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 Miles Vorkosigan is born into a noble family on a planet called Barrayar, but with a disability that may permanently bar him from gaining any merit in his warrior-based society. His bones are as fragile as glass and a simple fall can render him unable to walk. Yet Miles is clever, resourceful, and determined to live up to the example set him by his father and grandfather.
This omnibus edition actually consists of three different stories; two novels and a short story. In The Warrior’s Apprentice, Miles fails to gain entry to the military academy due to his handicaps. Instead he goes off-planet to visit his Betan grandmother, along with his bodyguard Bothari and Bothari’s daughter Elena, with whom Miles is enamored. Miles manages to get himself and his companions into serious trouble in a war zone.
It’s hard to emphasize how pleased I was even just by this first story. The plot is surprisingly complex as Miles manages to think and innovate his way out of the many difficult situations he encounters. But what really makes this shine is the immediate fondness and admiration we feel for Miles, starting off with his painfully failed entry to the military academy. I don’t know if anyone could fail to feel for Miles, but it’s not just pity, it’s admiration of someone who refuses to let his damaged body restrict his possibilities.
Miles isn’t the only fantastic character in these books; each and every one of them is well-drawn. Even just a few encounters lead us to build up relationships and understand how each character relates to one another. Once I’d started reading, I was hooked. While science fiction, these fall more into the genre of “space opera”, which I’ve always understood to be more character and story-focused than science based. I like this definition, from the Wikipedia page: “colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.” To me, this means almost everyone can enjoy this book without getting bogged down in the details.
The second story, The Mountains of Mourning, is short and demonstrates Miles’s life on his home planet, as an old woman comes to him begging for justice. Her baby daughter has been murdered due to a deformity, a subject naturally close to Miles’s heart given his own physical problems, even if they aren’t genetic. This was a perfect contrast to the first novel, showing another side of Miles as we encounter the difficulties he grew up with. Miles still shows his trademark clever ingenuity, but it’s at a completely different pace.
Lastly, we finish with The Vor Game. Ensign Miles hopes for spaceship duty as his first assignment, but instead ends up on frozen Lazkowski Base in the midst of a mutiny. Eventually, he finds himself once again dodging high treason, but with the young emperor in tow, who he has to save from himself, and then from those who would cause him harm. This shows how much Miles has developed since the start of the series, tying in more world-building and giving us a glimpse of how Miles advances through the various challenges that he is presented with.
As Bujold tells us herself, all of these stories touch on growing up. Miles is learning how to inhabit his skin, coming of age in a world of pressures made even worse by his physical problems. This utterly fantastic novel takes a deeper look at prejudices, war, and politics as Miles questions himself and makes decisions that he believes will work the best. I honestly could not believe how much I enjoyed this book – it’s incredibly thoughtful yet action-packed space opera, mixed with just the right amount of humor and tragedy, which has had me eager to read the next book every time. I couldn’t believe how quickly the “pages” fled by as I was wrapped up in this story.
Best of all, if you’d like to try these books for yourself, they are all available freely from the publisher. I know I’ll be reading all books available, and then proceeding to purchase everything Bujold writes in future. I would highly recommend you give this a try!
I downloaded this book for free from the publisher.
 Mary Russell stumbles upon the great Sherlock Holmes while rambling in the countryside. He’s retired – supposedly – to take up beekeeping, but her young mind is agile and ready to be challenged. After she proves herself, he takes her on as an apprentice, and the two begin to solve crimes together.
The central premise of this book is the idea that Sherlock Holmes was a real person, and the books and stories featuring him were elaborate fictionalizations of his real-life crime-solving. In his older years, Holmes still solves crimes, but does his best to stay out of the public eye. Still, Mary knows who he is, and as the central narrator, is determined to keep him within her sites. Soon we discover that her intellect is quite up to his as her own skills develop over the course of the novel.
Roughly the first half of this book is set out in episodes. Mary and Holmes set out to solve a couple of crimes together as he begins to train her. After she’s accepted as a fully fledged apprentice, the book gains more speed as the crimes get somewhat more desperate. Naturally, our two central characters also begin to develop a relationship with one another, both a respect for each other’s minds and a whole-hearted affection for each other’s character.
I was surprised by how much I genuinely enjoyed this book. Mysteries in the style of Sherlock Holmes frustrate me more often than not; because so much of the conclusions are derived from information that is never presented to the reader, it can be easy to get annoyed that it’s impossible to guess the conclusion. With this, though, I seem to have developed the ability to ignore that and simply follow the two characters along their journey. I suspect this is because the mysteries, while important to the plot, are not all that holds the book together. The narrative is very well done and the relationships between the characters develop naturally and realistically. About halfway through, I realized I just didn’t want to put the book down; I wanted to continue and find out what happened next.
