go, and whether just because something CAN be done doesn’t mean it SHOULD be done.

Because this case was steeped in those scientific questions, as well as the age-old question about the fine lines between genius and madness, and between interest and obsession. All the red herrings in this one, and there were many, had been electrocuted or charred to a crisp before presentation, making the solution seem just that much farther out of reach.

But what held my interest, and will hold most readers by the heartstrings, is Charlotte Sloane’s journey, and her decision to give up the thing she prizes most in order to save a person she holds dear. And that’s a dilemma that is every bit as potent two centuries ago as it is today.

Obviously, I’m still enjoying my read of the Wrexford & Sloane series very much, although I will probably take a bit of a break before I get back to it to keep the whole thing at the correct level of compulsion and freshness. But I know I’ll be picking up Murder at Queen’s Landing the next time the mood for a compelling historical mystery strikes!

Review: The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Review: The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko CandonThe Archive Undying (The Downworld Sequence, #1) by Emma Mieko Candon
Narrator: Yung-I Chang
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, mecha, science fiction
Series: Downworld Sequence #1
Pages: 496
Length: 16 hours and 28 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The Archive Undying is an epic work of mecha sci-fi about Sunai, the immortal survivor of an Autonomous Intelligence that went mad and destroyed the city it watched over as a patron god. In the aftermath of the divine AI’s suicide, Sunai is on the run from those who would use him, either to resurrect what was lost or as the enslaved pilot of a gargantuan war machine made from his god’s corpse. Trouble catches up with Sunai when he falls into bed with Veyadi, a strange man who recruits him to investigate an undiscovered AI. Sunai draws ever closer to his cursed past, flirting with disaster and his handsome new boyfriend alike.

My Review:

The Archive Undying is a fractured story about broken people in a shattered world. Everything about this story, the people, the place, even the story itself, is in jagged pieces.

But with everything in jagged pieces, while it makes the characters compelling, and the world they live in a fascinating puzzle, the fractured jaggedness of the story itself makes the whole thing hard to follow.

Which makes describing the thing more than a tad difficult. Because you’re never quite sure what’s going on – even after the end – because you don’t know how anything or anyone got to be who, where and what they were at the point things start. Or even what the point of what they did might have been.

That’s true of the characters, the institutions and the whole entire world they inhabit. Because it’s all been corrupted. Not by the usual human forms of corruption – well, honestly, that too – but because everything in this world was run by autonomous AIs, and someone or something, both in the distant past and in the immediate present, introduced corruption into those AIs’ codes that caused them to fall. And to die.

At least as much as an AI can die.

So the story begins with Sunai. Or at least the story we drop into begins from Sunai’s point of view. He’s a salvage rat hiding a bitter truth from himself – but as it turns out Sunai is lies and bitter truths pretty much all the way down.

So is everyone – and everything – else. But the more of all those perspectives of lies and deceptions and bitter truths and sorrows we see, the more it all comes back to Sunai. And to the bitterest truth of all that he has hidden so deep that it will take an invasion of rogue mechs and rapacious AIs destroying his city to finally bring it to light.

Escape Rating B: I listened to The Archive Undying in its entirety, and I have to say that its the narrator that carried me through all SIXTEEN AND A HALF HOURS. The narrator didn’t just do a good job of voicing all the many, many characters, but by literally being in their heads and not my own it allowed me to care enough about the individuals to be willing to experience the whole constantly twisting saga. If I’d been reading this as text, if I’d been in my head instead of theirs, I’d have DNF’d fairly early because the sheer number of changes in perspectives combined with unsatisfying hints of the world they occurred in would have driven me mad in short order. YMMV.

The Archive Undying is a story that expects a lot from its readers, probably more than it is likely to get. Which is somewhat ironic, as Sunai, the being who stands more-or-less as its protagonist has learned to expect very little, and is often surprised when he gets even that.

But then, that’s the thing about this book, in that if the reader can come to care about the characters, particularly Sunai the failed archivist and reluctant relic, then that reader will stick with the story to see what happens to Sunai and the ragtag band of friends, allies, frenemies and rogue AIs who have attached themselves to him. Or that he has attached himself to accidentally or by someone else’s purpose.

