Author: Jessica Crawford

Book Review: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES by Barbara Truelove

| Jessica Crawford

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove is a 407 page standalone novel published by Bindery Books through Ezeekat Press in 2025.

Genre:

Science Fiction, Fantasy

Synopsis:

Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi, Of Monsters and ​Mainframes ​is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.

Opening Line:

Awaiting input…

My Thoughts:

From the laugh out loud humor to the nerve-wracking escapades, the hodgepodge group of vibrant characters to the heartening narrative threads of love and found family, this story is an absolute delight!

I hate it. I hate is as much as I hate docking systems that put zeros on the end of my name. I hate it more because it destroyed my spider drones, who were only ever polite and useful, and killed my passengers, who were neither of those things but were mine to look after. I hate it as much as I’ve ever hated anything. I hate it as much as I hate Dracula.

Demeter is the AI of a large passenger ship that shuttles people between Earth and habitation units lightyears away. She always tries her best within the confines of her programming, and it’s really not her fault that all the humans onboard are slaughtered by the ancient vampire who stowed away in a container of soil in the cargo hold before reaching their destination. Or that almost all of her next group of passengers fall at the hands (paws?) of a werewolf. But unfortunately for her, the humans don’t believe in the existence of the supernatural, and assume Demeter’s programming is faulty in some way and she has been malfunctioning.

After a few more similar encounters with the preternatural (not all of whom are necessarily enemies), Demeter winds up with a ragtag crew that, in some ways, have become family to one another. They set out for revenge on the creature who started Demeter’s downward spiral into infamy, the one that earned her the nickname of ghost ship and got her painfully optimized by the engineers of the transport company that owns her: they are going to take down Dracula.

The chapters (many of which have hilarious names – for instance, one chapter ends with the question, “Am I desperate enough to go along with it?”, and the next chapter title is, “Yes.”) cycle through several POVs throughout this book. Two of these characters are AI, and in some ways this fact along with the humorous style brought The Murderbot Diaries to mind, only in a somewhat less satisfying way as these AIs seemed a bit more anthropomorphized (i.e. Demeter’s disks shake with relief and terabytes of fear run through her wires) (also, disks in a computerized spaceship several centuries in the future?). But it was still quite entertaining.

Even though this adventurous tale has some intense moments with high stakes, it’s told in a style that had me laughing regularly. Like when Demeter says,

Agnus says she is not as smart as Isaac. I inform her this faulty assessment is likely the result of a rounding error.

or when the ship’s medical AI asks her since when she was programmed with a desire for adventure and she answers, “I’m writing the code right now”.

So we’ve got the action, adventure, and humor, but this book also delivers some really sweet messages about love, familial/platonic as well as romantic. The relationships and the lengths the characters go to for one another despite being so drastically different from one another in a multitude of ways were really very heartwarming.

“Yes,” I say. “I…I thought I was protecting my family. But I wasn’t, because I wasn’t protecting you.” “Error. I am not your fam-” “Shut up, bitch. You’re family.”

I am truly impressed with this author for producing a story that is so equally fun and touching, and I look forward to reading more of her work. Three cheers for Barbara Truelove and Of Monsters and Mainframes!

Thank you to NetGalley, Bindery Books, and Ezeekat Press for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: THE BOMBSHELL by Darrow Farr

| Jessica Crawford

The Bombshell by Darrow Farr is a 416 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Pamela Dorman Books.

Genre:

Literary Fiction, Popular Fiction, Historical Fiction

Synopsis:

A young woman’s radicalization sparks a widespread movement and media frenzy in this explosive novel of youthful passion, political awakening and first love, by an extraordinary new talent.


Corsica, 1993. As a sun-drenched Mediterranean summer heads into full swing, beautiful and brash seventeen-year-old Severine Guimard is counting down the days until graduation, dreaming of stardom while smoking cigarettes and seducing boys in her class to pass the time. The pampered French-American daughter of a politician, Severine knows she’s destined for bigger things

That is, until one night, Severine is snatched off her bike by a militant trio fighting for Corsican independence and held for a large ransom. When the men fumble negotiating her release, the four become unlikely housemates deep in the island’s remote interior. Eager to gain the upper hand, Severine sets out to charm her captors, and soon, the handsome, intellectual leader, Bruno, the gentle university student, Tittu, and even the gruff, unflappable Petru grow to enjoy the company of their headstrong hostage.

