Carl and Dounut are on the 8th floor in a recreation of Cuba a few weeks before the collapse of everything. They are fighting monsters with some basis in Cubian myths and also collecting cards for a card game of fighting monsters. If you loved the other books, then you will love this and it will set up everything for the next floor in the next book.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
Almost everyone with a connection to the Folly has decided to join Dr Walid on holiday to Scotland. It seems an old friend from college sent him some samples from a dead sheep that might have been attacked by a large cat. So a camping holiday to do some hunting for Nightingale, Abigail to see magic outside a urban setting, Peter to have a beach holiday with his entire family, his Dad to play some jazz with his band, and his Mom to ride herd on everyone. Of course there is more than a mysterious large cat that appears and disappears in the area, turns out there was some sort of man killed and Peter is roped into that investigation. Everyone gets a turn on the page but the main focus is on Peter and Abigail each working on what appears to be different cases. This is a great story that really takes advantage of the setting in Scotland and maybe we can get more about magic around the entire island.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
With Eve’s boss dead things appear to be going Eve’s way but not for long. When she presents the current Prime Minster, an Elder God, Upert’s skull she finds out that time travel is tricky and now she has to find and present another version of Rupert’s head to the PM. Rupert shows up and the geas that he has on her comes roaring back to life and she is almost powerless to fight him. Eve finds herself walking the dream paths on the hunt for Rupert in the past and bring his head back to the present day. Stuck in the Regency and constrained by a woman’s role in that time, Eve has to find a way to escape the magical prison she has been put into. A great book and now it makes me want to reread the books about Eve.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
Cole is the eldest son of the current Santa Claus and is viewed as a screwup by his father but not by his younger brother. Cole has come home for the Christmas season and is told he needs to marry his childhood friend Iris, the Easter Princess. To make things interesting Halloween is sending one of their princes to also court Iris as a PR move. Cole doesn’t agree with what is dad is doing to promote and push the Christmas agenda and Kris, his younger brother agrees with him. Hex, the Halloween Prince and Cole have a spark between them immediately and it turns out they did met once before but Cole didn’t know who Hex was at the time. The overall story was cute and I would like to read more about the other holidays and their royal families.
Looking back I forgot to do a post for 2023 but checking the 2022 post I’m keeping to slightly over half my reading is review copies mostly from Edelweiss and NetGalley. I am getting more audio review books and more audio from the library. I need to pick up more nonfiction besides cookbooks. I did read several but didn’t bother to review any of them. I didn’t review much that I bought but I didn’t add in the personal copies that I had read in review version first. Definitely using my library card to its fullest potential.
This was a lot of fun. A Duke on the run from his father in law plotting his murder and a Queen of Villainy fighting her uncle to keep him from taking her throne. Neither the Duke or the Queen are what they are portrayed to their people. Felix escapes his place and heads to Saskia’s castle to ask for help and try to prevent a war, but he is mistaken for an evil wizard applying for the job as Saskia’s librarian. He takes to job and is soon getting the mess of books fixed. Slowly they realize they have feelings for one another but don’t act on it. Felix’s secret comes out and the happy ever after ending shows up and the payoff was great. I really liked this one and can’t wait to see what happens with the next couple in the series.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
Hellboy and The BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan [Dramatized Adaptation]
by Christopher Golden; Thomas E. Sniegoski, Full Cast Audio
Love Hellboy and this one has Liz and Abe. Set in the 1990’s with a goddess coming back to take over the surface that Lobster Johnson and his crew had defeated in the past. Good quips and great cast made me miss that we didn’t get more Del Toro Hellboy films.
Carl and Donut are still alive and on the 6th floor. There are outside groups that are not happy with how he finished the 5th floor but now for now he has made some bargains and gotten a lawyer to represent him in court cases since the lawsuits are flying thick outside the game. There is more of the outside world politics and the events that happened on the surface at the end of the previous book will come into play on this floor. I got a laugh at Carl having to leave to go to a convention about the crawl as a guest . Now to track down the next book.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
This novella is from Zane’s point of view. At the Summer Solstice party and charged with giving a gift to a woman his grandmother expects him to wed for a financial alliance for his house. When the Techwave breaks into the research lab of the house hosting the party Zane is right on them to figure out what technology they are trying to steal. But the mystery gets even more interesting when he sees Asterin Armas, his potential bride in the lab as well. The Techwave grabs her as a hostage and but Zane is able to free her, but the Techwave gets away and has what they are looking for. Zane has several interesting conversations after all the action and you get a new spin on his character. 
Ropa Moyo is now working for England’s Royal Sorcerer and money seems to be coming her way in to be able to take care of her grandmother, but everything crashes down with Scottish magical society fighting in the Library and then her grandmother is murdered and she is blamed for it. On the run from the police, her new boss turns away from her and even one of her best friends has turned their back, she has to survive to find her Gran’s killer and learn more about her father since what she has always been told wasn’t the truth. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and I can’t wait to see how they solve what happened in the last chapter.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Netgalley
What Song the Sirens Sang by Simon R. Green, Christopher Walker (reader), Bradley Foster Smith (reader), Colleen Delany (reader), Scott McCormick (Goodreads Author) (reader), Shanta Parasuraman (reader), Kay Eluvian (reader), Ian Russell (reader), Jenna Sharpe (reader), Keval Shah (reader), Khaya Fraites (reader)
Gideon and Annie are now in charge of Old Harry’s Place and need to find good things to stock it. When a rock that contains the song of a siren is stolen from them, they are hot on the trail of who did it to get it back and show the world you can’t steal from Gideon. But before they can start to find it they need to find Switch it Sally, who has been kidnapped from her honeymoon with Lex. Everything ties together and with the help of a new character they solve the theft.
Sherry works as a librarian in a small town in New York and has a habit of helping the police solve murders. It sounds like a TV show and Sherry starts to realize that maybe something is causing all the deaths to happen. With the help of the town’s priest, she starts working on the latest murder and to make it worse the victim is her boyfriend. When her cat starts talking to her and the police chief demands she investigate in a voice other than their own, she comes to the conclusion that she is solving all these killings to entertain a demon. A good read for anyone that likes cozy mysteries and poking fun at television shows.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
A shipwrecked 6-year-old girl is found and is in possession of a new demon. Penric helps her learn the language of where she is and makes sure her demon doesn’t go into ascension. Everyone thinks that the best course of action is to rid her of it since demons should be in adults but this is Penric and things don’t always go the way they should. A great story as always in this universe.
I did the audio for this because I wanted to hear him describe his life. There is a lot of privilege growing up and some distinct obstacles due to nothing more than being second born in a family where the first male is all important and the rest are just window dressing. It was an interesting peek into a very weird fishbowl lifestyle.
Another good collection of stories set in the Valdemar universe with many returning writers. The main theme of the collection is reflected in the title so reading it all in one setting does bang the drum of the theme a bit much. But the Lackey story is a Vanyel story that is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet so there was that payoff. Not as many Herald stories but several to deal with Bards.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
A tiny restaurant that doesn’t advertise offers a big service, to recreate a dish from your past. This father and daughter duo get the story about the dish and then track down exactly how to recreate the dish for someone who wants to eat it again. Some of these deal with loss and the dish they want is something made by someone that ha died. It is a bit of a cozy mystery but with no death and a lot of great food descriptions.
A short book about the science of space travel. I did this as an audio and I really liked it. It covered some of the problems that using various methods of propulsion in space and why we may need some breakthroughs to make it viable for humans to leave our solar system.
Another great story about Cormac and Amelia. When Odysseus shows up at their place, the trouble he brings may be more than they can handle. Part of the fight to contain the demon has them traveling back in time and when they do that, they bump into vampires from the Kitty universe books. A good story and the ending of the story is great. 
The third book in the series has Piper the lich doctor, a minor character from book one and Galen, a paladin of a dead god looking into a murder. The bonus to this is finding out more about gnoles. I like this fantasy universe and holding off reading the next one for when I need a dose of warmth.
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timeasmymeasure
