Format: eARC

#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Claim by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Claim by Anna HackettClaim (Fury Brothers Book 5) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Fury Brothers #5
Pages: 240
Published by Anna Hackett on October 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

It was only supposed to be one night—a hot, nameless encounter with the gruff, gorgeous older stranger.
When you’re on the run from a killer, you can’t afford attachments. For over a year, I’ve been alone, never staying in one place long, fighting to survive.
But when the tall, muscled man with the intriguing ink steps in to help me with an obnoxious admirer, we end up sharing a coffee. Coffee turns into the hottest night of my life.
I never expected to see him again.
But when I walk into Hard Burn—the best gym in New Orleans—desperate to learn how to fight, I discover my stranger is none other than Beauden Fury.
When Beau discovers I’m being hunted, I see the true depth of his protective streak. He gives me a job, and says he’ll train me to protect myself. But he also makes it clear that he thinks I’m too young, too vulnerable, and too nice for him.
Now we’re spending hours together, side by side, and it’s hard to remember that I can’t let myself get too close. It’s even harder to fight our red-hot desire.
But the man hunting me hasn’t given up.
Can I defeat a killer, and prove to Beau that what we have is worth fighting for?

My Review:

Claim is the fifth and most likely the final book in the Fury Brothers series (barring any epilog-type short stories) – because there are five Fury Brothers and as this book opens, Beauden Fury is the only brother left standing alone. Not that THAT lasts long after the woman he knows only as Bell walks into his New Orleans gym and pretty much demands that he train her to fight.

So she can fight back against the literal demon that is chasing her. Not that Beau knows what – or rather who – is driving her. Just that he’s certain that something is. Because the morning after they met in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere – and spent one glorious night together – she fled without a trace, leaving nothing but a sweet memory he can’t get out of his head and a name that isn’t nearly enough to track her down with – if it’s even hers at all.

He thought it was for the best. He’s convinced that he’s too old, too rough and too broken for her.

As much as her night with Beau was the best, safest, ANYTHING she’d had since she went on the run, Bell thought it was best to leave because it’s too dangerous for anyone she gets close to. Chandler Carr, the serial killer chasing her down and tormenting her every step is toying with her, his prey, as he runs her down – the only one who ever got away.

Bell comes to New Orleans because she always wanted to see the city – and because her would-be killer found her in Pensacola. She’s in Beau’s gym because she needs the best to train her to fight back – because if she can’t fight back and fight hard the next time Carr catches up with her it will be her death. The notes he’s left her – no matter how far or how fast she runs – make that frighteningly clear.

No matter how much Beau and Bell each tell themselves that the other would be better off without them – they can’t keep their hands off each other and can’t resist falling hard for each other. Even though they each believe that their relationship is best if it’s only temporary – until Carr is out of the picture.

Of course, they are both wrong, Wrong, WRONG! The question is just how big of an idiot one or both of them will have to be before they figure out that they belong together.

If Carr lets them live that long.

Escape Rating B: Readers of the Fury Brothers series will see echoes from the first book, Fury, in this final book. Mila Clifton was being chased by the mob in that first book after witnessing a murder. Bell is being chased by a serial killer after she witnessed him leaving her apartment and discovered that he’d murdered her roommate.

Neither woman was responsible for the mess that they found themselves in – and both of them were on the run because anyone they got close to got dead. Both of them get involved with the Fury Brothers because they’ve moved into the Fury orbit and have each met someone who can’t resist protecting them. And because they can’t resist their protector no matter how much they think they should.

The ‘heroine in jeopardy reacting by running’ trope is not one of my favorites. But it works for the Fury Brothers, in both cases, because in spite of it being a cliché it doesn’t descend into one. Bell is not TSTL. She doesn’t do anything stupid – although there’s a point where the reader thinks she might have that turns out MUCH better.

Neither is remotely responsible for the fix they’re in – not by any standard of guilt except possibly their own. And in neither case is their pursuer an EvilEx(™). I personally hate those stories.

Claim does run straight into another trope that can go pear-shaped, but in this case fits well within the setup of the series as a whole AND gets its comeuppance in very short order once Carr is out of the picture, and that’s the “I’m not worthy” trope. At first they’re both suffering from it as Bell’s presence does paint a target on anyone she gets close to, while Beau thinks he’s not worthy of anyone’s love because of the addict parents he ran away from. (The Fury Brothers have all had a bit of an issue with the “I’m not worthy” thing for reasons that are clear in their stories, so this isn’t out of left field. Also, Bell does a great job of separating Beau’s head from his ass as soon as their situation is resolved.

Very much like my reaction to that first book, I liked this one in spite of myself. The description had me worried that it was going to dive into a whole bunch of tropes that I’m not all that fond of, but it didn’t and the blend of if not going to any of the places I worried about while wrapping up this marvelous series of found family stories AND telling a hot romance set in a fascinating city absolutely did work for this reader.

#BookReview: The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Mountain Crown by Karin LowacheeThe Mountain Crown (The Crowns of Ishia, #1) by Karin Lowachee
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dragons, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Crowns of Ishia #1
Pages: 150
Published by Solaris on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Méka must capture a king dragon, or die trying.
War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection.
A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains.
The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions – defiant or compliant – that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world.

My Review:

This story feels like it began LONG before the book does. This story reads like it has been years in the making, and that the slice of it that we are getting is a bit in the middle in a world that has been going to hell in a handcart for quite some time, and has now reached a level of FUBAR that STILL isn’t anywhere near as bad as things are likely to get before the end.

And that’s a fascinating way to write a story, because worlds generally DO exist before a particular story in them gets told, and go on existing after the last page of a particular story in them gets turned.

Méka has returned to the land where she was born. A land that once belonged to her people, but no longer does. Even worse, a land that has been conquered by a rapacious empire that has chosen to act as if her people aren’t people at all – merely slaves for their use.

Including the dragons that her people, and only her people, have the capacity, not to control, but to bond with. A bond that the greedy, rapacious Kattakans exploit in order to use both Méka’s people, the Ba’Suon, and the dragons, the Suon, to strip mine the land for gold.

The Kattakans have turned a beautiful place into a steaming, belching wasteland on a par with Mordor. (Auditions for the part of this world’s Sauron are possibly ongoing – I jest but not nearly enough.)

Méka has come to this once-home for a right of both passage and preservation. It is her time to bond with one of the Suons that still live free in the mountain crowns far to the north. Both to refresh the dragons in her adopted homeland and to prevent a single king dragon from taking over too many herds and reducing the genetic diversity in the crowns.

Of course, the powers that be to rape and pillage interfere with her quest – even though it has been sanctioned by her adopted country and the court of the, shall we say, greedy bloodsuckers.

She is duty bound on a quest to bond a dragon. She is being coerced to retrieve a dragon for a criminal’s nefarious purposes. But control of any dragon is illusory at best – and a dangerous illusion at that. As the greedy bloodsuckers are about to discover in fire and blood.

Escape Rating B: The Mountain Crown is an ‘in media res’ story. In other words, it feels like it starts in the middle of things. It’s a method of storytelling that CAN get the reader caught up in the action from the very first page. Howsomever, it can also give the reader the feeling that they’re missing something, or a whole lot of somethings, and not feel like they have what they need to get stuck into the story.

The Mountain Crown read like it straddled that fence, where the problem with straddling a fence is that one gets splinters in the ass. I had a difficulty time, at first, getting into the story because I didn’t feel like I had enough to figure out how the situation reached this pass in the first place. It does not help at all that the primary characters of this story, Méka and her companions Lilley and Raka, are all parsimonious with their words – even when they are speaking to one another.

There’s a LOT that doesn’t get said – even when something is being said at all.

All of which led to my brain attempting to spackle over the bits that were missing with analogies to other stories and other places. The ramshackle mining monstrosity where Méka first arrives sounds a lot like the gold rush encampments of the Klondike, including the weather conditions. The nomadic nature of Méka’s people read like an amalgam of many nomadic cultures around this globe – even if this story isn’t set on any version of our world.

In the end, what brought the story together was the way that it reflected on colonialism and empire, shone a light on cultures whose fundamental principles are greed and acquisition and then explored the possibilities of another way – a way of stewardship and community.

And took the problem of might making right to a whole different level by adding dragons into the mix in a way that both put a temporary check on the ‘evil empire’ AND sowed the seeds for further contention between peoples who were once one.

I have to say that by the end, I really did enjoy The Mountain Crown and that I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, The Desert Talon, coming in February, as well as the third book, A Covenant of Ice, arriving in June. (There’s an irony that the desert book is coming in the depths of winter and the ice book is coming as summer heats up.)

I’m hoping that the rest of this novella trilogy will not just continue this fantastic story but also fill in the blanks and answer my many, many questions about this particular world came to this particular pass – because it has to be a doozy. I can’t wait to find out ALL the answers

 

A- #BookReview: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa KellyMurder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Emma Knightley Mystery #1
Pages: 400
Published by Kensington on October 22, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The delightful debut of a Regency historical mystery featuring Jane Austen’s indefatigable Emma Knightley! Perfect for fans of Anna Lee Huber, Darcie Wilde, Claudia Gray, and Stephanie Barron. Less than one year into her marriage to respected magistrate George Knightley, Emma has grown unusually content in her newfound partnership and refreshed sense of independence. The height of summer sees the former Miss Woodhouse gracefully balancing the meticulous management of her elegant family estate and a flurry of social engagements, with few worries apart from her beloved father’s health . . .    But cheery circumstances change in an instant when Emma and Harriet Martin, now the wife of one of Mr. Knightley’s tenant farmers, discover a hideous shock at the local church. The corpse of Mrs. Augusta Elton, the vicar’s wife, has been discarded on the altar steps—the ornate necklace she often wore stripped from her neck . . .    As a chilling murder mystery blooms and chaos descends upon the tranquil village of Highbury, the question isn’t simply who committed the crime, but who wasn’t secretly wishing for the unpleasant woman’s demise. When suspicions suddenly fall on a harmless local, Emma—armed with wit, unwavering determination, and extensive social connections—realizes she must discreetly navigate an investigation of her own to protect the innocent and expose the ruthless culprit hiding in plain sight.

My Review:

Mrs. Elton was dead, to begin with. And the only person in Highbury who seems to miss her is the local vicar. Then again, that local vicar was her husband, so he’s supposed to miss her. even if the woman had earned the, let’s call it the disregard, of everyone else in town – one way or another.

Honestly, several ways and many others. Mrs. Augusta Elton believed that everyone in Highbury was beneath her, and wasn’t at all shy – in any way – about making that plain.

When her body is discovered on the floor of her husband’s church, with finger-shaped bruises around her neck, blood and brain matter matted in her hair but without the expensive necklace she habitually wore, it’s clear to even the dullest numpty that Mrs. Elton was murdered. Also robbed, but definitely murdered.

The problem in Highbury is that there hasn’t been a murder in decades – and the local coroner and constable ARE both a couple of utter numpties at best, and pompous, self-aggrandizing fools at worst.

However, the corpse of the late, unlamented was discovered by Mrs. Knightley – the former Miss Emma Woodhouse – and her friend Mrs. Martin, the former Miss Harriet Smith. And, while Harriet can be a bit of a widgeon when she’s upset – and discovering a dead body is certainly VERY upsetting – Emma is much too intelligent and level-headed to let the terrible sight in front of her prevent her from investigating the scene of the unprecedented crime.