As Severine is exposed to the group’s political philosophy, the ideas of Marx and Fanon begin to take root. With her flair for the spotlight and newfound beliefs, Severine becomes the face of a radical movement for a global TV audience. What follows is a summer of passion and terror, careening toward an inevitable, explosive conclusion, as Severine steps into the biggest role of her life.

The Bombshell is an electric novel filled with seduction and fervor as it explores the wonders and perils of youthful idealism, the combustibility of celebrity, and the sublime force of young love.

Opening Line:

In the hours before her kidnapping, Séverine Guimard claimed Antoine Carsenti’s virginity in a grotto overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

My Thoughts:

Maybe he was a kind of oracle, and maybe they were hurtling towards a cliff’s edge on a train whose brakes she herself had dismantled.

In 1993 Severine, the daughter of the French prefect of Corsica, is abducted by a group of militant revolutionaries. When the minister of the interior refuses to negotiate with terrorists and meet their demands to release a political prisoner, the freedom fighters are left with an egotistical and brash seventeen year old girl on their hands, one who knows how to charm and manipulate people to her liking. After being given reading material about the cleansing force of violence when overthrowing oppressors to pass her time in captivity, Severine decides she wants to join the revolution. She wants to help eradicate injustice, sure – but she also really wants to be famous as the mouthpiece for the organization, and the liberation movement as a whole.

Here was Severine at the top of some mountain, speaking to a camera for five minutes, and consequently, down below, fire, blood, smoke, ash.

I was sucked into this story! Severine was a great main character – not a great person all the time, certainly, but a really fascinating and bold driving force of the story. She is not one to let decisions be made for her, and is often able to mold things into the shape of her choosing using all the wiles at her disposal. And, now, also bombs.

In that moment, she understood something else essential about Bruno: as long as she assured him of his virtuousness and correctness, he’d believe it.

I also actually wound up feeling a certain kind of way for this little found family of revolutionaries! Although I never held out much hope for their chances, when they wound up effectively being led by someone who was in it for the right and wrong reasons.

…[she] had the unsettling realization that everything she’d ever done, any choice she’d ever made, was in consideration of men. Without an audience of even one man, who was she?”

This book doesn’t end in a manner that was as big and revelatory as I had anticipated. It’s a pretty quiet finish to an otherwise explosive story, but still satisfying enough in its own way.

Book Review: A FAMILY MATTER by Claire Lynch

| Jessica Crawford

A Family Matter by Claire Lynch is a 240 page novel from Scribner with a publish date of June 3, 2025.

Genre:

Literary Fiction

Synopsis:

An exquisite and revelatory debut novel about the devastating consequences of one woman’s affair.

1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

A Family Matter is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.

Opening Line:

Five and a half hours after he found out he was dying, Heron drove to his favorite supermarket.

My Thoughts:

This is an emotional story of family, love, and grief. It’s based not off a specific event, but the period of UK history (recent – 1980s) when lesbians would often lose any and all access to their children, the court claiming cutting these women out of the children’s lives would protect from immorality and save them from the shame of having a gay parent and the public ridicule it might bring.

Heron has raised Maggie by himself since she was 4 years old, and the book opens with him, now in his sixties, receiving a cancer diagnosis. Chapters rotate through 4 POVs, and a big chunk of them follow Maggie, now 43 years and dealing with many things this reader found relatable – aging parents (and in her case, having to face a parent’s mortality head on), marriage along with all of its features and bugs, raising children (including a patronizing teenager), and never feeling like there is enough time.

She is prone to thoughts like this lately, about time passing too quickly, or running out altogether. About everything slipping out of her grasp. When she told Conor she felt this way, he said it was just her age, textbook midlife crisis. Maggie had advised him, on the grounds of his own health and safety, not to offer that as an explanation again.

Another line I liked:

There ought to be more to life than washing machines and emails and remembering to put the recycling out on the right day. But life is also this. It is all of this.

Other chapters follow Dawn, Maggie’s mother, in 1982. Dawn is married and has a young daughter when she meets Hazel.

Dawn couldn’t understand it, the way Hazel made her nervous. The feeling that her mouth was full of all the things she would say if she wasn’t too embarrassed to put herself into words.