The story has so many perspectives, and it jumps between them so frequently and with so little provocation, that the story is difficult to follow. But more often than the reader expects, all of those fractured pieces come together in beauty – just the way the bits of color in a kaleidoscope suddenly shift into a glorious – if temporary – whole.

I left this story with three completely separate – almost jagged – thoughts about it.

Because we spend this story inside pretty much all of the characters’ heads – even the characters that don’t technically HAVE heads, and because so many of their actions have gone horribly wrong and they’re all full to the brim with regret and angst, this struck me as a ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ kind of story. We see their thoughts, they’re all a mess all the time, they’ve all screwed up repeatedly, and they’re all sorry about almost everything they’ve done – even as they keep doing the thing they’re sorry about.

Second, as a question of language, and because I listened to this rather than read the text, I got myself caught up in the question of whether the word, and more of the characters than at first seemed, was ‘relic’ or ‘relict’ as they’re pronounced the same. Sunai, and others, are referred to as ‘relics’ of the mostly dead AI named Iterate Fractal – or one of its brethren. But a ‘relic’ is an object of religious significance from the past, and a ‘relict’ is a survivor of something that used to exist in a larger or active form but no longer does. Not all of the autonomous AIs were worshipped as gods, but they all left relicts behind.

There’s a part of me that keeps thinking that at its heart, The Archive Undying is a love story. Not necessarily a romance – but rather a story about the many and varied ways that love can turn toxic and wrong. To the point where even when it does come out right the selected value of right is tenuous and likely to break at the first opportunity.

An opportunity we’ll eventually get to see. The Archive Undying is the first book in the projected Downworld Sequence, implying that there will be more to come even if the when of it is ‘To Be Determined’. I think I got invested in the characters enough to see what happens to them next – and I have hope that maybe the many, many blanks in the explanation of how things got to be this bad will get filled in in that next or subsequent books in the duology. But after the way this first book went, I KNOW I’ll be getting that second one in audio because the narration of this first book by Yung-I Chang is what made the whole thing possible for me and I expect him to carry me through the next one as well.

Review: Jade Shards by Fonda Lee

Review: Jade Shards by Fonda LeeJade Shards (Green Bone Saga #0.75) by Fonda Lee
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Green Bone Saga #0.75
Pages: 136
Published by Subterranean Press on July 31, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
Goodreads

Fonda Lee returns to the acclaimed Green Bone Saga with four prequel short stories that delve into the personal histories of the Kaul and Ayt families.
The Witch and Her Friend. Before she was the ruthless leader of the Mountain clan, Ayt Mada was an orphan without friends at school except for one: Aun Ure, a teenage girl feared and renowned as an assassin but yearning for a simpler life.
Not Only Blood. Before he was the heir apparent of the No Peak clan, Kaul Lan challenged his grandfather and clan patriarch to help a boy who had lost everything.
Better Than Jade. Before they were married, Kaul Hilo and Maik Wen were a young couple facing long odds: the son of a top Green Bone clan in love with a stone-eye girl from a disreputable family.
Granddaughter Cormorant. Before she left and returned to Kekon, Kaul Shae was the apple of her grandfather’s eye…as well as a daring secret informer to a foreign country.
Contains an introduction and story notes by the author.

My Review:

Jade Shards isn’t a single story in the world of the Green Bone Saga, rather, just as the title indicates, it’s a series of little stories, shards if you will, of the magically beautiful big green stone that is the entire epic saga that begins with Jade City.

The stories in this collection feature the defining characters of Jade City, Jade War and Jade Legacy, but they are ‘before they were famous’ kinds of stories. In The Witch and Her Friend, we get to meet the towering figure of Ayt Mada on the very first steps of her journey to become the woman who set herself and her entire clan against the Kaul family.

Back when she was not a towering figure – and at that point in Kekon history had no hopes of becoming one. She was young, she was female, she was of unknown origin and she had been adopted into one of the two great families of Kekon. She was expected to be an asset to her new clan, but on the business side. She was never supposed to be the Pillar. WOMEN were not supposed to become Pillars. Period. But here we see the first inkling of the woman who did it anyway.

Ayt Mada was the powerful antagonist of the entire saga, but in that saga, she stood alone as her story does in this collection. The other stories dive deeply into the Kaul family, just as the other three stories here give us a peek into the early days of the three members of the Kaul family who drive the Green Bone Saga, Kaul Lan, Kaul Hilo and Kaul Shae.

All three were the heirs of Kaul Sennington, one of the two great heroes of Kekon’s liberation, along with Ayt Mada’s adopted father Ayt Yugontin. But where Ayt Mada was always alone, and had to fight to become the Pillar, Kaul Lan was always the intended heir of the Kauls.

Their three stories, Not Only Blood, Better Than Jade and Granddaughter Cormorant bring us perspectives on their characters before they became leaders. It’s a view of Lan as he is growing into the person he should have become, Hilo as he takes the first steps on the road to who he will be, and Shae as she attempts to fly away from her destiny.

Everyone who was enthralled by Janloon and fell in love with the characters that truly do live in the pages of the Green Bone Saga will be thrilled to get this glimpse into their earlier lives. And on this last trip back to Kekon will be caught between the pillars of smiling because it happened, and weeping because it’s over.

Escape Rating A+: I’m giving this one an A+ because that’s how deeply I escaped back into the world of the Green Bone Saga, how much I loved going there one more time, and just how damn sad I am that this looks like the last time based on the author’s introduction and notes in the book.

Unlike the first prequel to the Green Bone Saga, The Jade Setter of Janloon, even though all the stories in Jade Shards take place before the opening of Jade City, this is not the kind of prequel that stands alone, nor can it serve as an entry point for Jade City in the way that The Jade Setter of Janloon could.

The story shards in Jade Shards require prior knowledge of both the characters and the setting to have the resonance necessary to make them work. In other words, you have to already care about these people to want to read how they got to be the towering figures they eventually become.

It’s not nearly as interesting to watch their early fumbles and stumbles if you don’t already know just how sure and certain they eventually became on the roads they had to, or chose to, walk. But if you do care, if you’ve already visited Janloon, then Jade Shards is a bittersweet delight from beginning to end.

I finished the Green Bone Saga in tears at the end of Jade Legacy. By the end I felt like I’d walked the road with these marvelous characters and was beyond sad to their story end. It was a right, proper and fitting ending, but I just wasn’t ready to leave this world behind.

And neither was the author, as she admits in the notes for Jade Shards that these stories are a case of her writing fanfiction in the universe that she created. IMHO it’s a universe that is made even richer by these portraits of the clan leaders as young men and women. So I’m glad she was able to put these out into the world and sad that it looks like these will be the last.

The Green Bone Saga gave me the biggest book hangover I can remember in a very long time, one that is still stuck in my brain now two years after I finished Jade Legacy. To the point where I’m highly tempted to start listening to the damn thing all over again.

If you’re still a bit stuck in Janloon and looking for a way to alleviate the ache of missing it, may I recommend Ebony Gate by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle. It’s the first thing that has scratched even the tiniest bit of my itch to return to Kekon. If you have that same itch, it might do the same for you.

And if you don’t have that itch and you’ve read this review to the end, what are you waiting for? Take your very own trip to Jade City and prepare to be captured and captivated.

