So what have you been reading?

Carl and Donut are still alive and on the 6^th floor. There are outside groups that are not happy with how he finished the 5^th 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

Kathy is separated from her husband but finds herself pregnant after a hookup with him one night, she is also working at a job that she has never shared any details with him about it.  She collects souls after they die and helps them get to the next stage. But one day the soul of a teen boy is missing and that never happens. Her boss tells her she needs to find it ASAP because if they don’t go on to the next stage in 45 days they become a ghost.  Things are not right with Connor’s death and when she does find him after a bit of snooping she finds out that someone from her company is responsible for his death. Now Kathy doesn’t know who to trust and turns to a retired coworker and her soon to be ex husband to help figre out who killed Connor. Not a lot of details about the S.C.Y.T.H.E, the company that does this besides the few basics but by the end of the book there will be some shakeups happening.

And now Carl and Donut have made it to level 5 with Katia still with them. They need to take over four quadrants in the bubble they are trapped in with other crawlers. More over the top death and destruction with Carl’s plans not always going the way they should but they still get the job done.  He is working hard to throw sand in the gears of the game in every way he can.  The AI is definitely not always helping Borant out and at some point someone is going to figure out that he really does have the teacher’s edition of the textbook.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

Happenchance finds Cleric Chih traveling with a young bride and her family on the way to a wedding.  The only odd thing is their constant companion, the neixin Almost Brilliant is missing.  The arrival of the party is interrupted by the adult son of the groom telling the family to ask how many wives the groom has had before.  Nhung and the Cleric are soon exploring the grounds and finding things that point to some mystery about Lord Guo.  By the third evening everything comes to a head and the story wraps up into a great conclusion.  I hate to say any more lest I ruin the surprises. It certainly merits a reread to see the clues that were sprinkled in the story and might have been missed the first time.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

The overall plot arc kept me reading the book but I just couldn’t get into this couple at all. Ariadne and the Minotaur are the main characters in this one and the bonus for this book is we see more of Dionysus on the page. The Minotaur has been sent to kill Ariadne by their father for running away from him. Instead of killing her he starts to help her and the Olympians. Turns out he has had a torch for her since he first saw her as a kid living on the street and she gave him her gloves and some money. The very last few pages set up the next book.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

I had heard that this was a fun fantasy romance, and I decided to try it. The story moved along quite quickly with the heroine finding out the demons that attacked them were put under a curse by the goddess that her hometown worshiped.  Some things would pop me out of the fantasy setting and I wished it hadn’t since this could have been a better story if it wasn’t for jarring bits of dialogue that sounded way too modern for the setting.  It was cute but I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of the series.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

Dallas gets the call to investigate a murder at Crack’s club. A woman steps away from her bachelorette party and is found dead in one of the private rooms in the back. This is just the one case with no overly crazy person also gunning for Eve or anyone else, just like the title says this is a crime of passion and once again Eve and Peabody go through all the little interactions in the victim’s life to find the killer. And as usual the killer always believes he is too smart for the both of them and confirms everything that they found out through hard work.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

This is a new series and setting for Kim Harrison. Magic is not out in the open and there are 3 types of users, but only two are recognized by the community and the third one is actively hunted down.  Mages are at the top and sweepers are considered the necessary magic garbage men cleaning up the dross left over from using spells. Dross causes bad luck so no one wants it.  The third type of magic user is a spinner and they are not welcome at all and hunted down by the mages. Petra is a sweeper like her late father and works through the university cleaning up dross.  Her boss pleads with her to take a job at a new project that may have a new way of storing dross.  But something goes wrong at the uni dross storage site and it looks like a bomb has gone off on campus and she is now being hunted down by a separatist group of mages that want to rule everyone.  A well thought out magic system with and interesting premise and I can’t wait for the next book.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss