#104 Honor and Shadows by Jessie Mihalik

 

This is a good intro to the first book. You meet the crew and see their personalities as they are trying to bring in a large bounty.  Not too much to say about it since it is only a novelette.

#105 Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien, Cheryl May (Narrator)

 

Lana Lee is back working at her parents’ restaurant and after delivering the plaza owner’s weekly lunch order he is found dead from his shellfish allergy.  Lana decides to look into it since she believes Thomas the cook is innocent, and she knows she didn’t do it either.  Of course the detective working the case has to warn her to stop looking into it especially after it looks like the widow was possibly poisoned at the remembrance dinner. With the help of her roommate, she uncovers lots of secrets about the people she has known for years. A good intro to a cozy mystery series. 

#106 Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

 

A direct sequel to Spelunking Through Hell, has them finding a world for the refugees of the bottle world they were trapped in to settle and then get Thomas, Alice and Sally back to Earth. In typical fashion things never give them a break and they are sent to New York by the Queen of the Routewitches to deal with something that must be taken care of now. The novella at the end is a great payoff for fans of the mice. I enjoyed learning more about them and the event that caused a mouse to join the worship of the newest of the family gods.

#107 Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Set in our would where there is magic and magical beings but hidden from humans.  Elle is hiding her talents for magic and art by working creating glyphs for employees of the magical company she works for. A regular customer that she has a connection with asks her to do something that is more in her power range and even as she protests she can’t she does agree to do it because she has a crush on this half elf in hiding. Everyone things Luc is a full elf, but Elle knows the difference by using her family magic of medicine to tune the glyphs to him. Elle is an immortal descendant of a Chinese god of medicine and is hiding to protect her older brother who had his magic stripped from him during a fight with their younger brother.  Luc is a highly ranked agent at the agency that does missions for the head of company no matter how much he may not like the mission. His boss has magical control over him and had had him do things he loathes. Luc figures out that Elle is hiding something more than just her power level and even as they slowly become closer things secrets are going to come out on both sides and Elle will have to face what happened in her past with her family. 

I really liked this book, the setting felt fresh and didn’t bog itself down with tons of worldbuilding. Just enough to get the story told and leave lots of room for more tales in this setting with either these characters or new people. 

 

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

#108 Grave Beginnings by R.R. Virdi, Travis Baldree (Narrator)

This audio was a lot of fun. Graves wakes up in body that has been buried in another coffin.  After escaping and heading to the nearest church he gets his instructions to solve the murder of the body he is wearing.  He doesn’t have many memories of his previous life, but he does have memories and skills of the previous bodies he has worn.  This time he is solving the death of a museum curator that seems to have found himself in much younger body.  He normally works alone but he gets cornered by a tiger statue brought to life and is in the hands of the FBI.  The FBI agent for some reason believes that he is telling the truth and then helps him find just what killed the curator and causing a lot of magical damage along with other mysterious deaths of other museum coworkers.

 

I will certainly be listening to the rest of the audios in the coming months.