Review: Murder at Half Moon Gate by Andrea Penrose

Review: Murder at Half Moon Gate by Andrea PenroseMurder at Half Moon Gate (A Wrexford & Sloane Mystery) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #2
Pages: 360
Published by Kensington on March 27, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A wealthy lord who happens to be a brilliant scientist . . . an enigmatic young widow who secretly pens satirical cartoons . . . a violent killing disguised as a robbery . . . Nothing is as it seems in Regency London, especially when the Earl of Wrexford and Charlotte Sloane join forces to solve a shocking murder.
When Lord Wrexford discovers the body of a gifted inventor in a dark London alley, he promptly alerts the watchman and lets the authorities handle the matter. But Wrexford soon finds himself drawn into the murder investigation when the inventor's widow begs for his assistance, claiming the crime was not a random robbery. It seems her husband's designs for a revolutionary steam-powered engine went missing the night of his death. The plans could be worth a fortune . . . and very dangerous in the wrong hands.
Joining Wrexford in his investigation is Charlotte Sloane, who uses the pseudonym A. J. Quill to publish her scathing political cartoons. Her extensive network of informants is critical for her work, but she doesn't mind tapping that same web of spies to track down an elusive killer. Each suspect--from ambitious assistants to rich investors, and even the inventor's widow--is entwined in a maze of secrets and lies that leads Wrexford and Sloane down London's most perilous stews and darkest alleyways.
With danger lurking at every turn, the potent combination of Wrexford's analytical mind and Sloane's exacting intuition begins to unravel the twisted motivations behind the inventor's death. But they are up against a cunning and deadly foe--a killer ready to strike again before they can recover the inventor's priceless designs . . .

My Review:

Everyone has secrets. Everybody lies. Everybody dies. When the Earl of Wrexford practically trips over direct evidence of the latter on his way home from drinking at his club, he’s not all that interested in poking his nose into either of the former, at least not as long as it looks like the man’s death was the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not having enough money on his person to convince the footpads to leave him alone – or at least alive.

It’s only in the cold and entirely too bright light of the next morning, coping badly with his hangover from the drinking of the night before, that Wrex learned that he knew the man whose corpse he discovered, and that his recollections of the crime scene don’t jibe AT ALL with the official determination of a robbery gone wrong.

Or at least not the usual kind of robbery. Someone slit the seams of the dead man’s clothing to hunt for something secreted in the lining. Something like papers.

Considering that the late Elihu Ashton was a genius engineer who had purportedly invented a way of making a more powerful steam engine, and that the patents for that revolutionary invention had not yet been filed, there are plenty of motives for his murder.

In Regency England, steam is the power that is driving the burgeoning industrial revolution. There’s money to be made in anything that increases the power and efficiency of steam engines.

But the money that will be made will line the pockets of the investors. The rich will get richer. And the workers who will lose their jobs and their livelihoods as the inevitable result of all that efficiency have no hope and no choices.

Unless they turn ‘Radical’ and break the machines that are taking away their work and their dignity. Or unless someone is using them to divert suspicion from yet another rich man’s grab for more money and more power.

Wrex may not want to be involved in another murder, and he swears that he’s a man of science who doesn’t even have a heart other than as an efficient pump for his circulatory system. But Charlotte Sloane seems to have infected him with her inability to let an injustice stand – even if her own secrets get exposed along the way.

Along with his.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up, so soon after finishing Murder at Black Swan Lane, because I was still searching for comfort reads after last week and kind of wanted to stay in Sebastian St. Cyr’s world after Friday’s review of Why Kings Confess. But reading books in a series too close together doesn’t work as well for me as I always hope it will, so I turned to Wrexford & Sloane, which is very much the same world, just seen through a different set of characters who therefore have a different perspective on the same point in time.

Although St. Cyr and Wrexford are both aristocrats in Regency England, and quite literally occupy the same social strata (Wrexford has already inherited his Earldom while St. Cyr hasn’t yet) Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, investigates murders that touch on the powers that be – sometimes all the way up to the Prince Regent himself – or at least his household.

Wrexford is a man of science, a member of the Royal Academy, and his circle of friends and influence is vastly different. Where St. Cyr is often focused on the Napoleonic Wars and the destruction they have left in their wake, Wrexford is more focused on the advances of the scientific community and the social unrest that seems to follow the change and upheaval of society that is its result.

And if Wrexford isn’t sufficiently focused on that change and upheaval, his friend, the artist and satirist A.J. Quill is more than happy to point him in the right direction.

At the heart of this story, both the mystery and the situation that surrounds it, is change. The change in working conditions that has sparked the radical political movement, the Luddites that violently oppose change, and the further widening gap between the titans of the new industry and the human beings who are its true engine. And the changes of life and circumstance that have caught up Charlotte Sloane, AKA A.J. Quill, even as she and Wrex get themselves caught up in another murder investigation.

