Category: Book Reviews

Treasures from the Hoard: Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey

Treasures from the Hoard: Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey

The third book in Mercedes Lackey’s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Fortune’s Fool is an enjoyable if eclectic remix of a number of fairy tales. Lackey takes a wide assortment of elements drawn from Russian, eastern and northern European, Japanese, and Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, and mixes them up, higgledy-piggledy… and it works surprisingly well.

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Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal makes good use of the historical “year without a summer” in the third book of her Glamourist Histories. As Britain remains locked in winter’s grip, Jane and her husband Vincent are in London to work on a glamour commission for Lord Stratton, an Irish peer. Hearing that her sister Melody is melancholic and realizing there are few marriageable men near home, the Vincents invite Melody to stay with them. Melody’s growing affection for Stratton’s son, Mr. O’Brien, is complicated by Jane’s suspicions of the young man, and by the public’s growing belief that coldmongers are responsible for the unseasonable weather. Meanwhile, Jane and Vincent must contend with his father’s relentless cruelty and ambition, as well as a shadowy plot that threatens O’Brien, the young coldmongers, Jane and Vincent’s very lives, and even the British government itself.

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Pastiche, by Celia Lake

Pastiche, by Celia Lake

I love this gentle romance, which explores how two people, through sheer politeness, respect, and upper-class British reticence, end up in a conventionally distant arranged marriage instead of the affectionate, loving union they both desire… and how they eventually find their way to the real marriage they long for (with a little outside help from an unexpected quarter.)

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Wait Until Midnight, by Amanda Quick

Wait Until Midnight, by Amanda Quick

Amanda Quick’s books are always fun, and I plowed through Wait Until Midnight in two sittings. I particularly enjoyed Caroline’s career as writer of serialized “sensation novels,” which were extremely popular in the Victorian era. Adam has an interesting backstory as well, though to my regret, it wasn’t really developed as well as it could have been.

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When a Dragon Comes Courting, by Claire Trella Hill

When a Dragon Comes Courting, by Claire Trella Hill

When a company of soldiers are quartered at a war widow’s farm, they bring with them a prisoner… and a threat to her safety. The prisoner is one of her land’s most fearsome enemies, so why does Roe find herself sympathizing with him? When a Dragon Comes Courting is a slow-burn, poignant dragon-shifter romance.

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Hideaway, by Nora Roberts

Hideaway, by Nora Roberts

I enjoyed Hideaway just as much as I did the first time I read it. However, it doesn’t quite rise to the “favorites” level, in part because Hideaway is lighter on both romance and suspense than my favorite NR books.

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