And Emma Knightley, née Woodhouse, has never, ever been a dullard or a widgeon or a numpty. So, when most of the officials involved in investigating the case – with the obvious exception of Emma’s dear husband, who was, after all, smart enough to marry her in spite of her errors in matchmaking in the Jane Austen book named after her – accuse an oh-so-obviously incorrect person of the murder, Emma is all in on investigating the crime herself.

With, or without, her husband’s approval. But generally – and thankfully for Emma’s wake – with. Allowing Emma to prove, yet again, that there are times when she can be just a bit TOO smart for someone’s own good. And very nearly, her own.

Escape Rating A-: I was honestly surprised at how very much I enjoyed Murder in Highbury. But enjoy it I certainly did, and kept coming back to it over the course of a lazy Sunday because I just couldn’t resist seeing both whodunnit and how Emma managed to investigate the case in spite of a lack of even any of Sherlock Holmes’ forensic methods.

Part of my trepidation was due to not being an Austenphile. I’m pretty sure I listened to Emma once upon a time, but that would have been 30 years ago. I don’t remember any of the details – but that did not affect my enjoyment of this story one bit. (If you never read Emma, or read it LONG ago and don’t remember those details either, I would recommend looking at a plot summary. The events are still relevant, and the players are the same, so some background is helpful but not required.)

The second part of my concern going into the story reflects back on yesterday’s book (and Friday’s a bit, come to think of it), in regards to the difficulty that frequently occurs in female-led historical fiction. Specifically that the protagonist needs to be a woman of her own time and not ours, but must manage to realistically have enough agency to BE the protagonist. Emma manages to walk that line differently from Mabel Canning of the London Ladies’ Murder Club a century later, but manage it she does.

It helps that Emma was known to be high-handed, headstrong and intelligent if often prone to rushing down the wrong path, and she’s still that a year later in this story. Howsomever, while she is not independent in the way that Mabel is, she is allowed to act according to her own nature by the men who do have actual power over her – so she frequently acts first and worries about questions of forgiveness vs. permission later if at all – even as she still sometimes lets her heart overrule her head.

Because we’re in Emma’s head, we get to experience both what is said and done on the outside, as well as her actual, and frequently much less socially acceptable, thoughts on the inside. The men in charge absolutely ARE idiots, and we get to cringe right along with her.

Above all, and in spite of the murder, or on top of it, underneath it and all around it, Murder in Highbury is still just the kind of ‘comedy of manners’ that infused Jane Austen’s work and has made it utterly timeless. Human nature hasn’t changed in a mere two centuries, and the exposure and gentle ribbing of the nature of people in Highbury rings true in spite of the murderer and his (or her!) victim in their midst.

Or perhaps even more so because of it. Making Murder in Highbury a surprisingly charming and utterly delightful read. It looks like Murder in Highbury is the first in a cozy historical mystery series.  I hope so, because I’d be delighted to return to Highbury to watch Emma investigate another case!

A- #BookReview: Murder of a Suffragette by Marty Wingate

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Murder of a Suffragette by Marty WingateMurder of a Suffragette (London Ladies' Murder Club #4) by Marty Wingate
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery
Series: London Ladies' Murder Club #4
Pages: 331
Published by Bookouture on October 28, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

Women from all around the country have joined together to fight for the vote. But when one of them is killed, only amateur sleuth Mabel Canning can halt a murderer’s campaign…Fellbridge Hall, England: Mabel Canning is thrilled to be organising a suffragette conference. But when all the women are settled in the sprawling country mansion, she barely has time for a sip of gin before chaos ensues. Leading suffragette Annie Harkin has been found murdered in her bed, clutching a white feather in her outstretched hand…As the guests clamour for justice for Annie, young police officers Ned and Ted arrive in time to trip over the banners and be roundly ignored. And with a killer on the loose, the suffragettes swiftly vote for Mabel and her pals to take control. When it comes to solving mysteries, there’s nobody equal to the London Ladies’ Murder Club!But soon it’s clear many a suffragette is hiding a secret under her sash. Eccentric veteran of the cause Dorothea Goose is acting rather flighty; why is she so afraid of the police? Would Annie’s rival go this far to replace her as leader? Or has someone taken a life to stop the cause of women’s lib?Then Mabel uncovers what happened to Annie’s closest comrade in the years before the war, and she is sure the answers lie in the past. But will Mabel be elected as the killer’s next victim? Or can she crack the case and save the fight for Votes for Women?A totally addictive whodunnit bursting with suspense and sparkling with wit, from USA Today bestseller Marty Wingate. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, Verity Bright and T.E. Kinsey.

My Review:

As much as it makes Mabel Canning’s father worry about her when she’s on her own in London, it’s clear from this fourth entry in the utterly charming London Ladies’ Murder Club that her home, the tiny village of Peasmarsh and its surrounds, are better off if Mabel is in London.

Not because of Mabel herself, but rather because she seems to have a fortunately unfortunate knack for finding herself in the midst of murder investigations. Peasmarsh’s population is much too small to survive the number of deaths that Mabel and her ‘club’ become involved with on the regular!

As this case is a, well, case in point. Mabel has returned to the Peasmarsh area to serve as the personal secretary to Lady Emma Fellbridge at nearby Fellbridge Hall. Lady Emma has known Mabel all of Mabel’s life, and Mabel was a frequent guest at the hall as her dearest childhood friend was Lady Emma’s daughter-in-law until the Spanish Flu took her much too soon.