I’m a bit late to this series, and now there are a number of installments that I’ll need to catch up on. I’ve known of it for quite some time, but never really had the impulse to begin until I was offered the latest book for review. So I’ll be skipping ahead to the last book, but believe me when I say I’ll also catch up on the ones I’ve missed. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is a great start to a series I’m very happy to have finally discovered.
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 Irene and Nate Stanley move to Oregon in search of a better life for themselves and their family. Irene is reluctant to leave her extended family, but believes in the hope that her husband gives her. Instead, what they get is a seemingly random housebreaking and the death of their son, Shep. The murderer Daniel Robbin is caught, but the death of a child is something that neither can really cope with – driving away their daughter, Bliss, and launching life-changing consequences for the family.
This was one of the first books I bought for my Kindle nearly a year ago, and all this time it’s simply sat there unread – a book that, like so many, loses its luster once acquired. Luckily, I was travelling and had nothing on me but the Kindle, so when everything else ALSO seemed to lose appeal (don’t we all hate it when that happens?) I finally opened this title and started to read. I’m glad I did – this was a powerful book with a surprise twist at the end that I hardly expected, but which really added to the strength of the entire book.
The novel is told through alternating viewpoints. Most of the book is from Irene’s perspective as she loses her son, with the occasional chapter from Bliss, and the rest of the book is told by Tab Mason, the man who has been ordered to kill Daniel Robbin. Robbin has been on death row for years and Tab has never been the one to actually kill a man, nor is he comfortable with it. This perspective provides a really fascinating and heartbreaking look into the toll the death penalty takes on the people who are actually required to follow through with it.
The main thrust of the storyline, though, is Irene’s personal struggle with the murder of her son and the incredibly difficult pain she has to go through as a mother. She essentially dies inside – at first, she lives for the fact that her son’s murderer is going to be killed, until she decides to forgive him on what would have been Shep’s 25th birthday. She writes him a letter and, surprisingly and secretly, she and Daniel begin corresponding. This leads to the biggest twist in the book, which I obviously won’t spoil for you. It’s a fascinating meditation on the power of forgiveness, though, and the strength of a mother’s love.
For a book I wasn’t actually sure I’d like after I bought it, The Crying Tree was a powerful surprise, and certainly one I’d recommend to those who aren’t afraid of tackling more difficult issues in their reading.
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 The faerie world has never been comfortable for October Daye. Half-human, half-fae, she formerly ran investigations until her magical heritage lost her fourteen years of her life and the people she loved. Even though she’s decided that she’s finished with that half of her life, serving as a grocery store clerk until her need to avoid dawn gets her fired, the fae aren’t finished with her. She is drawn back into the world against her will, but with no power to resist her latest investigation into a friend’s death.
Ana of the Book Smugglers recommended this to me as her favorite recent urban fantasy series, and since you all know how much I love urban fantasy, there was simply no way I could say no. While this hasn’t displaced my current favorites, it’s fantastic to discover a new one.
This is proper urban fantasy, set right in the midst of San Francisco, where the fae blend neatly in the human world whenever possible. There are only a few times where they are vulnerable, such as at dawn, when October (Toby) must hide herself from detection. She has lost everything and mainly wishes to hide in the midst of the urban jungle. But she’s left no choice in the matter and must delve up old memories as she searches for a killer, and we’re right along with her on her journey.
This made it really easy to be immersed in the world as Toby’s investigation carries her around different sections of the fae, reacquainting her with old allies, enemies, and even lovers. There are quite a few places for McGuire to go with future installments in the series even as the current mystery begins to wrap up. This is a very eerie world; I’ve never been to San Francisco but I got a feel for the grimness of this version of the city, with its constant danger and quirky, often threatening inhabitants.
I really enjoyed the character of Toby in this book. I loved her casual banter, her struggles with other characters, and the fact that she feels like a human even though she’s actually half fae. It makes her very easy to sympathize with, especially because her concerns are actually very human in nature, particularly in the beginning of the book. She just wants to survive, to see her child, to be with the people she loves. I think it would be a challenge not to feel for her.
I did very much enjoy this particular urban fantasy and I’m looking forward to reading more in the series. There are three more, with another book coming out in October. In fact, now that I’ve written this review, I’m a bit tempted to go buy them now! Rosemary and Rue would be an excellent choice for anyone else who is craving a little bit more urban fantasy.
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 Please note that Magic Slays is book five in a series. This review will assume you have read the first four books in the series.
After quitting the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, