#CBR7 Books 101-102: "The Curious Case of the Clockwork Menace" and "Forged by Desire" by Bec McMaster

Page count: 595 pages
Rating: The Curious Case of the Clockwork Menace - 3 stars
Forged by Desire - 4 stars

The Curious Case of the Clockwork Menace is a novella set three years before the events of the rest of the London Steampunk series. In it, Nighthawk partners Garrett Reed and Perry Lowell work together on a case involving a missing theatre actress who may or may not have been abducted. Perry, the only other known female blueblood (vampire) has been in love with her partner for years, without ever really being bothered by jealousy, despite knowing that Garrett is a ladies' man. Now, seeing him flirt openly on the case, she has trouble keeping herself focused, which leads to conflict between the two, and causes complications during the investigation. In the story, Perry is abducted and nearly drowns and determined never to lose track of her again, Garrett gifts her with a dagger containing a tracking device, making her promise to keep it with her always. Said tracking device becomes significant in Forged by Desire.

Nine years ago, the Duke of Moncrieff was exiled to Scotland after it was believed he murdered his thrall, Miss Octavia Morrow, an earl's daughter. Her body was never found. Shortly after Miss Morrow's disappearance and believed death, an emaciated, bedraggled, terrified young woman infected with the craving virus showed up at the Nighthawk headquarters, asking the guild leader, Sir Jasper Lynch for help. Miss Peregrine "Perry" Lowell was taken in by the Nighthawks and trained to control her new animalistic instincts. Trained by Lynch himself, she rose in the ranks to become one of his right hand people. Now, as Lynch has been elevated to a dukedom, he can no longer lead the Nighthawks. His successor is Garrett Reed, Perry's partner for most of her nine years on the force.

Reed is struggling with his new leadership duties. Lynch led the Nighthawks for more than forty years (bluebloods being near immortal and impervious to ageing) and his subordinates didn't realise just how tricky a balancing act his job entailed. Garrett can't ask Lynch for help, as the man blames him for betraying a sworn oath, endangering Lynch's beloved Rosalind, in order to save Lynch's own life. After an attack that nearly ended his life, Garrett's virus levels are extremely strong and he is worried he's going to tip over the edge into the Fade (when bluebloods lose all control and become mindless vampires, attacking everything in sight). He is suffering from horrific nightmares, where he dreams that he attacks Perry, who he's come to realise he considers more than a friend and a work mate. Because he fears he'll hurt her, he's been keeping away from her for a month, and it's making him utterly miserable.

When two young women, clearly of highborn birth, are found murdered in a factory, the cause of death makes Perry flash back to the terrors in her past. She's convinced that she killed the madman who held her captive, infected her with the craving virus and tortured her in the name of medical science, but further investigation into the dead girls all seem to paint a gruesome picture. Moncrieff has been recalled from his exile, and has tasked Garrett with locating the missing Octavia Morrow to prove his innocence. Perry ran once before and created a new identity for herself. She realises that she'll have to flee again, but how can she leave Garrett when he finally seems to return her feelings?

In the world of McMaster's London Steampunk, the sons of the ruling classes, the Echelon, are given the craving virus that makes them faster, stronger and near immortal when they come of age. Once they have the virus, they have to feed on blood, but will be immensely powerful until the point when their virus levels go so high that they enter the Fade, and have to be put down, so as to not become ravening monsters. Any non-nobles who are accidentally infected with the virus can either join the Nighthawks or the Prince Regent's royal guard, or they will be executed. No women are given the virus, as they are believed to be too emotional and weak to handle it. The exception is the Duchess of Casavian, whose father broke the edicts, and Perry Lowell, who was infected in a horrific medical experiment she was lucky to escape.

A female blueblood has to be beyond reproach, so as to not confirm the rumours that women are inferior. Perry lives a strictly controlled existence, trying to appear as masculine as possible to blend in with the other Nighthawks. She has worked hard to overcome the trauma of her past, training with Lynch personally at fencing and fighting. Her sense of smell is unparallelled and she's one of the best trackers the guild has. She's also loved her partner, Garret Reed, for nearly as long as she's known him. Now her past appears to be catching up with her, and she's terrified that he's going to get hurt as a result. She's willing to do anything and risk everything to keep him safe.

