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

#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #ExcerptI Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos, #1) by Kimberly Lemming
Narrator: Hazel Addison
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alien abduction romance, Romance, romantasy, science fiction romance
Series: Cosmic Chaos #1
Pages: 304
Length: 9 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

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

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Focus.

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

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

The birds were unaffected.

Unfortunate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . Fuck this.

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

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

A+ #BookReview: Symbiote by Michael Nayak

A+ #BookReview: Symbiote by Michael NayakSymbiote by Michael Nayak
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: horror, science fiction, technothriller, thriller
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

World War III rages, and the scientists at the South Pole are thankful for the isolation – until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base with a dead man in their truck. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction, the Americans don’t know what to do. But they soon realize the Chinese scientists have brought far more with them than the body…
Within seventy-two hours, thirteen others lie dead in the snow, murdered in acts of madness and superhuman strength. An extremophile parasite from the truck, triggered by severe cold, is spreading by touch. With rescue impossible for months, it is learning from them. Evolving. It triggers violent tendencies in the winter crew, and, more insidiously… The beginnings of a strange symbiotic telepathy.
From an exciting new voice comes this propulsive SF-thriller, infused with authentic details about life in one of the world’s harshest, most mysterious landscapes, Antarctica.

My Review:

Four years from now – just think about that for a minute. Four years from right NOW. The world is on the brink of World War III.

And that’s not necessarily the most frightening part of the story!

The fears and frights and scares and outright terrors are layered in this OMG DEBUT novel, to the point where the reader’s heart is pounding alongside all the rest of the characters. I say ‘rest’ of the characters because frankly, if this is that close then we’re already in it and it’s already all of us.

A map of Antarctica showing the location of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station (circled)

But those layers of fear may start with just thinking about how close this might be, but the part of the story that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go is the part that happens far, far away, in the remotest place on Earth.

Over an entirely too short 72 hours in the midst of the long Antarctic winter, the tiny overwinter crew at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is reduced from 41 scientists, technicians and support crew to just FIVE scarred and scared survivors after the station is invaded.

In the midst of the Third World War that is happening in the world at large, the crew at the U.S. controlled South Pole fears that the vehicle heading their way from the Chinese-controlled Dome A is the vanguard of that invasion.

And it is – but not in the way that anyone thinks. It’s not the three starving Chinese men who are the threat – it’s the dead man in the back, the one who dashed himself against the walls until he died.

He had a passenger. (Technically, the dead man had a host of passengers.) In the best SF horror thriller tradition, those passengers, a lab experiment gone much too successfully and entirely too wrong, have plans of their own.

Geographic South Pole

Escape Rating A+: There are so many ways to think/talk/write about Symbiote – and they ALL work. The whole thing was a WOW. (Admittedly, a WOW I had to stop reading at 1 am, even though I had less than an hour left. I could have finished. And I’d probably have been awake for the rest of the night as a result. It’s that kind of WOW.)

The horrors, as I said, are layered. There’s the World War III aspect, which is touched on just enough to give the reader the shivers, which then gets subsumed in all the other horrors, only to rear its ugly head again at the end.

Underneath the World War III scares and the political maneuverings that go with it is the horror so brilliantly pointed out in the first Jurassic Park movie, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” The results are not actually dissimilar, although part of the horror leans a bit on another famous, and much older quote from Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

One of the biggest, and most in the moment layers of the horrors in Symbiote is very definitely the human equation.

An aerial view of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station taken in about 1983. The central dome is shown along with the arches, with various storage buildings, and other auxiliary buildings such as garages and hangars.

The small crew of overwinter “polies” is, as they are every year, alternately hard working and bored, often introverted but stuck in the enforced intimacy of a VERY TINY small town, isolated from the whole entire rest of the world and quite possibly just a bit – or a lot – cracked in one way or another.

There’s also a deep, resentful divide between the scientists – the ‘beakers’, and the techs and support crew – the ‘loggers’. On top of that there’s a huge gender imbalance, three men for every woman. It’s a pressure cooker on multiple axes and the stew gets aside to cook for a nine-month season. It’s not really a surprise that it boils over at the best of times – which this particular overwinter absolutely is not.

In other words, the story in Symbiote had more than enough stress factors to go to the ‘dark side’ from the human parts of the equation alone. And to some extent those human factors continue to drive events even after not all the humans are exactly still or just merely human.

And it’s those human factors that give the story its compulsive, breakneck pace. Because it’s the humans that we care about – and we do. We absolutely do. From the beginning, when it just seems like the scares come from humans just being human and some of them being shitty humans, we already have our hero, our sidekicks and most definitely our villains.

A photo of the station at night. The new station can be seen in the far left, the electric power plant is in the center, and the old vehicle mechanic’s garage in the lower right. The green light in the sky is part of the aurora australis.

As the snow gets deeper and the shit gets WAY more complicated, so do the motivations of ALL the players – and the reader gets even more invested as each character learns something new and shitty about themselves – and stands or folds under the weight of that knowledge.

I got so caught up in this story I barely stopped to sleep while I still could. When I finished, I found the ending cathartic enough – and yet still open. Because it reads like this chapter may be done, but there is plenty of story yet to come.

As there should be. Because the survivors have merely managed to survive the horror they faced in their isolated base. The huge, horrifying issues that brought this mess to their snowy doorstep are out in the wider world – and have yet to be addressed. Even though one of those messes already clearly has plans to address them.

Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood

Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen SpotswoodDead in the Frame: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #5
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday on February 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The most dramatic installment yet in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a shocking murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she's guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

With Lillian locked away in the House of D–New York City’s infamous women’s prison–Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hit-man who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, each day brings fresh headlines and hints of long-buried scandals from Lillian’s past. Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Her health failing and targeted by someone who wants her dead, Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand.

With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker's adventures once and for all.

My Review:

The Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in 1939.

This fifth entry in the Pentecost and Parker series begins with celebrated, hated, envied, feared, private investigator Lillian Pentecost on her way to the Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in New York City, under arrest for a murder that she surely did not commit.

Not that either the NYPD or the criminal justice system can see their way to that conclusion – at least not yet. The frame around Pentecost fits much too well, and there are too many people in the NYPD who have been itching to see this successful, intelligent woman fall. Of course the press is having a literal field day because everyone loves a scandal, and people especially love seeing the high and mighty cut down to size.

Pentecost’s right-hand woman, Willowjean Parker, comes back from her first-ever vacation to find her boss in handcuffs, their property being ransacked, and cops and reporters besieging the place. It seems as if the entire city wants a piece of Lillian Pentecost – only because they do.

This is the job that Will Parker has been training for, to become the lead investigator of Pentecost and Parker Investigations. That has been inevitable from the very first, marvelous book in this series, Fortune Favors the Dead, when Pentecost took Parker on as her assistant. Not because she wanted an assistant, but because Lillian Pentecost had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and she knew that her time as the lead investigator of her own agency was inevitably running out.

Now that it has, possibly temporarily but certainly abruptly, while Pentecost is behind bars and bail has been denied, it’s up to Will to ask herself what Lillian Pentecost would do – and do it. No matter how high the deck is stacked against them both. Pentecost is depending on her, and Willowjean Parker will not be found wanting. Whatever it takes.

Escape Rating A: The entire Pentecost and Parker series has been an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride from the very beginning in Fortune Favors the Dead, through Murder Under Her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood, Murder Crossed her Mind and now this latest page-turner, Dead in the Frame.

What initially drew me into this series was its homage to a classic mystery series that isn’t talked about much anymore, and that’s the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. A series which I fully admit probably doesn’t wear well in the 21st century for all sorts of reasons.

But the concept of the Wolfe series was a partnership between an older detective who mostly refuses to leave his New York City brownstone and his younger assistant who does all the legwork and brings the case back to his boss. In the case of Pentecost and Parker, as the series began Pentecost was aware that she SHOULD be sticking to her brownstone, but can’t make herself do it as much as her doctor would prefer.

On the one hand, Pentecost and Parker are very much in the style of the noir fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, and Parker’s first-person chronicles of the cases resembles Wolfe’s junior partner Archie Goodwin in style and often substance. Howsomever, the lens through which Parker sees the world is VERY different from Goodwin’s. Parker is both female and queer, and grew up in as far over the wrong side of the tracks as possible as she literally ran away and joined the circus.

(If you’ve enjoyed Pentecost and Parker and you’re curious about their antecedents, the first book in the Nero Wolfe series is Fer-de-Lance. If you’re looking for a readalike for Pentecost and Parker, take a look at Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen.)

This particular entry in the series does a fantastic job of straddling the line between Parker’s now and ours, speaking both to the case itself and the reasons for it while at the same time using that vehicle to highlight issues that are very much a part of our present. Including, but very much not limited to, the way that Pentecost is tried in the press LONG before her actual trial because there are just so many powers-that-be that can’t bear to see a woman be independent, successful and show them up when they deserve it.

After taking a couple of days to think about this one, I think that what’s at the heart of this entry in the story is the issue of inevitability and the human response to knowing that an ending is coming. In a way, it’s all about, to paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, not going gently into that good night, and the form that the rage against the dying of the light takes. It’s about the conflict between revenge being a dish best served as cold as, and from, the grave versus “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

All of that may seem a bit on the philosophical side, but it’s in there. And so is an absolutely cracking good mystery that sends both of our detectives through walks in the valley of the shadow of death and brings the inevitable changes that Pentecost has been staving off for years much closer much faster than her early hopes would have had it.

I have to say that the parts of this story where Pentecost is in the Women’s House of Detention are harrowing and also feel much too real – as the House of D most certainly was. Her treatment while incarcerated was entirely too typical of the treatment of prisoners in that nightmare of a place, and we go through that nightmare with her and feel her get both scared and scarred by it.

I was utterly caught up in the mystery, as I have been with every single one of their cases so far. I knew Pentecost was innocent but couldn’t see how she was going to get out from under – and for the longest time neither did she or Parker and it ratcheted the tension up to 11 the entire way.

The one thing that kept niggling at me is probably a result of my 21st century perspective having a disconnect with her post WW2 circumstances. I certainly understand why she hated the victim, and vice versa. But the information he was holding over Pentecost wasn’t about her, it was about her parents. I understand why no one would want that history dug up, but not why it was such a potentially huge scandal for Pentecost herself. Whatever the truth of that old matter, she herself can’t possibly be guilty of any of it as she was a child at the time. I expect to see that mess resolved, or at least as resolved as the dead past can be, in the next book in this series. Because that’s the story that Lillian Pentecost herself promised to work on next!

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James Logan

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James LoganThe Silverblood Promise (The Last Legacy, #1) by James Logan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Last Legacy #1
Pages: 521
Length: 17 hours and 2 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on April 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and - thanks to a duel that ended badly - the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His life consists of cheap wine, rigged card games and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away.When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father's death.His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow.For in Saphrona, everything has a price - and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.

My Review:

To take a page from a story not nearly as different as I expected it to be, “So naturally, our story begins where all great stories begin; with the seediest bar in town,” not with a missing contact but with a man attempting to piss his life away one drink and one shady card game at a time.

Lukan Gardova believes that he’s merely in the process of completing a job he started years ago, when he killed a man in a duel, his family paid the price with what little was left of their fortune, and Lukan left home in a storm of regret and recriminations.

He thought he had nothing left to return to. He wasn’t quite right seven years ago when he left, but he is when the story opens, when his past catches up with him. When he learns that his father was murdered and that the old man’s last words, written in his own blood, were Lukan’s name, the name of a glittering city far, far from his home in Parva, and a third word that might be a place or might be a name but almost certainly represents both a mystery and one last chance to do right by his father. A task that Lukan always thought the old man believed him incapable of.

But needs must and Lukan needs a purpose even more than he needs air to breathe and wine to drink. Not that he hasn’t done entirely too much of the latter over the years he’s been on the run from his past. From himself.

There’s one talent that Lukan Gardova has, above all others, a knack for getting himself into ever deeper piles of shit and trouble – and getting himself out alive. He’ll need all of that, and more than a little help from friends he hasn’t even met yet, to find his father’s murderer.

His quest begins in the fabled city of Saphrona, searching for a person, place or thing named Zandrusa. Lukan thinks what he has is a clue, but what he really has is a key. The key to a long-bubbling pot of corruption and conspiracy, facilitated by figures out of myth and nightmare.