Charlotte Sloane is determined that Bow Street doesn’t take the easy way out, blaming the radical workers for a series of murders that have more to do with money than politics. Wrex is caught between preventing a miscarriage of justice and preventing Charlotte and her young charges from becoming victims of yet another villain’s machinations.

While each wonders whether the other has a heart after all, and whether they can find their way to each other in spite of the barriers between them. But first they have to survive the bloody mess they’ve landed themselves in this time. With the able assistance of their friends, and colleagues, and especially the Weasels.

The first and most obvious readalike for Wrexford & Sloane is still, by far and away, Sebastian St. Cyr. If you like one you’ll like the other and vice versa. But now that I’m two books in with Wrexford & Sloane, the elements that set the two apart have become more apparent, and that’s most definitely an excellent thing.

At the same time, this series has also brought other historical mysteries to mind, especially Lady Sherlock and Mary Russell. Charlotte Sloane’s situation has turned out to be much like Charlotte Holmes’ in the Lady Sherlock series, although I believe that Sloane’s solution is likely to be a bit more traditional than that particular Holmes. And for any reader who loved the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, the ending of Murder at Half Moon Gate has more than a passing resemblance to the conclusion of A Monstrous Regiment of Women and I am most definitely here for it.

As well as for the next book in the Wrexford & Sloane series, Murder at Kensington Palace, the next time I’m looking for a comfort read that introduces itself with a corpse.

Review: Ebony Gate by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle

Review: Ebony Gate by Julia Vee and Ken BebelleEbony Gate (Phoenix Hoard, #1) by Julia Vee, Ken Bebelle
Narrator: Natalie Naudus
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Phoenix Hoard #1
Pages: 448
Length: 14 hours and 7 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on July 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle's Ebony Gate is a female John Wick story with dragon magic set in contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Emiko Soong belongs to one of the eight premier magical families of the world. But Emiko never needed any magic. Because she is the Blade of the Soong Clan. Or was. Until she’s drenched in blood in the middle of a market in China, surrounded by bodies and the scent of blood and human waste as a lethal perfume.
The Butcher of Beijing now lives a quiet life in San Francisco, importing antiques. But when a shinigami, a god of death itself, calls in a family blood debt, Emiko must recover the Ebony Gate that holds back the hungry ghosts of the Yomi underworld. Or forfeit her soul as the anchor.
What's a retired assassin to do but save the City by the Bay from an army of the dead?

My Review:

When we first drop into Emiko Soong’s life, she has been living in San Francisco for two years trying to seem normal – leaving behind as much as possible that made her hated and reviled as the Blade of Soong, the Butcher of Beijing.

But assassins don’t get to retire, and members of high-ranking Hoard Custodian families don’t get to leave their clans or their pasts behind – no matter how much they might want to. Or need to.

Emiko’s San Francisco both is and is not the one we Waīrén – read as garden-variety, no-magical-talent, original recipe-type humans see. Because Emiko is a member of one of the clans descended from the Eight Sons of the Dragon, and she has talents that seem magical. Or at least the other members of her family and the rest of the clans do. Emiko is a dud, a disappointment to her parents and her clan.

Or so she believes. (I left the book wondering a whole lot about the truth of that, but that’s me wondering and nothing revealed – at least not in this first book in the trilogy. We’ll see.)

If you haven’t guessed, Ebony Gate is urban fantasy, in a setting that’s a bit like The Nameless Restaurant where the magic and magic-users are hidden in plain sight from the mundanes, but in a world where the danger is dialed up to the max due to both political skullduggery and outright violence.

(There are also touches (or more) of Nice Dragons Finish Last, The City We Became and Jade City if you get the same book hangover from Ebony Gate that I did and are looking for readalikes. I digress.)

Emiko is a woman caught between worlds, and destinies. Without power of her own, she’s been a pawn of everyone around her, from her parents to her clan to the rest of her people, the Jiārén to the primal forces at the heart of both her world and her adopted city.