Garrett is the son of a prostitute from the East End and worked hard to become Lynch's second in command. No one had expected Lynch's elevation to the Echelon, and the mantle of guild leader sits heavily on his shoulders. His newly discovered attraction to Perry is complicated by his fear that he'll hurt her if his virus levels go too high, and with Lynch giving him the silent treatment, he has no one to talk to about all his fears. Once he realises that Perry isn't indifferent to his advances, he's determined to win her, to spend what little time he has left before he loses control, happy with her. He just needs to figure out what secrets she's keeping from him.

Perry and Garrett's love story is a complicated one, not helped by both being far too honourable and brave for their own good, willing to make audacious sacrifices for the sake of the other. The found family aspect of the Nighthawks really comes into play in the latter half of this book, though, and while Perry is a hell of a heroine, brave, fierce, independent and capable, it's clear that she needs to learn to trust those around her and allow herself to feel happiness. A lot of the overarching story of the series is also coming to a head over the course of this story, and I look forward to seeing how it all ends in the final book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 99: "My Lady Quicksilver" by Bec McMaster

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is book 3 in an ongoing series. While it can be read as a stand alone, the world building and the overarching story line will make a lot more sense if you start at the beginning, with Kiss of Steel.

Sir Jasper Lynch is the head of the Nighthawks, basically the mostly nocturnal police force of the Steampunk London that Bec McMaster has invented here. All of the nearly four hundred Nighthawks are rogue bluebloods, people who have caught the craving virus by accident in some way (become vampires) and who are not of the Echelon, the nobility who rule the country. After an assassination attempt on the Prince Regent, Lynch is tasked with finding the notorious human revolutionary, Mercury. If Mercury is not brought to justice within a short space of time, Lynch's life is forfeit instead.

Using his enhanced senses and his decades of experience with detective work, Lynch manages to track down Mercury, and is shocked to discover that the revolutionary is a woman. Not only that, she manages to get the better of him by using her feminine wiles to distract him, then she escapes. Now the reason he wants to find her is as much professional as it's personal. Little does he realise that she's much closer than he is expecting.

Rosalind Fairchild needs to find her missing brother, who was involved with the rogue group of revolutionaries who tried to blow up a large part of the Echelon and visiting dignitaries from Scandinavia. She needs to infiltrate the Nighthawks, and gets herself hired as Sir Jasper Lynch's personal secretary. She knows that if he discovers that she is also Mercury, he will arrest her and hand her to the Echelon to be executed, but Rosalind has been trained for subterfuge by the very best, and has no intention of getting caught. She needs to locate her brother, rescue him and then she can go back to ridding the world of all bluebloods.

Rosalind is a humanist, one of the disenfranchised humans who believe revolution is necessary, as the Prince Regent and the Echelon keeps making further demands for blood taxes and humans and mechs (humans who have had to get mechanical prosthetics after injuries) are being treated worse and worse. Few know that Mercury, the infamous revolutionary, is in fact a woman. Recently, a small band of her former followers went rogue, clearly sick of waiting for results. Not content with trying to kill a large group of people with an explosion, they are now working on some sort of weapon that turns bluebloods crazy with bloodlust, slaughtering everyone near them. Rosalind is as determined to stop these rogue revolutionaries as Lynch.

Lynch is the nephew of one of the ruling Dukes on the Echelon council, but was cast off by his family when he refused to fight his cousin in a duel for the rights to be the Duke's heir. Instead he founded the Nighthawks, non-noble bluebloods trained to police the city, solve crimes and bring criminals to justice. What Lynch fears most of all is losing control, and he keeps himself in check, never drinking more than the minimum required amount of blood, never letting himself get emotionally involved. So when Mercury gets under his skin so very quickly, it awakens needs in him he'd almost let himself believe he didn't have. He knows he can never have Mercury, but his newly awakened emotions draw him towards his impudent new secretary, a lovely widow who seems determined to drive him to distraction, even as she tidies up his private life.

Less involved in the larger politics of this world, and more on investigation and police work, My Lady Quicksilver may be my favourite book in the series so far. By now, all the pieces of the world building are firmly in place and McMaster can just let her characters play. The opposites attract story at the centre of this book is delightful. Rosalind is an outlaw, Lynch an officer of the law. She's all about temptation, sensuality and fun, he's all about control, order and work. Neither wants to fall for the other, but they are helpless to control their emotions.