A key to his father’s past. And, perhaps, a key to his own future. If he can manage to survive the pile of shit and trouble that his dubious gift has placed in his path. The odds are against him. Exactly what he expected.

Escape Rating A+: Some stories are very much “out of the frying pan and into the fire”, some are frying pans and fires all the way down. Lukan Gardova, on the other hand, the moment he lands on yet another already hot griddle the flames lick around the edges and he throws himself right into their path. Again, and again, and AGAIN.

Reading this felt like watching TV from behind the couch, with my hands covering my eyes to keep from seeing the onrushing disaster while peeking through my fingers to see if the hero might manage, yet again, to escape that onrushing disaster.

I found myself caught between the book and the audio, over and over again, because, as much as I really, really, really, NEEDED to find out what happened next, I also really didn’t want to see Lukan crash and burn – yet I expected it at every turn, much as he himself does. (Also, the audio voiced by Brenock O’Connor is EXCELLENT.)

From the very beginning, The Silverblood Promise had me hooked on its mystery and its protagonist every bit as much as Lukan himself is hooked on finding his father’s murderer. This story also scratched the itch left from my epic book hangover after finishing In the Shadow of Lightning. (I’m still waiting for the second book in that series. It’s been nearly three years. Come on already! PLEASE!)

But as much as Lukan reminds me of Demir with the similar openings of the two stories, with both men rotting their brains as fast as they can in very low places, not quite suicidal but not quite looking out for themselves either, trying to outrun their own demons and secretly hoping the demons will catch up anyway, Lukan also reminds me more than a bit of Kihrin from The Ruin of Kings and Kinch from The Blacktongue Thief. The story, OTOH strikes me as a readalike for City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky with a touch of the upcoming Idolfire by Grace Curtis. These are all stories that I loved so it’s not a surprise that I fell hard for this one as well.

I’ve read that it reminds a LOT of readers of The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I haven’t read that – YET. Let’s just say that the repeated comparison has moved that story considerably up the virtually towering TBR pile.

Back to Lukan, who is, in spite of his cynicism and snark, really just a big softy under his fractured and fraying armor – both literal and figurative. He’s on his last nerve pretty much all the time, and it shows. He’s the fool that rushes in where angels and demons would both fear to follow, someone who leaps over and over again never assuming that the net will appear. He leaps assuming that it will be pulled out from under him if it bothers to shimmer into existence at all – however briefly.

It’s just a part of what makes the story so compelling as the reader is always on the edge of their seat waiting to see what mess Lukan is going to fall into even as he escapes the previous mess by the skin of his teeth.

He’s one of those characters whose heart is in the right place even as entirely too many opponents are attempting to reach it between his fourth and fifth ribs. He doesn’t merely feel the fear and do his damndest anyway, he feels the fear, fucks himself up over it, and still does his damndest anyway even though his road to good intentions is paved with trapdoors.

I had an absolute blast following Lukan and his friends and frenemies as they find their way into the rot at the heart of Saphrona and out the other side – more or less intact – on the run yet again. I’m on pins and needles waiting for the next book in The Last Legacy series, The Blackfire Blade, coming in November. I’m definitely NOT waiting most of a year to read, or more likely listen to it this time around. Because Lukan’s journey has clearly just begun, and I can’t wait to see what trouble it leads him into next!

A- #BookReview: The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison

A- #BookReview: The Orb of Cairado by Katherine AddisonThe Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Chronicles of Osreth
Pages: 101
Published by Subterranean Press on January 31, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBetter World Books
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Set in the world of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee The Goblin Emperor, The Orb of Cairado offers an unlikely hero in historian Ulcetha Zhorvena. Five years ago, Ulcetha was studying at the University of Cairado, working his way toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History. Then a prize artifact disappeared and Ulcetha, deftly framed, was kicked out. Now he works for a crooked importer, using his knowledge of elven history to write provenances for the fake artifacts Salathgarad sells. When the airship Wisdom of Choharo explodes, killing the emperor and three of his four sons, it takes with it Ulcetha's best friend, Mara Lilana. But Mara leaves behind a puzzle--the one thing Ulcetha can't resist. And the puzzle leads Ulcetha back to the Department of History...and maybe the chance to clear his name.

My Review:

A witness for the dead is clearly an excellent person to know, or so it has been shown in ALL the books in The Chronicles of Osreth series that began oh-so-excellently in The Goblin Emperor.

The world of The Goblin Emperor is one that MANY readers, including this one, have been reluctant to leave behind, which led to The Cemeteries of Amalo Trilogy that began with the captivating story The Witness for the Dead, continued with The Grief of Stones and concludes with the upcoming The Tomb of Dragons.

But I suspect I’m not alone in STILL not wanting to let this world go, which may explain the existence of this novella, set in that same marvelous world but not directly part of either The Goblin Emperor or The Cemeteries of Amalo – even though it does kick off from the same starting point.

Howsomever, where the original story started big, and where the chronicles of The Cemeteries of Amalo eventually become big, empire shaking stories, (in spite of any wish or desire on the part of their protagonist), the story in The Orb of Cairado starts small and remains that way.

Not that the events of the story are not of the utmost importance to its protagonist, the disgraced scholar Ulcetha Zhorvena.

Ulcetha has hit the proverbial ‘slough of despond’ and can’t find a way to climb out. He was expelled from the University of Cairado five years previously after being accused of stealing an incredibly precious historical artifact. Which he didn’t. But logic dictates that whoever was the real thief, they are someone with considerably more rank and privilege than Ulcetha would ever have had even before his disgrace.

I’m not saying he’s innocent, because he’s certainly not innocent of wrongdoing now. But he’s got to eat and pay the rent, and the only decent paying job for someone with his education is writing fake provenances for equally fake artifacts. He hates his job, he particularly hates his boss, but needs must as the saying goes.

His best friend has just died, collateral damage in the accident that kicked off events in The Goblin Emperor. And left Ulcetha just the sort of puzzle that they both loved. And a puzzle box that opens to reveal the very artifact that Ulcetha was accused of stealing. Which he didn’t.

But revealing that he’s found it after all these years is not actually going to help his case – and he knows it. He needs to find a scholar in good standing who will actually listen to him and not just turn him over to the police.

