So what have you been reading?

This is a retelling of the tale of the seven boys turned into geese and saved by their sister who has to make them shirts while never speaking until the task is complete.  The setting is the usual Regency England with the Elemental Masters but it is set in the countryside and only at the end do we even see the White Lodge get involved.  The father is a minor lord who managed to get a swanmaid to marry him and then he hid her cloak of feathers so she couldn’t leave. When she gets it back she leaves and never returns abandoning her 8 children.  The four sets of twins, 7 brothers and one sister are mostly ignored by their father and are surprised when years later he shows up with a new bride. The story follows the tale’s framework and the usual ending happens. This story does show what happens with courtesans and how some made a living. Granted they didn’t use dark magic like the one in the story did. But the story also shows how small acts of kindness can pay back to the person when they need it the most. 

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This is a SF mystery with time travel. A super rich man has been murdered along with a clone of him murdered at a second site.  A retired cop is brought back to help with the case since she has a history with the victim.  There is a veteran cop familiar with her and a newbie cop and the three of them go to the murder site to work on the case.  I don’t want to get details since it will give too much of the plot away. 

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The third book has Alex going to America with their valet but not their horse in order to help Dr Denton. Denton’s cousin has gone missing at an abandoned coal mine in West Viginia.  Of course, things are not simple and Alex learns more about mines then they ever wanted to know. Almost as eerie as the first book and leaving you with the feeling that we all need a friend like Alex in our lives even if we hope to never truly need someone of Alex’s mettle to help with those kinds of things

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

The entire Price clan is still reeling from their battle with the Covenant of St George. Mary the family’s babysitter ghost finally returns after months thought lost in the battle, a little bit of normalcy returns but her charges are still grieving their losses.   Elsie and Arthur lost their mom and even before that Arthur lost himself from Sarah’s actions in a previous book.  Mary has them go with her to the East Coast to investigate why ghosts are disappearing in the Boston area. The anima mundi that has returned with the crossroads power that has been destroyed in a previous book has set Mary on the task and she now has to learn what her new power and limitations are. The story is good but the underpinnings of everything is the characters dealing with overwhelming grief  

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A good solid ending to this trilogy with Ada and Rian on Earth to stop the nanobots launching with the software that will hold the restoration of the climate hostage to constant payments to keep it working. Rian still doesn’t believe that Ada is just doing it only so the correct software is updated. He thinks she will still manage a heist as well. Ada does pull off what she plans to do as she has for the previous two books and hopefully Rian will come after her and her heart.

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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.

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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.

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This is an excellent stand-alone book in this series. You get the backstory for Nadya but you don’t need to know any of the other books to enjoy this. Nadya was born without part of her arm but she never missed it. She was placed in a state run orphanage and adopted by an American couple. One of the things she loved in Russia was a tortoise and her new parents thought it was turtles due to a mistranslation and show her pond in the neighborhood of her new home. She grows to love watching the turtles and one day sees one that has “Be Sure” carved on its shell. When she goes to help this turtle, she falls into the door under the water of the pond and finds herself in a water world where people and giant turtles live together.  A wonderful story but a bit bittersweet for Nadya at the end.

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When one is given the choice of dying or going to live as their favorite character in their favorite book you might not want to pick the one that is fated to die. Rae is dying of cancer, and she shares her love of Time of Iron with her sister to distract her from it. But stepping into that world isn’t as easy as she thinks. She quickly realizes there are a few plot points that she has forgotten, and she better work out how to avoid her own execution.  Rae is snarky and she does enjoy being the bad girl of the book. As she is changing the narrative as fast as she can in order to survive and to get the emperor to marry his fated love along with doing the one thing she needs to get back to the real world. 

The snark in this book is turned up to eleven and it does subvert a lot of the current fantasy tropes of lots of bestsellers. The ending is a cliffhanger and goes to show Rae that she should have paid more attention to the clues in the book she thought she knew.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

A huge spaceship that cruises the planets on a set course that hasn’t varied for years attracts a lot of interesting guests and the occasional conference. The beginning focuses on introducing much of the crew and how they arrived at working on the Abeona. As the character intros continue to guests onboard the ship, we start to see the plot and the reason for the ship’s course of ports.   The ending felt a bit rushed compared to the slow unfolding of all the people working on the ship.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley