The Serpent’s Egg – Caroline Stevermer

This book is thirty five years old (with a nice, new cover) and in hindsight, that’s absolutely obvious when reading it. The plot is very quick, very fun, and very fast. I think today, you would have gotten a lot more detail about the various intrigues.

Basically, the evil Duke of Tilbury is out to kill the queen, and a merry band of some of her other subjects want to save her. Why they want to save her is a little beyond me – she’s not actually that nice. But the actual merry band is a lot of fun.

I’ll confess, I sometimes miss the slimmer books I read in the 80s and 90s. Books these days are more often ponderous tomes with lots of detail and maybe lots of story. It’s a little refreshing to just take a quick dip.

A Coup of Tea – Casey Blair

Miyara is a princess, on the eve of the day she’s supposed to dedicate herself in service to her people. She’s the fourth daughter, so her older sisters have taken their own paths, and she’s at a loss for what to do herself. So she chooses to leave, which exiles herself from her family.

So this does start with what could be a really silly premise – princess wanders off and manages to find herself among her people. Which is what happens, but it works. Miyara ends up in a city near the Cataclysm, where magic has changed the land, and forced many people as refugees into her country of Istalam. And where she always understood that these people were being taken care of, and treated fairly, she finds out that the reality is more complicated than that.

So we do get a bit of a princess to the rescue story, but it’s very kind, and very cozy. Her new friends are all interesting, good people, even the ones that shouldn’t be. I really enjoyed this book.

Dragonshadow – Elle Katharine White

This is the second book in a series that started as a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, with dragons. Alaistair and Aliza are now married, and the story goes off into original territory.

There’s some good world building here – quite a bit of interesting mythology, with a twist, comes in. But the story can be a little irritating – Alaistair and Aliza have to fight a few times to establish how he feels about her not being a dragon rider in a dragon rider’s world. I’m hoping they’ve hashed that out for good, because this was a good set up for a show down, as long as he can trust Aliza to take care of herself for the final book.

A Spindle Splintered – Alix E. Harrow

This is a lovely interpretation of “Sleeping Beauty”, where our main character suffers from a terminal illness, and it’s the suffocation of her parents’ love and trying to help her that’s ruled her life. She’s an adult now, on borrowed time, waiting for her figurative spinning wheel to appear, when instead, she’s sucked into another world, where she can change the destiny of another girl with her own similiar story.

Bringing the real world into a fairy tale retelling like this really works – there’s something so poignant about Zinnia’s story (she’s got a flower name, because of course, she has to). It’s quick too – very much to the point, because the author could have tried to make this about all the Sleeping Beauties, but kept it very controlled. I’m interested to see where the follow up book goes.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy – Megan Bannen

Hart and Mercy have hated each other since they first met. Hart is a marshal on the border of the town where Mercy manages her family’s business. They’re undertakers, and Hart often has to bring what are essentially zombies back to Birdsall and Son when he catches them roaming about.

It turns out, they’re both pretty unhappy – Hart’s lost his mentor and is fighting with his former partner, now his boss, over it. And Mercy’s not sure how they’re going to keep the family business afloat. Hart decides one day to write a letter to “a friend”, and Mercy ends up receiving it.

This book owes a lot to Pride and Prejudice, but it’s with great world building, and lovely side relationships. I really enjoyed the mythology of this world – the author got a lot in there without having to resort to a ton of exposition dumps. The romance is sweet, and Mercy’s family is a hoot. I very much enjoyed this book. It’s definitely more on the romance side of things, but if you enjoy good fantasy world-building, and don’t think you like romance, I still think you’ll like this book.

Unnatural Magic – C. M. Waggoner

I really enjoyed this book – it’s about people outside of the regular magical structure of this particular world being able to find a place where they can wield power.

Onna is obviously magically talented, and is educated in it as much as her small town can manage. When she applies to the country’s magical college, she’s rejected, because she’s a girl. So she decides to go to the magician’s city of Hexos to see if she can get an education there.

The second story is that of Tsira, a half human troll who’s never really fit in anywhere, despite being the daughter of her clan’s leader. When she stumbles onto a half dead human soldier one night in the snow, she has no idea what this find has in store for her.

Tsira’s story is the more interesting of the two – I really enjoyed how the author made an effort to make troll and human cultures very different. The culture shock is very interesting. The two stories do eventually converge, when both Onna and Tsira investigate some troll murders.

Like I said, I really enjoyed this book – it was different. Good system of magic, and interesting characters. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more in this world.

Symphony for a Deadly Throne – E. J. Mellow

I preordered this book – I’d enjoyed the first two books in the series enough that I knew I wanted to read this sooner rather than later. I did enjoy it, but, it’s my least favorite of the three.

This is the eldest sister – Arabessa’s – story. They are the daughters of the Thief King – a seemingly immortal figure. But their father is mortal, and it’s clear that there must be some sort of succession, and in this book, we find out what that is. And Arabessa is invited to the trials to be the new king.

This story also features her romance with Zimri – who we’ve met before. He was an orphan brought into the household as a child, and even though he and Arabessa have tried to keep their relationship under wraps, everyone in the family knows what’s going on. Which does make that part of the storyline a little irritating – I just don’t buy it. I mean, it’s terribly romantic, but I think I’m a little too old to deal with that kind of thing without a way better backstory.

So, I did enjoy this book, and I do think it nicely finished out the trilogy, but the first two are my favorites.

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians – Brandon Sanderson

This is a fun book – it’s a middle reader, so goes by pretty fast.

The conceit is that Brandon Sanderson is the name a young man named Alcatraz is using to get his story out to those of us in the lands the Librarians are in charge of. They’re in an evil conspiracy to hide the rest of the magical world from us, you see. The action is completely preposterous, as it really should be for an adventure story for this age group. I would have enjoyed this thoroughly when I was that age.

Soul Taken – Patricia Briggs

It really sucks getting on the bad side of any of the big bads of this world. This particular book features some particularly nasty vampire infighting, with some rather serious implications for everyone else in the area (of course).

This does seem like a bit of a placeholder story – nothing is particularly new, just variations on some things we’ve seen before. It really feels like the set up to a chess match – certain identities are revealed, powers are clarified, and things then seem to simmer back down to normal. I do hope this is setting up something epic.

Jolene – Mercedes Lackey

I enjoyed this book a lot, partially for reasons outside of the actual story. First – I love that to move the Elemental Masters series into America, the author decided to use national treasure Dolly Parton as inspiration, and that she dedicated the book to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The second is that I work with several people that live in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee (one of my company’s main campuses is in Chattanooga). I always thought it was a curiously named town, and it turns out, it was once two different towns, and Soddy was a Company town. You learn something every day.

Story-wise, I enjoyed this. Anna lives with her parents in Soddy – she’s always been sickly. Knowing what this series is about, I immediately figured she must be pretty strong in Earth-based powers, and having the mine nearby was poisoning her. Her mother has an older sister that’s been trying to get Anna to come to live with her for years, and when Anna’s father’s health starts to precipitously decline, he finally agrees to send her away. (There was no love lost between her father and Aunt Jinny.)

Jinny is a witchy-woman who’s living in a holler outside another mine town, but far enough away from the effects of the mine. She quickly realizes the extent of Anna’s power, and starts to train her. There are also neighbors about, including a local farm with an interesting eldest son, and the mysterious Jolene, who appears where she wills, and may or may not be Anna’s friend.

I really liked who Jolene actually is, and how that worked into the story. This is a quiet book – the action feels a little formulaic to bring about the set up that you’d expect, since this is based on a rather famous song. But I really appreciate the setting, and I think it fits well into this larger series.