An affair is scandalous enough, but two women falling in love was even more taboo at the time. In an effort to still be able to see her daughter, Dawn suffers through indignity after indignity, like the court officials grilling her on the specifics of her sex life.

There is a lot of beautiful writing in this book, but my one complaint is that it seemed uneven in its telling. The beginning had a heavy focus on Heron and his illness, and then by the end this trail of narrative seems to kind of peter out. Maggie and Dawn have chapters throughout, but last parts of the book belong much more to the two of them. And then those just sort of end as well, without much of a climax or any sort of denouement. There were also several Britishisms that threw me a bit, but obviously that is not a fault, just something to be aware of.

I wish the parts of the story, Heron’s mortaltiy/navigating family life/what makes it all meaningful, etc etc, and Dawn’s love story along with its tragic and infuriating outcome, were brought together more cohesively. As it is, it seems kind of like two separate stories, requiring one to be dropped partway though in order to tell the other. But I really did enjoy the writing and the sentiments – Heron knowing the hardest thing about his cancer is watching his daughter watch him dying, Maggie understanding that it is important and necessary for her children to grow away from her in some respects, and Dawn’s reckoning:

Later-I mean years later-I realized the worst thing had already happened to me. When I worked that out, I was invincible.

A beautiful heartache of a story that ultimately offers hope.

My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: THE LAST FERRY OUT by Andrea Bartz

| Jessica Crawford

The Last Ferry Out by Andrea Bartz is a 320 page standalone novel published in Ballantine Books May 20, 2025.

Genre:

Thriller, Mystery

Opening Line:

Blood hits limestone and splatters for a second before the rain beats it back, diluting it and sluicing it away in pink rivulets.

My Thoughts:

What a nice, original thriller!

Abby’s fiancée died four months ago while spending a few weeks on an isolated Mexican island in order to finish her capstone project in a peaceful location free of distractions. Eszter had died from an apparent allergic reaction. Now, Abby herself travels to Isla Colel in an effort to feel closer to her lost love, to see how she spent her last days alive, to understand how the unthinkable could have happened. As Abby meets and learns the secrets of the island’s residents and the group of expats who have fallen in love with the desolate locale (as well as the blank slate it offers), she begins to see that she never knew the woman she loved as well as she thought she did.

Abby was a wonderful main character, a grieving woman who learned to survive by being bold and valuing efficiency. Eszter was the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, and desired her parents’ approval despite their strictness and unyielding expectations. Isla Colel was a beautifully evocative setting, with the fonda, tropical beaches, limestone cliffs, and bioluminescent bay…and also with the abandoned resort hotel and rusting comm tower lending a more menacing air.

Just before her death, Eszter texted Abby, “There’s something I need to tell you.” The mystery of this story stems from Abby trying to understand what that might have been, and as she talks to the people her fiancée spent her last days with, it becomes clear that someone knows more than they’re saying. This was a refreshingly unique and decently smart mystery/thriller. Some readers are happy with the works of certain prolific authors who can’t be bothered to fact check the details in their books or to worry that the plot makes sense, as long as they’re telling an interesting story. To me, this book was a cut above that type of thing, for sure. And then just when you think it’s over and the resolution complete, out trots a twist that is just ::chef’s kiss::. Good stuff! 4.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books of Penguin Random House for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS by K. A. Merson

| Jessica Crawford

The Language of the Birds by K. A. Merson is a 368 page standalone debut novel from Ballantine Books with a publish date of May 13, 2025.

Genre:

Mystery, Thriller

Opening Line:

Arizona cradles the figure-eight pendant between her thumb and finger and counts the days since her dad died–seventeen, the same as her age, and a prime number.

My Thoughts:

This is an impressive debut by an author who cites the following influences: Andy Weir for showing that science and math writing can be accessible, Blake Crouch for demonstrating how genres can be blended and bent seamlessly, Steig Larsson for writing an inspirational heroine, and Stephen King for inspiring others to make a serious effort at writing.

Arizona is a neurodivergent seventeen year old traveling with her mother to spread her recently-deceased father’s ashes in some of the places he loved. After her mother goes missing at Bodie State Historic Park in California, Arizona receives a phone call from a stranger – he is part of a group that has her mother, is familiar with Arizona’s idiosyncrasies, and demands that she help them solve a cryptic puzzle if she wants to see her mother returned safely. But how do they know this about her, and how is the group that kidnapped her mother tied to her late father?