At her heart she’s a protector – but she’s been molded into a killer through guilt and manipulation. San Francisco was her chance to start over, but her mother’s machinations have just pulled her back into the middle of everything she tried to set aside.

She can’t avoid the duty – because her powerful mother has put her in a position where taking up that obligation is the only way she can keep her beloved brother safe. So Emiko is back where she started, wading through blood and guts and hoping that her martial arts skills will be enough to beat back people with the power to create whirlwinds and tornadoes.

What awaits her if she fails is a fate that is, really, truly, worse than death. If she succeeds on the terms that everyone expects of ‘The Butcher of Beijing’ she might as well resign herself to an early death as her family’s vengeance blade.

But there’s a slim possibility that she can forge a path of her own – if she’s able to let go of enough of her own damage to accept a job that may still get her killed – but on her own terms and in a truly righteous cause.

Escape Rating A+: Hot damn but this was good. It had me hooked from the opening and I stayed engrossed until I turned the last page and kind of screamed because I wasn’t ready for it to be over. And it’s not as this is the first book of a trilogy but I want that second book NOW! Dammit.

Ebony Gate is one of those stories where I started in audio, and absolutely loved it, but switched to text because as much as I didn’t want this to end I was getting desperate to learn how this first book in the trilogy concluded.

That being said, I want to give a big shoutout to the narrator, Natalie Naudus, who also narrated Max Gladstone’s Last Exit. She was a terrific choice to narrate both books, as both are written in the first-person perspective of characters with the same attitude of take no shit, take no prisoners, get shit done no matter the cost to oneself and always, always keep one’s angst and insecurities and weaknesses on the inside where no one can take advantage of the weaknesses – but no one can help carry the burden, either.

While the urban fantasy thriller pace of Ebony Gate relentlessly keeps the reader turning pages, this is a story that leans hard on the personality of its protagonist – as do pretty much all of the characters she deals with along the way.

Everyone wants a piece of her. Everyone always has. She’s second and third guessing herself at every turn, as she always has and always does, because she’s never felt like she’s enough for any of the tasks laid before her. She plows on anyway. Always.

But through her memories of her failures and her internal monologue of her thoughts, fears and frustrations, we’re able to experience her world through the eyes of someone who is an insider but who has always seen herself as being on the outside looking in. And whose fatal flaw isn’t, after all, her lack of power, but rather her inability to get her opponents to STFU. This is Emiko’s journey and we’re absolutely taking it with her and it’s fan-damn-tastic AND nail-biting every step of the way.

Before I stop the squee – and yes, I fully recognize I’m just squeeing all over the place at this point because I loved this one SO DAMN HARD – I have one more thing to add.

Ebony Gate is the first thing that has scratched even a tiny bit of the book hangover itch from Fonda Lee’s marvelous Green Bone Saga. Not that other books haven’t given me itches nearly as bad – I’m looking at you, Glass Immortals – but this is the first thing that has assuaged even the tiniest bit of that particular itch – even as it creates one of its very own. Which means I’m looking forward, rather desperately, to the next book in this series, Blood Jade, coming hopefully sometime next year

Review: The Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre

Review: The Only Purple House in Town by Ann AguirreThe Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, paranormal, paranormal romance
Series: Fix-It Witches #4
Pages: 368
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on July 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Iris Collins is the messy one in her family. The "chaos bunny." Her sisters are all wildly successful, while she can't balance her budget for a single month. It's no wonder she's in debt to her roommates. When she unexpectedly inherits a house from her great aunt, her plan to turn it into a B&B fails—as most of her plans do. She winds up renting rooms like a Victorian spinster, collecting other lost souls...and not all of them are "human."
Eli Reese grew up as the nerdy outcast in school, but he got rich designing apps. Now he's successful by any standards. But he's never had the same luck in finding a real community or people who understand him. Over the years, he's never forgotten his first crush, so when he spots her at a café, he takes it as a sign. Except then he gets sucked into the Iris-verse and somehow ends up renting one of her B&B rooms. As the days pass, Eli grows enchanted by the misfit boarders staying in the house...and even more so by Iris. Could Eli have finally found a person and a place to call "home"?