Lady Emma was one of the heroines of the suffragette movement, and has convened a meeting of her fellow campaigners at Fellbridge Hall to consider the next phase of their work. At the time this story takes place, 1922, women 30 years of age and over who were property owners or householders, or married to men who were either of the above, or occupiers of rental property over a certain rate, or university graduates had the right to vote, while men could vote from age 21 with considerably fewer restrictions. These women, who once chained themselves to gates and went on hunger strikes in prison, are determined to continue the fight for equality into a new generation.

Mabel and her ‘Murder Club’ have arrived at Fellbridge Hall under the auspices of Miss Kerr’s Useful Women’s Agency for which Mabel works and of which her ‘Murder Club’ is an active part. She’s not expecting for the club to be active at the suffragette meeting – but that’s exactly what happens when one of the suffragettes, in fact, one of the women in contention to become the next leader of the movement, is murdered.

Mabel has more experience with murder investigations than the local police do – and Detective Inspector Tollerton of the Met is just far enough away in London and snowed under with urgent cases in the metropolis to leave Mabel temporarily in charge. Somewhat to his own surprise – and even occasional chagrin – Tolly is forced to leave Mabel leading the investigation, seconded by WPC Hildy Wardle, several members of her Murder Club, and two local constables who desperately need someone to give them orders.

When a second suffragette is murdered, and Mabel herself is attacked twice, she’s certain that she’s on the trail of a murderer – but the clues are misleading at best and confoundingly conflicting at worst. She’ll need the wits, and the skills, of every single member of the London Ladies’ Murder Club to catch the killer – before he strikes again.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve been looking forward to reading this latest entry in the London Ladies’ Murder Club since the minute I finished the previous book, A Body at the Dance Hall. And it absolutely was worth the wait! My one regret about having finished this book is that I don’t know for certain that there will be a next book in the series – or when that MUCH hoped for book will be published. (I have my fingers crossed!)

I’ve fallen for this series because I’ve taken to Mabel Canning as the protagonist. The charm of the series rides very much on her shoulders – and it’s just terrific to follow the investigation from inside her thoughtful, intelligent head.

What makes this series work for me is that Mabel does an excellent job of straddling the line between being a woman of her own time and not ours, while still having a realistic amount of agency to go about her business – which in Mabel’s case is investigating murders.

She does have to reckon with the attitudes towards women’s roles and women’s place, but because of her particular era, just post-World War I, she’s part of a time when things were still in flux because of the war – and because the war killed a generation of young men leaving many women without the prospects of marriage even if they wanted it.

The series does not shy away from the fact that some didn’t, including Mabel’s friends Skeff and Cora, as well as, it turns out, both Lady Emma and the first victim, Annie, even though the earlier generation did follow tradition – at least to all outward appearances. And it’s the degree to which lip service was given to those outward appearances that creates one of the sets of misunderstood clues and red herrings that makes this particular case so juicy.

Another part of the series that works particularly well is the way that it dives into women’s experiences and women’s history. In this particular case, the suffragette movement, its sister movement, the suffragists, and the contention between the two. Suffragettes were the considerably more militant arm of the movement – while suffragists preferred to conduct their campaign via entirely legal means. There existed tension between the two as well as an acknowledgement that some women switched from one to the other (and back and again) over time.

Voting rights for women on the same terms as men was finally granted in 1928, but at the time of this story the fight was not yet won. The question before the gathered women centered on just who would be the best person to lead that fight. The strong personalities of many of the women involved made leadership of the movement a possible motive that Mabel was forced to consider – no matter how much she wished it was not.

Part of what makes Mabel such a fascinating protagonist is the way that she navigates her world, and the push and pull of loving her father and wanting to remain in his good graces – he’s a good man and has been an excellent father – but still NEEDS to live her own life on her own terms gave this entry in the series a very personal touch as well.

Her father wants her to be safe – but he recognizes that safe on his terms is not what his daughter was built for. It was wonderful to see a supportive father-daughter relationship in a female-led historical mystery – as opposed to the more usual situation, where dear-old-dad has often been the impetus for his daughter’s flight from conventionality in one way or another. If not several.

In other words, there are a LOT of reasons why I enjoy the London Ladies’ Murder Club series and this entry is certainly an excellent example of why. I did figure out WHOdunnit a bit early, although the WHYdunnit took a bit longer. I’m here for Mabel Canning, and I hope you will be too. If you haven’t discovered her yet, start with A Body on the Doorstep to see just how the London Ladies’ Murder Club got its start!

#BookReview: The Booklover’s Library by Madeline Martin

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: The Booklover’s Library by Madeline MartinThe Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, World War II
Pages: 416
Published by Hanover Square Press on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A heartwarming story about a mother and daughter in wartime England and the power of the books that bring them together.
In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job to provide for herself and her beloved daughter, Olivia. But with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her.
When the threat of war becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In her daughter’s absence, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, as well as the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and her work forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.
As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times.

My Review:

When this story truly opens, after a heartbreaking prologue, it’s August of 1939 and the impending war is NOT the biggest problem looming on Emma Taylor’s horizon.

Her immediate worry is continuing to put food on the table – as well as continuing to have a table to put it on – for herself and her eight-year-old daughter Olivia. As a widow with a child, Emma is unemployable – regardless of her skills, her abilities, or her outright need to support herself and that child.

And her widow’s pension plus the government stipend for her daughter aren’t nearly enough to make ends meet – no matter how much Emma scrimps and saves – which she absolutely does – at every single turn.

Emma’s parents are dead, her late husband’s parents are, frankly, terrible – or at least they were the last time she saw them – and she has no options and no prospects. Not because she’s not capable but because that’s the way society wills it. (I am holding myself back from getting up on a soapbox SO HARD!)

The war is about to change all of that, but Emma doesn’t know it, yet.

Still, on a cold and rainy afternoon, a door opens for her in the person of Miss Bainbridge, the manager of Nottingham’s Boots’ Booklover’s Library. The Boots’ libraries, which really did exist, were subscription lending libraries housed within Boots’ Chemist shops around the country. They had strict educational requirements and equally strict standards for their female ‘librarians’.

Emma had the skills, after growing up in her late father’s bookshop, and Miss Bainbridge, for reasons of her own, bent the rules. Rules that began going by the wayside not long after, as Britain declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland.

In the midst of what later became known as the “Phoney War”, the parents in cities that were determined to be targets for German bombers shipped their children out to the hopefully safer countryside. Nottingham was chock full of factories that either had been or would be converted to war production.

Olivia, like so many children, was sent – or evacuated as it was referred to – turning the white lie of Emma being alone into a lonely truth. A truth that, even as it broke her heart a bit, forced her into relying on her fellow librarians for companionship and friendship and opened up her world and her place in it, if only to get herself away from a flat that was empty, quiet and much, much too clean.

The Booklover’s Library becomes a story on three levels. On the first level, there’s Emma, her work and her life on the homefront as the Blitz bombards Nottingham as well as other industrial centers. On the second, there’s Olivia’s own story, an independent adventure she feels forced to take as hers becomes one of the placements that does not work out – at all. And over all of that, there’s the story of the power of literature to build community – and to help people find a light in even the darkest of places.

And if that last piece of the story reminds readers of The Last Bookshop in London, it’s only right that it should. Both The Booklover’s Library and The Last Bookshop in London are from the same talented pen, and both tell charming and heartwarming stories centered on the early days of that terrible war.

Escape Rating B: I picked up The Booklover’s Library because I was fascinated by the concept AND because I enjoyed the author’s earlier book, The Last Bookshop in London. (Which is absolutely a readalike for this book and vice versa!)

That both stories are grounded in surprising bits of real history made them that much more captivating. In this story, it’s the existence of the Boots’ Booklover’s Libraries, which existed until 1966! What’s notable about the Boots’ libraries is that they provided popular fiction – even salacious fiction – to their middle-class subscribers.

(The debate about popular vs. improving literature in public libraries has been loud, vociferous, and contentious in both the UK and the US and is STILL ongoing.)

As a librarian, I found the portrait of the Boots’ library, how it worked and how its ‘librarians’ were trained to be utterly fascinating, while the friendship, camaraderie and support that developed among the women working there – particularly under wartime conditions – is sure to charm the heart of ANY reader.

The story of the evacuations, told from both the perspective of Emma who misses her daughter but wants her safe, and Olivia who has found that safety from bombing is not nearly enough, provides a perspective that adds to the depth of the story. (This was not my favorite part of the story, but it was an important part nonetheless.)

Like The Last Bookshop in London, the story of The Booklover’s Library does not go into the details of Emma’s and Olivia’s experiences through the whole war. It doesn’t need to. It ends at the point where their personal crises have been resolved even though the war has several years to run. The icing on this cake – even if sugar is rationed – is that Emma has her chance at a Happy Ever After. The rest of their war will be following that admonition to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, but in much happier circumstances in spite of the war. And together.

But the reader needs to know that Emma, Olivia and their friends and loved ones made it out okay. Which we do get in a sparkling epilogue. A fitting ending to a lovely read.

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

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A+ #BookReview: The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy SivinskiThe Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, historical romance, historical fantasy
Pages: 336
Published by Atria Books on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cozy and uplifting debut novel about three clairvoyant sisters who face an unexpected twist of Fate at the bottom of their own delicate porcelain cups.
Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamom at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers.
That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus—and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet. It seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.
With dwindling time to rewrite their future and help three other witches challenge their own destinies, the Quigleys set out to bargain with Fate. But in focusing so closely on saving each other, will they lose sight of themselves?

My Review:

The Crescent Room Tearoom serves well-to-do ladies with considerably more than just tea from its turn-of-the-20th century location on Chicago’s bustling State Street, already the home of Marshall Field’s and Schlesinger & Mayer.

The Quigley sisters, Anne, Beatrice and Violet, serve slices of the future along with tea, pastries and finger sandwiches. They are witches, and they are all gifted with the ability to tell the future – just like their mother before them.

Like much of Chicago’s magical community, the Quigley sisters hide in plain sight, operating their tearoom just outside the edge of the city’s burgeoning magical district, dispensing true fortunes and sage advice under the guise of gossip, amusement and ladies’ fripperies.

Of course the magical community knows the truth about the Quigley sisters, the triplet daughters of the most gifted seer the Chicago Coven had seen in generations. A woman who gave up her place in the Coven to marry her mundane soulmate, knowing that their lives would end in tragedy.

Because her gift of seeing the future could also be a curse.

A curse that seems to have passed to the sisters now that they have grown up. Their joint operation of the tearoom has given them safety, security and companionship. At least until they discover that they are cursed to lose it all – and that it seems as if the leaders of the Chicago Coven are complicit in that curse.

Just as the curse drives a wedge in their contented companionship, setting them each on paths that pull them away from the shop and from each other, the Coven sets them three seemingly impossible tasks that must be met by an even more impossible deadline – or they will destroy the shop and cast the sisters out of the community.

It’s obviously a plot. If the curse doesn’t get them, the Coven will – and vice versa. Unless, like their parents loving but much too brief happiness, the curse is not really a curse after all.

Escape Rating A+: It’s the way that the whole, entire story does a complete heel turn that makes it work – because the story isn’t AT ALL what the reader thinks it’s going to be at the beginning.

First, I loved the setting. Chicago is still one of my favorite cities, and it’s always seemed magical to me. Part of the reason I loved the Dresden Files series so much – back in that day – was that Harry’s Chicago was ‘my’ Chicago, just with more magic. It’s also a part of what made Veronica Roth’s recent When Among Crows work so well, because it seemed just so downright likely that there’s a magical community hiding in plain sight.