What he finds is a much bigger treasure – as well as a much larger mystery – than he ever hoped to find. Or despaired of finding. Or both. Definitely both.

Escape Rating A-: First and foremost, this was definitely a case of the right book at the right time. I ADORED The Goblin Emperor, and I’m extremely fond of The Cemeteries of Amalo with its blend of cozy mystery and fantasy, its continued exploration of a fascinating world, and its oh-so-competent but extremely self-effacing protagonist in the person of Thane Celehar.

Thane and Ulcetha would get along like a house on fire (and possibly also set one considering their combined bad luck) if they could manage to get over their mutual shyness to discover just how much they have in common. Which certainly made it easy to slip right back into this world and follow Ulcetha around as he finds himself in intrigue up to his neck, caught between his desperate hope that he might be reinstated if not vindicated even as he figures out that the facts don’t quite add up to the resolution he was hoping for.

It was oh-so-easy to feel for Ulcetha and get caught up in his struggle. He’s doing the best he can with the hand he’s been dealt – even though that hand is utterly shitty and it’s not his fault. Not that he doesn’t want reinstatement, but that he knows it’s not realistic to expect it and that the odds are stacked against him.

He does remind me very much of Thane Celehar from The Witness for the Dead. He’s doing his best. He’s dogged in his determination to get the job done even when it’s boring or he hates it. He’s pragmatic about his situation even if he’s shaking in his boots on the inside.

And he doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions even though he knows the answers or going to upset his personal applecart all over again. Which is where that comment about witnesses for the dead being extremely helpful people to know. Because Ulcetha eventually figures out that he is in possession of a terrible secret that no one wants revealed, and that he and it will be swept under the rug, again, if he is the one to bring it to light.

However, if a witness for the dead brings it forward, it will be believed. Witnesses for the dead take an oath to their god that they will always tell the truth. They cannot lie, even on pain of death, or they will lose their gift. So Ulcetha goes to the witness for the dead in this case, knowing that the truth they will reveal will have consequences for him, but also that it will finally be KNOWN and that’s enough.

I liked Ulcetha because he’s trying to do the right thing, even when he’s doing it either bass-ackwards or completely underhandedly or both. It was fun to follow him because he provided yet a different perspective on a world that I STILL miss rather a lot. (That book hangover was TRULY epic and clearly ongoing.)

This novella-length treat of a book is a terrific addition both to a fantastic series and to the marvelous trend of fantasy (and SF) mysteries, whether cozy or not so much. I’m very, VERY happy I picked this up and if you have as fond memories of The Goblin Emperor as I do you will too. If the above is true, and you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading The Cemeteries of Amalo, there’s plenty of time to read the first two books, The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones, before the marvelous conclusion, The Tomb of Dragons, comes out in March!

#BookReview: Rebellious Grace by Jeri Westerson

#BookReview: Rebellious Grace by Jeri WestersonRebellious Grace (A King's Fool mystery, 3) by Jeri Westerson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: King's Fool #3
Pages: 224
Published by Severn House on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Henry VIII's court jester Will Somers turns reluctant inquisitor once again when a grotesque murder within the palace walls is linked to the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion in this gripping Tudor mystery.

1536, London. The gruesome murder of a servant in the king's palace, his throat savagely cut, has brought fear to the court of Henry VIII. When the man's body is then dug up from the churchyard and disembowelled two weeks later, Will Somers, the king's jester, is horrified. What terrible mischief is now afoot under the king's roof?
With Henry VIII distracted by The Pilgrimage of Grace, the religious revolt led by Robert Aske in protest at the king turning his back on the Catholic faith, Will becomes reluctant inquisitor once again. As he attempts to unmask a murderous knave, Will uncovers a chilling link between one of Queen Jane Seymour's precious jewels, the rebellion and the dead man. Is a shocking act of treachery behind a grotesque killing?
Perfect for fans of stunning Tudor mysteries and historical dramas featuring witty and tenacious sleuths, and bursting with betrayal, politics and passion from the likes of Paul Doherty Michael Jecks,, C.J. Sansom and Philippa Gregory.

My Review:

Will Somers, the King’s Fool of this series, finds himself hoist on his own petard in this particular case. After his success at investigating murders on his own in the two previous books in this series, Courting Dragons and The Twilight Queen, this time around his king has ordered him to look into the death of one of Will’s fellow royal servants.

Not as a result of the original murder, but because some ghoulish or desperate person disinterred the corpse of the late Geoffrey Payne in order to disembowel the man two weeks after his burial. Someone seriously had it out for the victim, and King Henry VIII has tasked his fool, Will Somers, with discovering who would do such a terrible thing – and especially why.

Finding out who might have wanted the man dead is one thing, figuring out who hated him so much that they desecrated his corpse is something else altogether.

Evidence from the murder has long been washed away, but Will knows THAT is where he must begin, with a trail long grown as cold as the winter winds whipping through the palace. But Will, as the king’s own, personal, fool, has permission to poke his nose in anywhere and everywhere at court. With his king’s commission, he has the warrant to ask all the questions he wants, as well.

Even as every single noble he even attempts to talk with makes him all too aware that they will remember this slight and take it out on him whenever the first opportunity arises. Because even if they’re guilty they know they can’t be punished – but sooner or later, Will Somers most certainly can.

But Will can’t resist the puzzle – no matter how much he wishes that he could. The more he digs into the problem, the more it seems like that problem is much bigger than the ‘mere’ death of one of the queen’s own royal servants – not that Will Somers, a royal servant himself, would ever see it so.

That his best witness is unreliable by their very nature only adds to the conundrum, as each clue he teases out takes his investigation one more rung up the ladder of people that Will knows he cannot touch – even if they are guilty.

Especially if they have involved a member of the court so high that they cannot even be questioned, let alone touched, at all.

Escape Rating B+: Historical mysteries like this one, and the King’s Fool series of which it is the third entry, have to walk a tightrope over the historical era they portray. That’s especially true in this case, as Will Somers, the ‘King’s Fool’ of the title, was a real person in the court of Henry VIII, and his position and duties are known to history – if not the details of his days and nights.

At the same time, as an integral part of the court, Will was, by definition of his duties, in a position to literally see all and know all about the doings of the high and mighty among whom he served.