There were flavors of The Davinci Code in this story, as Arizona works her way through multiple puzzles using ciphers and all sorts of logic exercises with which I can’t pretend to be familiar. There are a lot of diagrams and maps in this book, as we follow Arizona and her dog Mojo along on this high-stakes adventure. Did I skim over many of the parts trying to explain how she figured out what the encrypted messages and riddles meant (fractals, Euclidean space, monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, frequency analyses)? You bet. Did I get a kick out of the story featuring the history of alchemy and U.S. history and geography anyway? Heck yeah!

This books tells a smart puzzle-filled adventure of a story while also showing us personal growth in Arizona as she learns a bit more about learning to trust people enough to form relationships, and that emotions can’t be dealt with in the same way as mathematical equations. On display is the author’s own love of historical mysteries, literature, and even topography/U.S. geography and an outdoor/nomadic lifestyle. Well done!

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and Ballantine Books of Penguin Random House in exchange for my unbiased review.

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Book Review: VICTORIAN PSYCHO by Virginia Feito

| Jessica Crawford

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito is a 208 page standalone novel published in 2025 by Liveright, imprint of W. W. Norton & Company.

Genre/subgenre:

Horror, Satire, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Dark Comedy

Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.

Opening Line:

Death everywhere.

My Thoughts:

Well, that was wild!

I personally got 3 star book enjoyment from this one, but it has 5 star writing, so I guess I’ll compromise with 4.

This is basically super gory satire about the Victorian era. It was weird, and I often like weird books, but this style of weird wasn’t 100% to my tastes – although the absurdities did make me laugh out loud several times. I also prefer suspense and psychological horror to the straight up grotesque. It lacked the depth that really draws me personally as a reader into feeling connected to a story (and in this case, thank goodness for that!) But for what the author was going for, the writing really hits the nail on the head.

So clearly, I have mixed feelings on this one!

Examples of the humorous satire about a truly psychopathic governess living in Victorian times:

As advised by the Ladies’ Journal, I am clothed in a ‘plain and quiet style of dress; a deep straw bonnet with green or brown veil’ (brown, in my case, as the drab color blurs the identifying features further, obscuring my expression of unfathomable emptiness to resemble one a casual observer might mistake for solemnity).

When Mrs. Pounds makes an inquiry into her health, he scoffs at his wife’s ‘slight hysterical tendency’. She has been languishing on settees and refusing meals since witnessing the drowning of their youngest son.

‘Nothing a good rest devoid of intellectual strain can’t cure,’ Mr. Pounds says brightly.

‘Agree wholeheartedly,’ Mr. Fishal says. ‘Mrs. Fishal said writing energised her, so I took away all her quills and now she’s decreed that she’ll write in her own blood if she must.’

There is some good-natured tittering around the table, some good-natured shaking of heads. Women! Theatrical bitches.

If large quantities of gore in an effort to effect satire don’t bother you, you should most certainly read this book. But if you consider yourself on the squeamish side, you should probably give this one a pass.

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Book Review: HOW TO SEAL YOUR OWN FATE by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin is a 320 page novel, the second in the Castle Knoll Files series, from PENGUIN GROUP Dutton with a publish date of April 29, 2025.

Genre:

Mystery

Synopsis:

Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.

Present Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane crosses her path and shares a cryptic message. When Peony Lane is found dead only hours later inside the locked Gravesdown Estate, Annie quickly realizes that someone is out to make her look guilty while silencing Peony at the same time. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of Castle Knoll in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about, before the new life she’s just begun to build comes crashing down around her.

1967: A year has passed since her friend Emily disappeared, and teenage Frances Adams finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that claimed the lives of Ford’s family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident—hints of cover-ups, lies, and betrayals abound. The question is, just how far does the blackness creep through the heart of Castle Knoll? When Frances uncovers secrets kept by both Ford and Archie, she starts to What exactly has she gotten herself into?

Opening Line:

Her name had always been too plain, she thought, as she looked at the prison register in front of her, which required her signature.

My Thoughts:

This was another engaging murder mystery in the Castle Knoll Files.