As well as Lynch and Rosalind's romance, I very much liked the supporting cast of Nighthawks in this book. Family is very important in these books, and Rosalind's relationship with her brothers and with her werwulfen friend also adds depth and complexity to the world. Teased in this book, and coming up in the next one, is the romance between two of Lynch's most trusted lieutenants, Garret Reed and one of the few blue blood women, Perry Lowell. I very much liked their banter in this one and hope their book is as satisfying as this one.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 98: "Archangel's Enigma" by Nalini Singh

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

This is book 8 in a series, not the place to start. There is far too much stuff in this book furthering the ongoing story arc for this to be an especially satisfying book to start the series with. Start at the beginning with Angels' Blood.

There are dark rumours that Lijuan, the Archangel of Death, is about to murder one of the sleeping Ancients (powerful archangels who have gone to ground to sleep for millennia so as to stave off insanity). As this goes against everything angelkind considers holy, Raphael sends one of his trusted Seven, the mysterious Naasir, his most skilled tracker, to find the sleeping place of Alexander. Naasir has decided that so many others in his family have found happiness with their mates, he too wants one. He's been searching for seven months, with no luck, but will postpone his quest for his mate to aid his archangel.

Andromeda is a young angelic scholar, fifteen days away from coming of age (when she turns 400). The granddaughter of the archangel Charismemnon, dealer of poisons, disease, pain and debauchery, Andromeda fled his court and has been working to prove herself at the Refuge, devoted to learning, record keeping and all manner of other scholarly arts so despised by the kin at her grandfather's court. She knows that on her birthday, she has to return, bound to serve there for five hundred years, a service she dreads with every fibre of her being. Because her specialised field of study is the burial places of the Ancients, Andromeda is asked to help Naasir locate Alexander. At first she is startled by his strange manner and mysterious origins, but it doesn't take long before they form a bond - making the thought of five hundred years away from him seem even more unbearable to Andromeda.

 It's clear that while working on furthering the plot of the ongoing arc of these books, the building war between Raphael and Lijuan, the dangers of the ongoing Cascade, the changes and threats to angel-, vampire- and humankind, Nalini Singh is also determined to have fun, playing around with different sub-genres. Archangel's Shadows was mostly a police procedural, this is an adventure novel, with a quest and a chase against time at its centre. Andromeda and Naasir are the unlikely pair who have to join forces, solve the puzzles and finish the quest before their rivals catch up to them. Yet there is also the complication of Andromeda's family obligations and the service she's expected to offer at her grandfather's court. The book doesn't end when the quest is complete, there is more to solve before the two lovers can have their HEA.

Naasir's origins have always been a mystery. He is clearly unique, in that he appears to be both a vampire, yet not. He has silver eyes and hair and an unparallelled ability to track. He can sprout claws, seems to occasionally purr and in previous books, there have been hints that he may sport stripes in the right light. He is both a ferociously efficient hunter and almost childlike in his manner. His found family means everything to him, and those close to him hold him in great affection. In this book, his brutal and heart-breaking origins are revealed, and it's clear why there is only one of him. I have always liked Naasir as a supporting character in the previous books, and he was a wonderful hero in this.

Born into the court of the Archangel of plague and pestilence, with parents who went out of their way to break any sexual, physical or moral taboo, Andromeda had enough and fled while she was still considered too young to take care of herself. Lying about her obligations to her family, she found a new home in the archives of the Refuge, immersing herself in ancient texts and languages, doing her very best to forget the day when she has to return. Yet knowing she can't be weak, she's been training herself in martial arts and swordplay, so she can defend herself when she finally has to return. Because of the debauched surroundings she grew up in, Andromeda has sworn a vow of celibacy, only to be broken if she is presented with an ancient Grimoire, believed to have been lost forever. Before she meets Naasir, Andromeda never had cause to regret her vow for a second.

Naasir initially doubts that Andi, as he calls her, can be his mate. She appears soft and bookish and no mate of his would swear a vow of celibacy. He quickly discovers that the angel has secrets, however, and that there is much more to her than he first expected. As the two grow closer, and their attraction to each other increases, Andromeda declares herself willing to break her vow for Naasir. He refuses to let her, because he's learned that it is imperative to keep one's promises, especially to oneself and swears he will track down her stupid Grimoire, and afterwards, she will let him do whatever he pleases. She willingly agrees, hoping that he can fulfil his promise before she has to start her forced servitude in her grandfather's court and give him up for centuries.


For all the darkness that is spreading in the the universe of these books, and for all the pain in both Naasir and Andromeda's past, their courtship is a playful one and this book was so much fun. It's by far my favourite of the Guild Hunter books since probably the second book in the series. I hope that some of the lightness can continue in future books, even as the overall story takes a more serious turn.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 96: "Archangel's Shadows" by Nalini Singh

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is book 7 in an ongoing series, and as such, not the place to start reading. This review will contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, because it's impossible not to mention some of the things that have happened before this book began. The first book in the series is Angels' Blood and I highly recommend it.

After the devestating attacks on New York, archangel Raphael and his consort Elena are trying to re-group, rebuild and calm the population. When a dessicated body is found, it looks like it was killed in a way reminiscent of how Lijuan, the insane archangel who tried to destroy New York, Raphael and his people, would drain her victims completely of life force to gain strength. Releasing the news of the body would only cause panic, so the death needs to be investigated with subtlety and stealth. Ashwini, one of Elena's old Guild Hunter colleagues is recovering from a near-fatal cut she sustained during the battle and is eager and willing to do some investigating. Like all Guild Hunters, Ashwini is a skilled tracker and can handle herself in a fight. She's also gifted and sometimes haunted with the ability to sense the secrets, memories and experiences of those she touches, often suffering terrible nightmares after just brushing against someone by accident. With older immortals, like some of the angels or vampires in the city, she doesn't even need to touch, their mere presence is enough to trigger her visions.

One of the few people who doesn't affect her in such a way is Janvier, the centuries old Cajun vampire who has sometimes been her target, but more often her ally. He has wanted Ashwini since the first time he saw her, and as the years have passed and they have sparred, flirted and co-operated more frequently, his feelings for her have only grown. She keeps him at a distance, but after she nearly died in the battle for New York, Janvier is determined to never leave her side. He knows that there are secrets in her past that make her reluctant to take their relationship to the next level, but having lived for centuries, he's not averse to waiting a while for her to make up her mind. Now they need to track down the monster who slowly tortured and murdered a young woman, making sure her killer doesn't hurt anyone else.

Unlike in most of the books in this series, Ashwini and Janvier already know each other well by the start of the book. Their first encounter involved Ashwini having to hunt down the vampire, who had gone rogue from his angel master and him leading her on a merry chase through the bayou of Louisiana. Over the course of the series, Janvier has gone to work for Raphael, the archangel of New York and he and Ashwini are allies rather than antagonists. There has always been strong attraction and sexual tension between them, but due to her abilities, Ashwini keeps herself from getting too close to anyone. While Janvier is one of the individuals she can be around, and who seems to actually keep her grounded, she can't bring herself to actually initiate a relationship with him, as there are secrets in her past that make it impossible for her to commit to anyone.

Janvier loves Ashwini and is none too happy that she nearly died recently. He wants to spend the rest of his immortal life with her, but due to the effect of older immortals on her abilities, Ashwini hates the idea of being turned into a vampire. She's worried it will amplify her powers, causing her to go insane from the sensory input. So she keeps flirting with Janvier, but taking it no further. Her near-death experience and the tender care that her Cajun took of her while she was recovering makes her want to tell him the full truth about why they can't be toghether. She's just terrified that the truth will drive him away forever.

While a lot of the previous books in the series (especially the ones focused primarily on Raphael and Elena) have driven the story arc forward, this is a quieter book, with a murder investigation in its centre. While trying to negotiate the new status of their relationship, Janvier and Ashwini try to identify the withered husk of a woman they found in a dumpster, so they can narrow down the suspects and discover who murdered her. Because the way she was killed is so similar to Lijuan's power, the Tower is very determined to track the guilty party quickly. As they keep investigating, it seems the murder of the young woman might be connected to a strange new drug that causes uncontrollable blood lust among the vampires in the city. All signs point to someone further trying to destabilize Raphael's territory, making his subjects feel unsafe.