Which is very much where that tightrope comes in. His job, not as a ‘court jester’ but as the king’s own fool, required him to be in the rooms where Henry VIII’s reign happened – while at the same time being ignored as beneath the notice of the courtiers in that room with him.

The conceit of this series has put Somers in the sort of position that modern detectives would envy. He is intimately aware of all the ‘goings on’ in court, and he has been part of the court more than enough years to know how things work, where the nobility stash the skeletons in their personal closets and where the metaphorical and occasionally physical bodies are buried.

At the same time, he’s an outsider. He’s not himself a noble and he never will be. He’s a servant and all too frequently reminded of that fact. He’s beneath notice – and yet, he has the ear of the king. He can go everywhere and see everything and continue to slither out of trouble as long as he doesn’t go too far for the king to allow him to keep both his position and his head.

The story gets told, and the mystery gets solved, through Will Somers’ intimate perspective on the court and the people in it. It very much feels as if the mystery is second to the detailed and loving portrait of the court and its denizens. Not that Will doesn’t manage to solve the mystery while getting into as much danger as any contemporary detective, but that both the solution and the danger are tightly wrapped in the historical period.

I enjoy this series a LOT because this is a period that has always fascinated me. The history that it dives into so deeply is recognizable and familiar and the ‘you are there’ feeling is one that I’m eager to be a part of. I hope it works just as well for readers who are experiencing this era for the first time.

The series continues to move through the reign of Henry VIII based on that old doggerel about his wives, “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” The next book in the series, tentatively titled Beloved Sister but recently changed to Devil’s Gambit, will be set during Henry VIII’s brief marriage to Anne of Cleves, which she survived in style.

In the meantime, I’m also looking very much forward to Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race coming in June, the start of an epic fantasy series that also takes its inspiration from the court of Henry VIII and his wives.

I am eagerly anticipating both of these upcoming books!

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

A+ #AudioBookReview: Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken BebelleBlood Jade (Phoenix Hoard, #2) by Julia Vee, Ken Bebelle
Narrator: Natalie Naudus
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dragons, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Phoenix Hoard #2
Pages: 448
Length: 14 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on July 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A+ #BookReview: Echo by Tracy Clark

A+ #BookReview: Echo by Tracy ClarkEcho (Detective Harriet Foster, #3) by Tracy Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Detective Harriet Foster #3
Pages: 364
Published by Thomas & Mercer on December 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the award-winning author of Hide and Fall comes a taut tale of renegade justice and long-awaited resolution, bringing the thrilling Detective Harriet Foster series to a heart-stopping conclusion.
Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.
Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.
Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice—and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything.

My Review:

You can feel the deep cold of a Chicago winter wafting from the pages to chill your fingers to the bone as you read Echo. February is the cruelest month in the city, as it’s so cold you can see your breath, the pigeons huddle under the heat lamps at the ‘L’ stations, sunrise doesn’t happen until you get to work and sunset comes LONG before it’s time to go home. It feels like it’s been cold forever and that it’s going to be cold every bit as long – which it might, as winter holds onto the city with an icy grip that shows no signs of breaking.

Detective Harriet Foster of the Chicago Police Department has been breaking since we met her in the first book in this series, Hide. But she’s not quite broken – at least not yet – in spite of not letting herself find solace or even closure for the two hits that have left her reeling in badly suppressed agony; the senseless death of her son as he was playing in the front yard, and the staged suicide of her police partner.

Her son’s killers have been held to as much account as they ever will be, but the death of her partner is still an open case – or so Harri believes when this story opens. That hope is dashed when Internal Affairs closes the case, taking the evidence at a face value that Harri has called into question. Whoever killed Glynnis made it look like G. was a dirty cop, and IA would rather bury the case and Harri’s partner than open a can of worms that no one on the force wants to open. Justice be damned.

That G.’s killer has been calling Harri from a succession of burner phones to taunt her about the case and promise her that she’ll fall to his dirty tricks just as Glynnis did is just more black slush on top of the grey snow piled all over the city.

Just as Harri decides to pursue this very personal case very much on her own time and off the books – and her new partner, Vera Li is just as determined to join her in spite of the risks to both of their lives and careers – they get caught up in a very much on-the-books case that seems as far from Harri’s barely hanging on, hard-working, city employee life as it possible for it to get.

A young man has been found dead in a snow covered field on Chicago’s North Side, a stone’s throw away from the big house his ultra-wealthy father owns as a private ‘Animal House’ for the scions of the family as they attend the expensive private college nearby. A college where the family name is on half the buildings, and where once the father and now the son are rich and privileged legacy students – with all the power and indulgence that wealth can provide.

The only thing that hard-working CPD Detective Harriet Foster would normally have in common with a hard-partying rich boy skating through life on his father’s well-earned reputation would be that she’s the cop investigating his murder.

But it’s not.

Because it’s beginning to look a lot like Brice Collier wasn’t murdered for anything HE did – and not that he didn’t do plenty of things that no one dared to accuse him of. Just as Harri figures out that her partner’s murder – and it definitely was murder – had nothing to do with anything that G. might have EVER done.

Instead, the two cases ‘echo’ each other, as the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children by perpetrators for whom revenge is a dish best served as cold as February in Chicago.

Escape Rating A+: This series has been awesome from the very first page of the very first book, Hide. The second book, Fall, managed to be even better. The blurb claims that this book is the conclusion to the trilogy, and I was so utterly bummed about that until I noticed that in spite of the blurb the series continues this time next year with Edge.

This story does conclude the initial story from Hide. In that first book, Harri was dealing, badly, with the death of her son and dealing equally badly with the death of her police partner and friend. Over the course of the series she has managed to both solve some really thorny – and very typically Chicago – murders while at the same time being very human and broken and not dealing with her own personal shit well at all.

And yet still putting one foot in front of the other.

The case here feels ripped from the headlines. The young scion of a rich and influential family, someone whose way has been repeatedly smoothed over by family money and power, who expects to skate through life and never face the consequences of his frequently scummy actions – is murdered. He could have been killed for some of his own misdeeds, but it goes deeper and darker than that as it’s clear from early in the case that his own actions hadn’t yet caught up with him. And that his death hasn’t had the effect that his murderers hoped for.