I do think I would have benefitted from rereading How to Solve Your Own Murder before jumping into this one, to better remember the characters we were previously introduced to, their relationships and motivations. In general they are an interesting collection of folk from a seemingly idyllic English countryside, one of whom offers the possibility of a future romance for our main character, Annie.

This time, it’s the intriguing figure of Peony Lane, the fortune teller who set Great Aunt Frances on her life’s course of trying to solve her own murder before it occurred, that gets caught up in the middle of the action. What might she have to do the Foyles, Sparrows, as well as the Gravesdowns of yore? And why do these crimes always seem to come knocking right at Annie’s door?

Alternating chapters between Annie’s current timeline (in present tense POV) and young Frances’s diary entries got a bit confusing to me, as both included many of the same characters and events, and so it became difficult to keep straight who already knew what in their respective investigations. And the particulars of this mystery wind up being quite convoluted and at times a bit of a stretch.

That being said, I was still definitely entertained by this contemporary whodunnit, and would happily read the next installment of Annie’s adventures in investigating secrets in order to solve crimes.

Thank you to Dutton, Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: EMILY WILDE’S COMPENDIUM OF LOST TALES by Heather Fawcett

| Jessica Crawford

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett is the third book in the Emily Wilde series. It is 358 pages and was published by Del Rey in 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy

Subgenres:

Cozy, academia, Fae

Opening Line:

If there is one subject upon which Wendell and I will never agree, it is the wisdom of attempting to drag a cat into Faerie.

Synopsis:

The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves.

Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

My Thoughts:

“We should start with…the old queen’s ladies-in-waiting.” “Most of them have fled.” “Or they’ve been killed,” Lord Taran said. “Oops.”

What a treat it was to return to the world of Emily Wilde and Wendell! But ultimately this third installment of their tale seemed a bit gratuitous.

When Emily and Wendell travel to the latter’s realm in Faerie to take their places as its rulers, they find that the old queen, in her defeat, has cursed the land. Emily believes the answer to how to address this problem lies in the stories told in Faerie, as the rules of that place don’t necessarily follow the same logics that the mortal world does.

This wasn’t as tightly plotted as the previous books of the series, but it was still a real pleasure to spend time in Emily’s wondrous world, oftentimes as horrifying as it is amusing.

Faerie snails possess a crude intelligence and value their dignity above all things; as such, they spend most of their lives occupied with revenge quests. While their vengeance may be slow in coming, they will always have it in the end.

I do wish I had reread the previous installments before staring this one, as there were several secondary characters I simply did not remember. But this was overall still quite a lark, and I will happily read on in the series should the author choose to write more!

Book Review: A DROP OF CORRUPTION by Robert Jackson Bennett

| Jessica Crawford

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett is the second book in the Shadows of the Leviathan series with a publish date of April 1, 2025.

Genre:

Fantasy, Mystery

Opening Line:

Before there was memory, before there was history, there were the leviathans: the colossal, monstrous creatures that lumbered ashore each wet season and went wandering the plains, bringing death and panic with them.

My Thoughts:

“You know, you are not a stupid person, Din.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, pleased.

“Or, rather, not an unusually stupid person.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, far less pleased.

Ana and Din return in this solid installment in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, investigating another puzzler of a crime.

The events of this book take place in a different corner of the fantasy world than those of book one, but magical corruption and contagion are still things to watch out for. The Empire is in negotiations with the kingdom of Yarrow regarding its impending annexation when a member of the Imperial treasury goes missing from a locked room at the top of a tower, parts of him later found floating in the canals. Once Ana and Din arrive to look into the matter, they come to realize they are pitted against a mastermind of uncanny intelligence and the ability to parse patterns and predict their next moves before they themselves even know what they plan to do.

The investigation sees our unusual duo team up with the local wardens led by a woman named Malo, and an organization of Apoths tasked with obtaining the reagents that provide the people of this fantasy world with their special augmentations directly from the corpses of the dreaded leviathans. We also delve more into Din’s circumstances, his desire to return to Talgaray in service to the Legion in order to both be a hero and to be closer to his lover, as well as into the mystery of what, exactly, Ana is that allows her to accomplish the things she does.

The mystery was good and twisty, and the writing amusing, and the lessons once again go beyond magical mayhem to say something about the ills that come part and parcel with society. I will certainly continue reading on on this series to see what Ana and Din find themselves dealing with next.

Thank you to Del Rey of Random House Publishing and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.