There have been some hit and miss books in the series, but the last few, this included, I have very much enjoyed. I liked that Ash and her Cajun already knew each other well and that they just needed to figure out a way to really be together, without any of the drama of falling in love and acknowledging their new feelings. There is a big, established supporting cast in these books, including Raphael and Elena, and the vampires and angels that make up Raphael's most loyal followers, the Seven. Now several of them have spouses of their own, and it's clear that Naasir, the most feral and mysterious of all of them is ready to find a special someone of his own. I like that Elena is so determined to discover what he is, which seems to be some sort of cat shapeshifter/vamprire hybrid. I'm very much looking forward to discovering the truth behind his origins and who his intended turns out to be.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 94: "Black Heart" by Holly Black

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is book 3 of a trilogy. This review, and even the book summary, is likely to contain spoilers for previous books in the series. Skip this until you're caught up.

In the third and final volume of Holly Black's Curse Worker trilogy, Cassel has forced his older brother Barron into working for the Feds, and he's loving every minute of it, as he's able to use his memory working to get a whole load of cool fringe benefits. Cassel can't be officially recruited by them yet, as he's not 18, but the deal is that once he's finished his final year of school, he'll come work for them too. Now he's mainly using his practise missions to spy on Lila, the girl he loves and who pretty much hates him after the emotion work his mother forced on her wore off. Lila Zacharov is following in her father's footsteps, having quit school and become a gangster in training.

Having not seen or heard from his mother in a while, Cassel discovers that Lila's father has her under house arrest for stealing and fencing his most prized possession, the resurrection diamond, a stone believed to have belonged to Rasputin, and whose owner can never be killed. He's been wearing a fake for years, but would like the original returned, and Cassel has no choice but to agree to try to locate it. Anything to be nearer to Lila, who lives in the same flat where his mother is now imprisoned.

The Feds need Cassel's help in neutralising a senator, who after emotion work was performed on him by a number of individuals, including Cassel's mother, has become dangerously unstable. He keeps proposing mandatory testing of all citizens, wanting those who are proven to be workers fired from their jobs, and in some extreme cases, imprisoned. As the government also employs magically gifted workers, it's very much in their interest that the sentator is taken out of the equation. They want Cassel to change him into a dog, who they can keep contained. Every instinct Cassel has says this is a trap, and his brother's snooping confirms it.

There is also a fairly boring subplot involving a school friend of Cassel's, hiring him and his roommate Sam to help her retrieve some photographs she's being blackmailed for. I thought the whole plot dragged quite a bit. It felt like it, as well as the extensive relationship drama between Sam and his girlfriend Daneca had been inserted mainly as padding, because Cassel's two main story lines - his doomed love for Lila and his moral quandary about transforming the senator, weren't enough to fill out the book.

What I really like about this whole series is that it's mostly a contemporary fiction series, with just a slight magical twist. The various worker powers are interesting to me, as are the implications of what such powers and the fear of them would do to a society. The books explore prejudice, fear and discrimination in an interesting way, and there is a tremendous range of morality in the various characters. There is very little right or wrong, just a whole lot of grey areas. Cassel isn't a very nice person, and has a lot of bad stuff in his past and present, but he keeps trying to protect the people he cares about and protect them as best he can. Sometimes he has to break the law to do that, but he doesn't want to become worse than he already is. He's killed people, but only because his brothers used him and made him forget it. He's caused a lot of pain to people he cares about, especially Lila, and so desperately wants to make up for it.

I found Barron's slight redemptive arc in this last book both promising and with the reveal of the picture on his phone, and what Cassel did with it, a bit heart-breaking. Barron has clearly been a sociopathic dick for much of the books, but you do get the sense that the brothers love each other despite all that. Their relationship with each other, and their mother, is very dysfunctional. I like their grandfather though, he's a nice guy, for all that he's been a mob assassin for much of his life.

I liked Cassel's solution to the dilemma he faced, and the tension in the aftermath, where his smart-arse ways were suddenly not enough to get him out of a bind. It was nice to see that the trust he'd learned to put in others over the course of the series paid off and that by the end of the series, things were seeming to look up for him. I said in my review for Red Glove that this would make an interesting TV show - a sort of paranormal Sopranos for young adults. Cast it with hot young things and it would probably do really well on the CW.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 93: "Red Glove" by Holly Black

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the second book in a trilogy, and as such not the best place to start. This review will contain some spoilers for book one, because it's impossible to write about this book without talking about things that were revealed in the first one. So if you are new to these Holly Black books, go find White Cat - that's where to begin the trilogy.

Cassel Sharpe lives in a world where a select percentage of the population have certain gifts. People who, if they touch your skin with theirs, can alter your luck or prospects, manipulate or delete your memories, alter or change your emotions, break your bones or heal your illnesses. Some can even kill. In the United States, there is heavy legislation against what is known as such curse working. Everyone has to wear gloves, because you never know who might be a curse worker, manipulating you in some way. Because curse working is mainly seen as a bad thing (despite the fact that the majority of workers mainly use their powers to bring good luck or can heal the sick and injured), those who discover they are gifted with such powers keep it very secret, or go on to join organised crime, because all the major crime bosses are curse workers.

On the flip side of having a cool superpower, there is the blowback. Every time a worker uses his or her abilities, they get a reaction. Physical workers who use their powers to hurt or heal get sick themselves, emotion workers get very emotionally unstable, death workers actually lose body parts and memory workers lose their own memories. 

Cassel believed he was the only one in his family of grifters and curse workers not gifted. His mother can completely change people's emotions, his older brother Phillip could break people's bones, his middle brother Barron can completely rewrite or delete people's memories and his grandfather is a death worker. Cassel himself is one of the rarest of workers, he can transform items or people, alter their appearances or even change them into animals or inanimate objects. His mother and brothers wanted to keep him unaware of his gifts until he got older, so his brother Barron started changing his memories, making him think he was just a regular human. Over the course of the first book, Cassel discovers that his brothers kept rewriting his memories, using his transformation abilities for their own ends.

After Phillip and Barrons tried to move up in the world by trying to assassinate Zacharov, the local curse worker crime boss, Cassel made a deal that saved their lives, but led to the death of Zacharov's nephew Anton. Because of all the blowback from his memory cursing, Barron's memory is a bit like Swiss cheese, and he has to surround himself with photographs, notebooks, post-it notes and note cards to remind himself of who he is and what his memories are. Cassel has used his forgery skills to make Barron believe they don't hate each other, and go for pizza every fortnight. Their mother is out of jail, and to "thank" Cassel, manipulated Lila, Zacharov's only daughter, into being madly in love with him. Now the girl Cassel has always loved and feels horrible about betraying (I don't want to reveal how, as it's very spoilery) is attending his school, watching him like a love-sick puppy and he can't touch her, as she's effectively given a really long-lasting roofie.

To add to Cassel's difficulties, he is approached by Federal agents who tell him his brother Phillip has been murdered. The security footage show a hooded woman entering his building, wearing long red gloves. They believe Phillip's death may be the last in a string of disappearances connected to the Zacharov crime family, and want Cassel's help in solving the crimes. Looking at the pictures of the missing men, Cassel is worried he knows exactly what happened to them. Cassel is pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place. He doesn't really want to actively work for Zacharov, but can't exactly turn around and work for the government either, as that would be seen as a betrayal of everything he comes from, and could lead to the death of Barron, his mother and likely Cassel himself.

Luckily, over the course of the first book, Cassel discovered he has friends he can really confide in and trust. His roommate Sam, who is a special effects wizard and Sam's girlfriend Daneca, who is very passionate about protecting worker rights, helped him prevent his brothers' misguided assassination attempt of Zacharov. They are now his most important allies. Cassel's grandfather is also firmly on his side, with no illusions about his various family members, but as he's been part of the Zacharov crime family and lost four fingers because of death curses he's performed in the line of duty, so Cassel doesn't feel he can tell him the full truth. He needs to use all the tricks he's learned as a grifter to hold both sides off until he figures out how he can work out what is best for himself.

I first read White Cat, the first book in the series about five years ago, and it didn't really make much of an impact on me. Then one of my friends read the whole series and rated them so highly, saying he actually wanted to see a paranormal TV series based on them, and I figured I really should give them another try. When re-reading the first book, I liked it better this time and many of the problems I had with Cassel as a protagonist come from the fact that he's such a introverted loner. Once he starts opening up and making friends, he becomes a lot more relatable and I cared more about what happened to him. Which is good, because there is a more engaging plot in the first book than in this one. I was still interested in seeing where the story was going and how Cassel was going to play both sides against each other. My friend is right, this would make a very cool TV show.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 91: "A Red-Rose Chain" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is book 9 in the October Daye series. Standard disclaimers about spoilers if you're not caught up. Book one, Rosemary and Rue, is the place to start if this series is entirely new to you. It's also the September 2015 pick for the Vaginal Fantasy book club.

Just as October "Toby" Daye, changeling knight and hero of multiple faerie kingdoms seems to be catching a break, having things go her way for a change, there are unexpected developments in the court of queen Arden Windermere and Toby is sent as an ambassador to the neighbouring kingdom of Silences (located in Portland), with only three days to prevent a war. King Rhys of the Silences was given his throne by the former Queen of the Mists, who was ousted when Toby discovered she was an impostor and located Arden Windermere to take her rightful place on the throne. It's safe to say that he's unlikely to be very receptive to Toby's entreaties of peace, especially since he is also rumoured to hate and revile changelings.

While the Toby of old might have thrown herself into danger by herself, now Toby has friends, allies and a fiancee who isn't about to let her leave his side if he can help it. Toby travels to the Silences with the King of Cats, her squire Quentin, her adopted sister May, her pet rose goblin and Walther, a former resident of the Silences. While they think they are prepared for anything, what they find when they arrive is worse than they had even imagined and it's clear that their three days are not going to simple or peaceful ones. Toby is facing an enemy from her past she was hoping never to see again, and is going to have to use all her wits and allies to get out of the Silences alive.

It wouldn't be a very exciting Toby Daye book if all Toby did was sit around, flirting with Tybalt and planning her future wedding, bantering with Quentin and May and generally just going about her daily chores. Her sudden promotion to diplomat startles her, but as the Silences' declaration of war was to shoot queen Windermere's seneschal with elf shot (meaning he will sleep for a hundred years), and the new queen is young and new to the throne, there really aren't that many people around her she can trust and Toby has already proven her worth with a number of heroic deeds. Besides, it quickly becomes clear that our favourite changeling knight isn't being sent to negotiate so much as cause a distraction and stall as much as possible, while the kingdom of the Mists can prepare for imminent attack.

It's always fun to see the world of a beloved series expanding and while the Silences is clearly a faerie kingdom where there is a whole lot of badness and wrong going on, it was also interesting to see how it was being run and had been run in the past. Walther, Toby's alchemist friend, turns out to have ties to the former royal family, who were put out of commission when King Rhys took power. He really doesn't want to return there, preferring to stay at Berkeley to teach chemistry and working towards his tenure, but he can't really refuse a direct request from his friend either.

While I found the first couple of books in this series a bit slow going (I liked them a lot better when re-reading the series a few years back), I have been pretty much hooked since I was a third into book three, and for the last four years (maybe five now), I've been counting the days from when I finish one book until the next is released. It's one of my favourite series, both because of the interesting mix of paranormal and real world ideas, combined with an excellent protagonist and a wonderful supporting cast. The previous book in the series was one of those game-changer books that finished off a lot of plot threads and revealed a whole load of things that had been hinted at for years. This book is relatively quiet in comparison, but still a very good read. As in most urban fantasy, there is a good range of diverse and complex female characters, but there McGuire is very good at representation with regards to different sexual preferences and identities, without it being made any kind of special issue of. In this, there was even a trans-gender character, which isn't something I think I've come across in paranormal fantasy before.

Since I have to wait another year for Toby Daye 10, I really should check out McGuire's InCryptid series, which I've also heard very good things about.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

Yet another Reading Challenge: RIP X

It's that time of year again, when it gets darker and colder and the Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP) Reading Challenge kicks off. This is the tenth year (my third, I think), and this year the challenge is hosted over on The Estella Society. The challenge runs from September 1st to October 31st and while I may be a few days late in signing up for it, I've already read a bunch books in September that fit in with the challenge. As always the challenge is to read books that can be classified as mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, supernatural or anything sufficiently moody that seems to fit in with the genres above. You can go to the website to see the various levels of the challenge - I will, as always be doing all three Perils, because let's face it, the genres in question are pretty much what I read all year.

Let the autumnal reading begin!

Artwork credited to Abigail Larson.