Meanwhile, Harri’s personal case goes down a parallel path. Her partner’s death wasn’t about anything G. did. It’s not even about anything Harri ever did. It’s all to get back at someone in the past who is just as unreachable as the Collier paterfamilias. Even though that unreachability is a parallel that shouldn’t have been part of the parallel.

The Collier case is riveting in the way that great police procedurals are riveting, as Harri and her team work through the evidence in spite of pressure from both the senior Collier and City Hall. They manage to work their way to a sticky and convoluted end through layers of facts and lies and long-buried secrets.

Harri’s personal case is compelling in the way that the best thrillers are compelling. She’s being taunted and threatened by someone who knows everything about her while she knows nothing about them or their motives. That case slowly unravels, bit by bit and step by step, even as Harri does an often poor job at keeping herself from unravelling along with it.

In the end, she emerges victorious, stronger in her broken places, and with friends at her back she hadn’t been willing to let in. Justice prevails for her, as the reader hopes that it will, even if the closest that the Collier case can reach is closure. But that’s right too.

I’m glad to see the trauma of Harri’s personal case get solved and resolved, and I’m equally glad that this is not the end of her story. She’s a dynamic, flawed and fascinating character and I can’t wait to ride along with her again next December in Edge.

#BookReview: Miss Amelia’s List by Mercedes Lackey

#BookReview: Miss Amelia’s List by Mercedes LackeyMiss Amelia's List (Elemental Masters Book 17) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: regency fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Elemental Masters #17
Pages: 336
Published by DAW on December 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The seventeenth novel in the magical alternate history Elemental Masters series follows Amelia Stonehold and Serena Meleva as they navigate property acquisition, marriage proposals, and other ancient horrors in Regency England, but with the help of elemental magicThe year is 1815, and an American, Miss Amelia Stonehold, has arrived in the Devon town of Axminster, accompanied by her "cousin" Serena Meleva. She’s brought with her a list to tick find a property, investigate the neighbors, bargain for and purchase the property, staff the property and...possibly...find a husband. But Amelia soon finds herself contending with some decidedly off-list trouble, including the Honorable Captain Harold Roughtower, whose eyes are fixed on her fortune. Little does Amelia know that his plans for her wealth extend far beyond refurbishing his own crumbing estate — they include the hidden Roman temple of Glykon, where something very old, very angry, and very dangerous still lurks. But Roughtower isn’t prepared to reckon with the fact that neither Amelia nor Serena are pushovers. And he certainly isn’t ready for the revelation that he has an Earth Master and a Fire Mage on his hands — or that one of them is a shapeshifter.

My Review:

Miss Amelia’s List is a lovely and charming story that will especially appeal to Jane Austen lovers who occasionally wish there was just a bit more actual magic in her stories – but do not want to go nearly as far as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I’m pretty sure the above requires a bit of explanation. Maybe even more than a bit.

Amelia Stonehold and her cousin Serena Meleva arrive in London from the former – definitely and definitively former – American colonies in 1815. To set the historical stage, the War of 1812 was settled by treaty in December of 1814 – which means that some people are still a bit salty about it on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane Austen has published her first three novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park, under the pseudonym, ‘A Lady’. The Regency period is in the fullest of its flower. Napoleon is still in his first exile on Elba and has not yet ‘met his Waterloo’ and made that phrase into a cliché.

While this entry in the Elemental Masters series is number 17 in publication order, this series of magical retellings and reinterpretations of classic myths, legends, tales and historical events has not been published in ANY chronological order. The previous book in the series, The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley, is set in the late 19th century. Annie Oakley wasn’t even born until 1860 – long after the events of Miss Amelia’s List take place.

Which, by a roundabout route, leads us back to Amelia and Serena by way of Jane Austen. I put it that way because Amelia’s and Serena’s introduction to the Regency reads very much like the ‘comedy of manners’ style of Austen. Or at least like Austen if Austen knew about magic.

While Amelia’s and Serena’s perspectives on Regency society are very much informed by their ‘colonial’ origins, the realities of life in a new world, and the existence of magic and their significant powers within it, their story, and the events in which they participate and/or are excluded from is very similar to the world Austen described in such loving detail.

Which means that a large portion of Miss Amelia’s List is, in fact and told in a much more lively fashion, about the list of things that Amelia Stonehold has come to England to accomplish, and about the progression of Amelia and Serena through the highly structured but often ridiculously stratified and stultifying ‘society’ in which they must play an exacting part in order to get things done.

It’s fun, it’s charming. It’s occasionally teeth gnashing but because of Amelia’s and Serena’s outsider perspectives that teeth gnashing is shared by the characters. They know the so-called ‘rules’ are OFTEN ridiculous while knowing they must at least appear to conform, so the reader is in charity with them when some high-stickler makes an ass of themselves in their presence – or behind their backs.

But it’s not a story of action – in spite of the blurb. (Yes, I know, I’ve not been ‘in charity’ with a lot of blurbs in the last few weeks.) Miss Amelia’s List is utterly charming, a delightfully well told Austenesque ‘comedy of manners’, but there’s not a lot of excitement. At least, not until the very end.

An ending which includes death, dismemberment, big snakes and small helpers, as well as a happy ever after that appropriately differs for each and every character.

Escape Rating B: Miss Amelia’s List is a story that I truly enjoyed while I was in it. Howsomever, right up until the very end I didn’t feel any compulsion to find out what happened next, because there’s not really a lot happening at all.

Amelia, surprisingly so for being an Earth Master in this particular magic system, is rather like a duck or better yet, a swan, seeming to float effortless on top of the water – or all the various social situations to which she of necessity must adapt – while paddling furiously under the water DOING all that adapting.

Which is where I circle back to Austen’s comedy of manners style, as a LOT of what Amelia does is observation and then tailoring her behavior to what she’s observed. She may be extremely ruffled on the inside – and in fact often is – but she must appear decidedly UNruffled at all times, which she does.

So not a lot happens because it’s her ‘job’ in effect to make sure that it seems like not a lot is happening. Even if, or especially because, the reality is that a lot is getting done. Which again, gets back to the story being charming and lovely and a delight to sink into much like a warm bath, BUT not exactly a page-turner.

You might very well be looking for something EXACTLY like this amidst, or after, the holiday bustle. I absolutely enjoyed my read of it and hope that the Elemental Masters series eventually returns to the setting and some of the characters of Miss Amelia’s List.

After all, finding a husband for Miss Amelia herself was explicitly NOT on her list. Maybe it will be if we have the chance to see her again. If you like the concept of the Elemental Masters, but want a story that’s a bit more of a page-turner, you might want to try either The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley or the Sherlock Holmes subseries – my personal favorite – that begins with A Study in Sable.

#AudioBookReview: I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander + #Excerpt

#AudioBookReview: I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander + #ExcerptI Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander
Narrator: Gail Shalan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, magical realism
Pages: 352
Length: 9 hours and 47 minutes
Published by Harlequin Audio, Mira on December 10, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In this darkly funny and surprisingly sweet novel, a woman creates a golem in a desperate attempt to pretend her life is a romantic comedy rather than a disaster.
Nothing’s going well for Eve: She’s single, turning forty, stressed at work and anxious about a recent series of increasingly creepy incidents. Most devastatingly, her beloved father died last year, and her family still won’t acknowledge their sorrow.
With her younger sister’s wedding rapidly approaching, Eve is on the verge of panic. She can’t bear to attend the event alone. That’s when she recalls a strange story her Yiddish grandmother once told her, about a protector forged of desperation… and Eve, to her own shock, manages to create a golem.
At first everything seems great. The golem is indeed protective—and also attractive. But when they head out to a rural summer camp for the family wedding, Eve’s lighthearted rom-com fantasy swiftly mudslides into something much darker.

My Review:

This is going to be one of those reviews where I write AROUND the book more than I write ABOUT the book, because my reaction was considerably more about the issues it raised than it was about the content – and that’s saying something because I have more than a few of those as well. Just that some of those issues are ‘me’ things that may or may not be ‘you’ things.

As always, your reading mileage may absolutely vary, so in this particular case I’m pleased that I have an excerpt from the book to include so that you can judge for yourself whether this will turn out to be a book for you.

I have an additional reason for including the excerpt. I want you to have a chance to see what the book actually IS, rather than what the blurb says it is. Because that’s very much a case of never the twain shall meet.

As the story opens, Eve’s life is far, far, far from being a rom-com. Also, the story is neither darkly funny nor sweet, surprisingly or otherwise. And she doesn’t create the golem until nearly the halfway point of things.

But the story is dark, because Eve’s is in the middle of a long, dark night of the soul. Her beloved father died suddenly just barely a year ago as this Hanukkah story opens, and she’s still utterly devastated. She’s never gotten over the death of grandmother a few years previously, so she’s grieving double while her mother and sister both seem to be breezing along. She has few friends, she’s terribly lonely, and she’s eating her feelings constantly. As if that weren’t enough, her employer is hinting strongly at layoffs AFTER the holidays if not before.

In other words, Eve is in a pit and hasn’t stopped digging. It’s hard to read about just how terrible she’s feeling and how much depression she’s dragging around.

Which is where the audiobook, read marvelously by Gail Shalan, made things worse for me personally because she did such a terrific job as the narrator. When a story is written in the first person perspective, and it’s narrated by someone who is a great match for the character, I get a bit too deeply caught up in the character’s emotions.

And that’s what happened in I Made It Out of Clay. Not just because Eve and I are both Jewish, but because her Chicago neighborhood is where I used to live, her parents’ synagogue is in the town where I used to work and I lost my own father exactly the same way she did. It all got a bit too close – at least before she magicked up that golem – and I got so into her problems they were depressing me.

So my feelings about the story went to places that the author couldn’t possibly have known or intended, but absolutely did affect my reading and listening of it.

The story does get, well, livelier, for lack of a better term, and does head into the sort of horror-adjacent dark I was expecting from that blurb, once the golem arrives on the scene. Eve’s frantic efforts to disguise her wedding date as a real person and not a magical construct gave the story a lot more oomph than it had up to that point.

But I was too mired in her depression to see whatever funny or sweet parts there might be until the very, very end.

Escape Rating C: If you’re looking for this to be a Hanukkah-themed romantic comedy based on that blurb, you’re going to be in for a bit of disappointment. Instead, II would recommend you take a look at Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot, Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White to fill that particular holiday craving and Magical Meet Cute by Jean Meltzer if you think your Hanukkah romance reading won’t be complete without at least one golem among your eight nights of presents.