My Review:

Iris Collins is at the end of her rope – and the knot she’s tied in that rope seems to be slipping through her fingers. And just at the point where all of her choices seem to range from bad to worse the universe throws her a lifeline. Ironic that, as the lifeline is the direct result of a death in her family. Her Great-Aunt Gertie has died and left her a charming but slightly dilapidated house in witch-friendly St. Claire, Illinois. All Iris has to do is get herself there, sign some papers, and she’ll have a rent-free place to live and a fresh start in a life that could seriously use one.

That it will get her away from her family’s drama is icing on a very purple cake. Because her mother and sisters are literally sucking the life out of her whenever she’s near them – and not just because they are ALL psychic vampires. Literally. Really, truly. Delphine, Lily and Rose would be toxic if they were garden-variety humans – but they aren’t. And they never let Iris forget that she’s the family ‘dud’ because she is. Or so it seems.

But Iris can’t support herself and the purple house without solving her cash flow problems, which is where the whole story starts to shine.

Her solution is to take in boarders, people like herself who need a place to live. But her first new roommate doesn’t really fit that description – not that Eli Reese is going to let Iris know that. Once upon a time, back when both Iris and Eli were briefly attending Middle School in St. Claire, Iris saved Eli from a gang of bullies. She doesn’t remember him or the incident, but he’s never forgotten her.

His motives for a bit of deception at their (re)meeting aren’t exactly pure. He IS hoping to pay her back for that timely rescue way back when. But he also just wants to get close to her. That he wants to get as close as possible in ways that would never have occurred to him back in Middle School is a secret he’s even keeping from himself. At least at first.

Of course, by the time he figures it out, his lies start to unravel and so does the cozy little dream that every person who has gravitated to The Only Purple House in Town has dreamed.

Because there’s a wicked witch (even if she isn’t REALLY a witch) trying to run them out of town with an attack of flying monkeys (in the person of government bureaucracy and officialdom) who doesn’t want paranormal creatures in her perfectly normal little town.

We’ll see who wins, and if the course of true love can possibly run true after all, in The Only Purple House in Town.

Escape Rating A-: The Only Purple House in Town was the best book in the entire Fix-It Witches series. Even better, it’s more of a set in the same universe story than it is a direct follow-up to the earlier books, meaning that it is more than possible to skip to the good stuff – meaning this book – without reading the rest unless you really, really want to.

And I’m saying this even though the resolution of the drama is well and truly straight out of deus ex machina territory and none of the characters in this story who put the “B” in “witch” get nearly the comeuppance they deserve – as is true for the previous books in the series.

That’s because the residents of the Violet Gables are just so damn charming together, their found family is so full of both love and humor, and Iris and Eli were delightful from their very first meet-cute. (Their first actual meeting wasn’t nearly so cute and that’s part of the story’s charm.)

What makes this story work so damn well is the way that this found family finds itself and pulls itself together. They are a mixed bag in so many ways, from Iris, the only seemingly mundane person in a family of psychic vampires to Eli the hawk-shifter and Mina the witch. But the mundanes in the family are just as fascinating, and just as much a necessary part of that family, as the supernatural folks. Everyone has had a different journey to bring them to this marvelous place and it is delightful to see them all blend into a whole that is not always harmonious but is always filled with love and care.

And I did love that the found family aspect of the story was a bigger and more important part of everything than the romance. Not that the romance wasn’t sweet, but it was icing on the tasty cake rather than the whole cake in a way that was just right.

The story has a lot of the same cozy fantasy vibes – just with a paranormal twist – as Travis Baldree’s marvelous Legends & Lattes. So if you’ve heard about how wonderful THAT story is but the fantasy setting isn’t quite your jam, The Only Purple House in Town has a lot of that same cozy feel while populated by somewhat more familiar species.

My journey to St. Claire to explore this marvelous little town where the paranormal is normal, has bumped through more than a few potholes along the road, but my stay in The Only Purple House in Town was absolutely delightful from the first page to the last. If there are more stories like this one in town, I’d love to go back!