Karen

I love this series and I'm only two books in. We meet up with Ray Lilly several months after Child of Fire. He's working at a grocery store and trying to forget about the events in Hammer Bay when an investigator with the Twenty Palaces Society shows up. A group is auctioning off a predator, and they're being sent in to gather information.

On the one hand I'm disappointed by the fact that we see less of Annalise in this book, as I find the interaction between she and Ray a lot of fun. On the other hand, we get to see Ray flounder about on his own without any magical backup, making his own mistakes and coming into his own. I'm also pretty intrigued by the insinuations that Ray is something more than your average Wooden Man. It's a bit obvious, or he wouldn't be our main character, but hints are definitely being dropped that Ray might be something special, or have more of a future in the Twenty Palaces Society than as low tier cannon fodder. It's a great hook and I'll definitely be coming back for more.

I can't resist books that look like religious thrillers. I don't know why, since I have yet to find one that's satisfying in any way. Elisha's Bones has an interesting enough premise. The bones of the biblical prophet Elisha have the power to bring back the dead, so an old, rich, and terminally ill man hires our protagonist (an skeptic archaeologist with a tragic past, natch) to find them and retrieve them. What follows is a bunch of globe trotting, whizzing bullets, and exploding cars, all leading to an extremely unsatisfying ending. Unfortunately there are no real surprises in this book and no real twists. You see what the author is about to do long before he does it and are left with a sense of disappointment.

This book is fun. It's not complicated, it's not deep, and it's a bit predictable, but it was still an enjoyable read. There were a few annoying plot bits, but I was able to overlook them and I'll probably read the next one.

Basically just a retelling of Cinderella, with a few changes thrown in. Nothing spectacular occurs; the protagonist gets everything she wants without much difficulty or effort of her own. Disappointing.

Nope, nope, nope. I loved A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske and was hoping this would be similar. But the one character immediately starts being sexually aggressive towards the other in a very rapey way. And then the second character is like ‘well, if everyone thinks we're having sex, I guess you might as well just have me, so do it' and he doesn't act at ALL like he wants it, like he's interested, just “might as well” and it's not an act he PARTICIPATES in, it's a thing that is done TO him. Shades of rape. I couldn't make it past that scene. Maybe it gets better? Maybe it turns into a healthy relationship? But I'm not going to make it that far.

I tried, I really did. But it was just too over the top.

I dnf'd this book. Not necessarily because it's bad; but because it read like it was simply a written version of someone's DnD campaign. Which is perfectly fine for those who like that style, but it was overly simplistic for me, and after the first couple of chapters I wasn't at all engaged.

I'm not giving a star rating, because I don't think it's a BAD book, it's just not a book for me.