Which is the case in The Crescent Moon Tearoom. This is definitely turn-of-the-last century Chicago, when State Street was already ‘that great street’. The gigantic downtown department stores were still new and celebrated and it was fun to read about Marshall Field’s back in that day, because the building is still something special a century plus later. (I had to look Schlesinger and Mayer up because the store didn’t last but the building did – as Carson, Pirie, Scott.)

Returning to the story – because it’s a wonderful story to return to – what I loved about The Crescent Moon Tearoom was the way that the reader is led down a primrose path, multiple times, making the reveal at the end just that much cozier and more heartwarming.

Because I have to admit that as the story was going along, I wasn’t all that sure about the cozy fantasy label. At first, it reminded me a LOT of Small Town, Big Magic, in that the heroine is cursed, her powers are gone, and the local coven leadership is manipulative to the max and evil to the core. And that’s at the point where the reader thinks the purpose of the story is to reveal the coven’s machinations and thwart their plot.

That it turns out to be entirely different – and much better, more heartwarming and considerably more interesting into the bargain – was the ending I stayed up until 4 in the morning for – and I’m so very glad that I did.

The Crescent Moon Tearoom is the author’s DEBUT novel, and it’s simply fantastic in all of the meanings of that word. The one and only, teeny-tiny, even slightly negative thing I could possibly say about it is that this book does not read like the first in a series. I could be wrong. I’d LOVE to be wrong. But even if I’m right about this book, I will absolutely be on the lookout for her next!

#BookReview: What We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerd

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: What We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerdWhat We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 304
Published by Alcove Press on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Perfect for fans of Practical Magic and The Lager Queen of Minnesota: a coming-of-age novel following three generations of witches in the 1960s, this enchanting and heartwarming debut explores the importance of family and the delight and heartbreak of discovering who you truly are.

It’s 1968, and the Watry-Ridder family is feared and respected in equal measure. The local farmers seek out their water charms, and the teenagers, their love spells. The family’s charms and spells, passed down through generations of witches descending from the Black Forest, have long served the small town of Friedrich, Minnesota.

Eldest daughter Elisabeth has just graduated high school—she is expected to hone her supernatural abilities to take over for her grandmother, the indomitable Magda. She’s also expected to marry her high school sweetheart and live the rest of her life in Friedrich. But all she can ask is, why her? Why is her path set in stone, and what else might be out there for her?

She soon discovers that magic isn’t the only thing inherited in her family. That magic also comes with a great price—and a big family secret. The more she digs, the more questions she has, and the less she trusts the grandmother she thought she knew. Who is Elisabeth without her family? She must ultimately decide what she’s willing to sacrifice for her family, for their secrets and their magic, or risk it all to pave her own way.

Navigating the bittersweet tension between self-discovery and living up to familial expectations, What We Sacrifice for Magic is a touching look at coming into one’s own.

My Review:

The Age of Aquarius might have dawned in the rest of the world, but 1968 in tiny Friedrich, Minnesota seemed like it would be no different from the year before, or the year after. The witches of the Watry-Ridder family had been doing their very best – and occasionally their damndest – to make sure that life in the town they held under their protection stayed protected and pretty much the same.

Helped by the fact that it was a teeny-tiny farming community and change came even slower to those sorts of towns than it did to the big cities – and a few well-placed memory charms helped with the rest.

But 1968 was the year that Elisabeth Watry-Rider graduated high school – and was expected to settle down in Friedrich, marry the boy she’d been dating for two years, and take up the reins of her family’s magical power – reins that had been firmly held in the iron grip of her grandmother Magda since long before Elisabeth was born.

No one has ever asked Elisabeth what she wants. Not that she hasn’t always enjoyed the attention of being Magda’s favorite, and not that she hasn’t pitied both her mother and her younger sister Mary, whose powers seem to be considerably less than her own.

As Elisabeth feels the walls closing in, she envies them both their freedom from the strait-jacket of the family legacy. She begins to ask questions about why she is the one who must give up all her freedom, while everyone around her has choices. Choices that the formidable Magda took from her when she was too young to even have a voice to protest with.

Before the bars of her prison of expectations clang shut for good, Elisabeth publicly defies her grandmother, accidentally sets fire to half the town, and flees into the night. Clawing out just a little tiny space of time to see who SHE wants to be when she grows up.

It’s the making of her – even as it breaks the back of her family and shatters the community’s faith in their powers. But some things are made to be broken, and some family secrets have to be exposed before the light of hope and possibility can have a chance to heal what’s – and who’s – been torn apart.

Escape Rating B: If Hazel Beck’s Witchlore and The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradel had a book baby, with Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic serving as either the midwife or the fairy godmother – or both – that book would be What We Sacrifice for Magic.

The title manages to tease the story without giving it away, and it’s a doozy but not in the way I expected, which leads back to those books I think contributed to its DNA.

Even though Lager Queen isn’t a book about magic, it is a story about family secrets and family rifts in a similar setting to What We Sacrifice for Magic with similar family dynamics. It’s a story about family traditions carried on by the women of the family, and the stresses and strains of a family heritage and business that is jealously guarded instead of shared.

Hazel Beck’s Witchlore and Ann Aguirre’s Fix-It Witches have similar witchy elements in that an older generation of witches is doing its damndest to control who gets power in ways that are detrimental to pretty much everyone involved – which is definitely paralleled by the story of What We Sacrifice for Magic.

The third element here – and one that didn’t get quite enough attention for this reader – is that late 1960s setting. The past is another country, they do things differently there, and that feels particularly true of the way things were before all of the social revolutions of the 1960s. The world was changing faster than small towns or formerly dominant institutions were able to keep up with – and Elisabeth’s coming of age felt like it was on the cusp of that but it wasn’t as much as this reader might have liked.

At its heart, this is a story about the family ties that bind and strangle, and the ballast of family expectations that may be great for the town but has turned out to be pretty catastrophic for the women who are supposed to bear its burdens. I felt for Elisabeth’s need to escape, I just found myself wishing that she hadn’t felt the need to take on so much guilt for having done so, and was glad to see the family start to heal when the dark secrets were finally exposed to the light.

A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de BodardIn the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: alternate history, science fiction
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 96
Published by Subterranean Press on September 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.
Now an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.
Khuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thảo, a beautiful and mysterious woman who seems to know more than she should about Khuyên and the ship. But saving Anh requires doing what Khuyên couldn’t do before: face her family, face the ship, face her own hopes and fears for the future—a future that might well include Thảo, but only if Khuyên can stop listening to the critical voice in her head.
A voice that sounds an awful lot like Nightjar’s...

My Review:

The Universe of Xuya isn’t so much a series as it is a sprawl of alternate history that extends from the early 15th century – the point where the butterfly flapped its wings differently from the history we know – all the way out to an undetermined point VERY far in the future.

It’s a vast, sprawling canvas of a universe that hinges on a single year in history (1411) where two events turned left instead of right. An internal political struggle at the Imperial court of Ming-dynasty China sent the Empire looking outward instead of in (as it did in our history) and a fleet of Imperial ships that planned to head east along the coast was struck by typhoons and found itself drifting north, across the Bering Strait to Alaska, resulting in an earlier “discovery” of North America, from Asia instead of from Europe.

And with those two almighty flaps of the butterfly’s wings, history goes down the other leg of the trousers of time (to thoroughly mix my metaphors) and results in the universe of this series, where China and eventually an independent Việt empire become the dominant influences in the world instead of the West – not that, by the time of this particular entry in the sprawl, the West hasn’t established its own hegemonies in the greater galaxy.

The past is another country, they do things differently there. And if they did things differently than what we know, the future would be an even more different country that it will be on history’s current trajectory.

But the thing about the Xuya Universe is that even though the author has a broad outline of what brought it about and some stories set in the historical past that illustrate some of the points, most of it is set in the future. The galaxy is big, the history and future history is potentially very long indeed, and there’s plenty of scope for pretty much anything to happen pretty much anywhere.

Which leads back to the Universe of Xuya being more of a sprawl than the way we usually think of ‘series’. Each story set in the Xuya Universe is intended to be standalone, and while it might link thematically with other stories, that doesn’t mean it will feature any of the same characters as previous or future entries. There’s obviously a publication order for the series, but the internal chronology is ever changing, and considerably more fluid than is usually the case.

I fell into this series, somewhere in the middle, with The Tea Master and the Detective, because it’s a Sherlock Holmes pastiche and that was an entry point that worked for me – as it usually does. (Also, Tea Master is one of the longer works in the series so it has time and space to get a new reader stuck into the world that’s already been built.) I’ve read around Xuya, but not thoroughly – at least not yet – ever since. Although I’ve just had the light dawn that several of the short stories that were in various SFF magazines are also available as podcasts and that’s an avenue to be explored.

I know I haven’t talked about this particular entry in the series yet, and that’s a bit by design as I have mixed feelings about whether this story is a good place to start. I found it fascinating but I don’t think it’s a good entry point. The author has an excellent precis of the history of Xuya, with a list of stories that give both a loose chronology and some suggestions of stories that might make good places to start on her website – so if you’re looking for an entry point or have visited Xuya and are wondering how it all fits together, take a look.

The story of In the Shadow of the Ship is deceptively small and at first seems simple. It’s the story of a young woman who left a conservative and restrictive home because she didn’t fit in. The life that was mapped out for her, even before her birth, was one she had no interest in or desire to follow. That it seemed like she never had a chance to earn her mother’s love or acceptance made it that much easier to leave the world of her birth behind.

She’s been successful, if lonely, in the intervening years. But when she learns of the death of her grandmother, duty and respect call her home. But home is not a planet, or even a station. Home is a decaying mindship, a refugee from the galactic war that destroyed so much and left so many refugees, ship-bound and planet-dwellers alike. A war that her home, her ship, her family, was on the losing side of.

A home that wants her back – even if her mother still does not.

As an adult, Khuyên has knowingly kept the secret of her family’s status from the empire she serves, even though she knows they are war criminals and that she is guilty by association – and silence. She can’t make herself turn them in, and she can’t bear losing her job and her purpose in the universe she’s made her own.

At the same time, as an adult, when she returns for the funeral, she is able to see that the ship is manipulating her and everyone around her, and that the terrible things she was told to ignore when she was a child are no longer ignorable – or honorable. And that they are wrong.

And that there is no second escape. This time, the only way out is through – no matter the cost.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed In the Shadow of the Ship, although it is a very shadowed story indeed and probably needs to be read with the lights on. There’s an underlying creepiness that is totally justified but isn’t revealed until past the halfway point.

Although there’s also a lovely sapphic romance that redeems that darkness – it just takes a while to get there.

That two of the characters of this story were mindships felt like the one, solid link to the Xuya Universe, at least so far as I’ve read into it. A reader who has come at this series from different angles might find more linkages, but it was fine as it was.

The story that it did remind me of, however, was the author’s “The Mausoleum’s Children”, one of this year’s Hugo nominees for Best Short Story. (BTW the award was won by “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer, which I read and loved.)

In my review of “The Mausoleum’s Children”, I said that the themes were a bit too big for the package, that it would have worked better in a longer format. Those themes; survivor’s guilt, living with trauma, returning to the place that broke you in the hopes of saving others, and more, received that longer treatment here In the Shadow of the Ship, which made me like both stories just that much better.

#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana CostaShoestring Theory by Mariana Costa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy, time travel romance
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A queer, madcap, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers time travel romance with the future of the world at stake, this charming fantasy tale is sure to satisfy fans of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree.
The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former Grand-Mage of the High Court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a ramshackle hut by the sea, trying to catch any remaining fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom’s ruin. For he played his part – for as the King, Eufrates Margrave, descended further and further into paranoia, violence and madness, his Grand-Mage – and husband – Cyril didn’t do a thing to stop him.
When Shoestring wanders away and dies one morning, Cyril knows his days are finally numbered. But are there enough left to have a last go at putting things right? With his remaining lifeblood, he casts a powerful spell that catapults him back in time to a happier period of Farsalan history – a time when it was Eufrates’s older sister Tig destined to ascend to the throne, before she died of a wasting disease, and a time when Cyril and Eufrates’s tentative romance had not yet bloomed. If he can just make sure Eufie never becomes King, then maybe he can prevent the kingdom’s tragic fate. But the magical oath he made to his husband at the altar, transcending both time and space, may prove to be his most enduring – and most dangerous – feat of magic to date…
Featuring a formidable Great Aunt, a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance, an awkward love quadrangle and a crow familiar called Ganache, this charming story is imminently easy to read and sure to satisfy fans of fanfiction who like their fantasy lite.

My Review:

I picked this one up for the cat. Which is fair, because from a certain perspective, this whole story is, in fact and for real, all about Shoestring the cat. Even though, like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, Shoestring is dead, to begin with.

If you’re also here for the cat, I will give you one spoiler, a spoiler that I seriously wished I had at the beginning. Because at the end, Shoestring will be just fine. Really, truly. (Not knowing that gave me some terrible approach/avoidance problems when I began reading the story. I was having as hard a time dealing with Shoestring’s apparent death as Cyril was.)

In a terrible future that should never have been, Cyril has been barely surviving as what used to be the Kingdom of Farsala literally rots all around him. It’s been years with bad air, almost no sun, and a starvation diet for both himself and poor Shoestring.

Cyril’s only reason for continuing this meager, guilt-ridden existence is to catch fish for his familiar, Shoestring. Everyone else he ever cared about is dead. From a certain perspective – namely Cyril’s – it’s all his fault.

But Shoestring’s passing is the cosmic kick in the pants that Cyril needed. Without Shoestring, he’s faced with two choices. He can either wither away into death, as all mages do when their familiars die, or he can get off his magical ass and go back and fix things.

Or at least try, making this whole marvelous story a fix-it fic, set in a magical world that needs a hell of a lot of fixing. The only problem is that Cyril isn’t really the right person to get the job. But he is the right person to keep his loved ones alive – and they absolutely are.

Escape Rating B: I had some mixed feelings about this book, in spite of how much I generally adore fix-it fics. Part of that can be laid at the feets of poor Shoestring, as I was nearly as heartbroken at his early, first-chapter death as Cyril was.

And, I’ll admit, I’m used to the protagonists of fix-it fics – which I usually love – being somewhat more competent hot messes than it seems Cyril could ever possibly be. He does not look before he leaps. It often seems as if he doesn’t even look after he leaps. Or at all. He doesn’t act – he reacts – and generally cluelessly at that.

Which is how his country got in the mess it did in the first place. Because Cyril is the heir to the Grand Mage of the whole entire kingdom and he’s supposed to be a whole lot more capable than he has ever demonstrated being. His great-aunt, Heléne, the current high-court witch, is that great and it seems from Cyril’s barely-adult perspective that she always has been.

But Heléne is slowing down, and Cyril hasn’t been stepping up. Which is why everything went pear-shaped. Because he didn’t see the rot in the kingdom at a point where it could be stopped. This time around, he has to do better, to be better, and at the beginning, he isn’t.

He does, eventually, and with frequent application of several boots to his ass, get better enough to figure out what went wrong the first time around – but he’s a bit slow on the uptake. Frequently. Often.

Which is why the comparisons between Shoestring Theory and Legends & Lattes fall spectacularly apart. They are both cozy fantasies – but they take vastly different approaches to both the coziness and the fantasy.

For one thing, Viv in Legends & Lattes is very competent and gets shit done. It’s just that what she wants to get done is very cozy in that her goal is to open a coffee shop. She has doubts, she has fears, she backslides in her ambition to eschew her old, violent ways as a mercenary – but she gets the job done because of herself.

Cyril gets the job done in spite of himself. In the end he does get there, but he faffs around a LOT. If it wasn’t for his friends he wouldn’t manage to get his head on straight. He IS, actually, quite capable – but he’s never been pushed to apply himself until now and it takes him a LONG time to get out of that mindset.

A lot longer than it took this reader to figure out who the true villain of the piece really was, and that Shoestring’s restoration would be part of Cyril’s reward for finally getting his act together.

In the end, I liked Shoestring Theory, but not nearly as much as I expected to. There just wasn’t enough of Shoestring himself in the story, and Cyril turned out to be a surprisingly incompetent protagonist for a fix-it story.

But I did enjoy the way the story turned itself inside out, that all of Cyril’s intentions and memories of that first, terrible, time around turned out to be not what he thought they were, and that he did manage to get to the truth and the whole truth of what went wrong the first time – and that it wasn’t ALL his fault.

So, in spite of Cyril’s frequent faffing around, the one thing he always was that shone through was that he loved deeply if not always wisely, that he had a huge capacity for trust even if it was sometimes misplaced, and that the story, the kingdom and even Cyril himself are finally saved by the depth of his loyalty to those he loves – and the reciprocation of that love and loyalty in full measure in return.