Excerpt from I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander

The soft growl on the train is coming from me.
I flush with shame at the insistent rumbling of my stomach. Thankfully, the Monday-morning brown line is too crowded with bundled-up commuters for anyone but me to notice the sound. If someone does somehow clock it, they’ll probably assume it’s coming from the pigtailed pregnant woman I gave my seat to at the last stop.
The train lurches, and I nearly drop my peppermint mocha. Technically, you’re not supposed to have open food or beverages aboard, but no one follows that rule. You’ll only get in trouble if you spill on someone. Nobody really cares what’s going on in the background until the mess impacts them.
When my stomach rumbles yet again, the pigtailed pregnant woman gives me a conspiratorial look. Everyone else on the train might think it’s her, but she knows it’s me. She isn’t judging, though; her expression is friendly. Surprisingly kind and intimate in a maternal sort of way. I take in her pert nose, amused hazel eyes, and the beautiful coppery shade of her two neat, thick braids. I want to tell her I bet you’re gonna be a great mother—but who needs to hear that from a stranger? Besides, maybe she already is a mother. This might not be her first rodeo.
Another grumble from my midsection cues me to return my attention to myself. I smile weakly, averting my gaze as I take a slow sip of my mocha, attempting to temporarily silence my stomach’s demands. While I’ve always had a healthy appetite, lately it’s like I’m haunted by this constant craving. I can take the edge off sometimes, but I’m never really satisfied.
My granddaughter Eve, oy, let me tell you, she can really eat, my grandmother used to say with pride. But it wasn’t a problem when I was a kid. I was just a girl who liked food. Now, it’s like I can never get enough. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s seasonal. The weather. Winter cold snap making everyone want to hibernate and fatten up like all those rotund city squirrels. But I think it’s something more than that.
Like, say, losing my father a year ago.
Or my looming fortieth birthday.
Or my little sister’s upcoming wedding.
Or the growing conviction that I’m going to die alone.
Or, most likely, all of the above.
Rather than sift through all the wreckage, it’s easiest to just blame my hungry malaise on December—and specifically, Christmas.
Holidays make excellent emotional scapegoats, and I’ve always had a powerful love/hate relationship with Christmas. I’m pretty sure that’s just part of growing up as a religious minority in America. The holiday to end all holidays is an omnipresent blur of red and green, a nonstop monthlong takeover of society as we know it, which magically manages to be both inescapable and exclusionary. It’s relentless. Exhausting.
But at the same time, dammit, the persistent cheer is intoxicating, and I want in on it.
That’s why I do things like set my vintage radio alarm to the twenty-four-hour-carols station that pops up every November for the “countdown to Christmas.” It’s an annual ritual I never miss, but also never mention to any of my friends—the literal definition of guilty pleasure, which might just be the most Jewish kind of enjoyment ever.
From Thanksgiving all the way until the New Year, I start every day with the sounds of crooning baritones, promises of holiday homecomings, and all those bells—silver, jingling, carol-of-the. I can’t help it. My whole life, I’ve loved all the glitzy aspects of the season. The sparkling lights adorning trees and outlining the houses and apartment buildings throughout Chicagoland always seemed so magical to the little Jewish girl with the only dark house on the block. And as an adult, God help me, I cannot get enough of seasonal mochas. (At the same time, I feel a need to assert my Hanukkah-celebrant status, resenting the default assumption that everyone celebrates Christmas. Because humans are complicated.)
One of the best and worst things about the holiday season is how much more you wind up chatting with other people. Wishing total strangers happy holidays, commenting on their overflowing shopping bags, chitchatting with people in line for the aforementioned addictive peppermint mochas. I’m not in the mood for it this year as much as in years past, but once in a while I’m glad to take advantage of the holiday-related conversational opportunities.
For instance, there’s a new guy in my apartment building. He moved in a few months ago. He has a British accent, thick dark brows, muscular arms, and a charming tendency to hold the door for everyone. I haven’t crushed this hard on someone since high school. We said hello a few times over the fall, but December has opened the door to much more lobby banter.
Hot Josh—which is what I call him when he’s not around, and am absolutely doomed to someday accidentally call him in person—has been getting a lot of boxes delivered to our lobby. Which, for better or worse, has given me multiple excuses to make stupid jokes. Most recently, a huge overseas package arrived; it had clearly cost a fortune to ship. Hot Josh made some comment about the overzealous shipper of said holiday package, rolling his eyes at the amount of postage plastered all over the box.
It’s better than if they forgot to put on any stamps at all, I said. Have you heard the joke about the letter someone tried to send without a stamp?
Uh, no? Hot Josh replied, raising an eyebrow.
You wouldn’t get it, I said, and snort-laughed.
He just blinked. Apparently, for some of us, all those cheery holiday conversational opportunities are more like sparkling seasonal landmines.
At the next train stop, only a few passengers exit, while dozens more shove their way in. The handful of departing passengers include the pigtailed pregnant woman. She rises awkwardly from her seat, giving me a hey-thanks-again farewell nod as she indicates I should sit there again.
I look around cautiously as I reclaim my seat, making sure no new pregnant, elderly, or otherwise-in-need folks are boarding. It’s only after I finish this courtesy check that I notice I’m now sitting directly across from a man in full Santa Claus gear.
He’s truly sporting the whole shebang: red crushed-velvet suit with wide black belt and matching buckle, epic white beard, and thigh-high black boots. His bowl-full-of-jelly belly is straining the buttons on the jacket, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a pillow or a legit beer gut.
I’m not sure how to react. If Dad was here, he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d high-five Santa, and they’d instantly be best friends.
But I never know where to start, what to say. Like, should I smile at the guy? Refer to him as “Santa”? Maybe, like, salute him, or something?
I gotta at least take a picture and text it to Dad. He’d get such a kick out of this guy—
My hand automatically goes for my phone, pulling it swiftly from my pocket. But my amusement is cut off with a violent jerk when I touch the screen and nothing happens. That’s when I remember that my phone is off—and why I keep it off.
My rumbling stomach curdles. Even after a whole year, the habit of reaching for my phone to share something with my father hasn’t gone away. I’m not sure it ever will.
Shoving my phone back into my coat pocket, I ignore St. Nick and just stare out the filthy train windows instead. Even through this grayish pane streaked with God-knows-what horrific substances, the city is beautiful. I love the views from the train, even the inglorious graffiti and glimpses of small backyards. And now, every neighborhood in Chicago has its holiday decorations up.
This Midwestern metropolis, with its glittering architecture, elegant lakefront, and collection of distinct neighborhoods sprawling away from the water, knows how to show off. Most people think downtown is prettiest. But if you ask me, it’s hard to beat my very own neighborhood, Lincoln Square.
In the center of the Square is Giddings Plaza. In summertime the plaza’s large stone fountain is the bubbling backdrop to all the concerts and street festivals in the brick-paved square. But in wintertime, the water feature is drained and becomes the planter for a massive Christmas tree. Surrounded by all the perky local shops, the plaza is cute as hell year-round. When you add tinsel and twinkle lights and a giant fir tree that looks straight out of a black-and-white Christmas movie, it’s almost unbearably charming.
We haven’t had a proper snowfall yet, so the natural seasonal scenery has been lacking a little. But even with the bare tree limbs and gray skies, the stubbornly sparkling holiday decor provides a whispered promise of magic ahead.
I really want to believe in that magic.
The light shifts as we rattle beneath looming buildings and trees, and I briefly catch my reflection in the dirty window. Dark curls crushed beneath my olive-green knit cap, round cheeks, dark eyes, no makeup except a smear of lip gloss I bought because it was called Holiday Cheer. The details are all familiar, but I barely recognize myself. I wonder if I’ll ever feel like the real-me again, or if grief has made me into someone else entirely.
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of losing my dad. A whole year, and it still doesn’t feel real. Most days, it seems like I’m in the wrong version of my life. Or like everything around me is just some strange movie set I wandered onto and can’t seem to escape. I keep waiting for things to feel normal again. For me to feel normal again.
Hasn’t happened yet.

Excerpted from I MADE IT OUT OF CLAY by Beth Kander. Copyright © 2024 by Beth Kander. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.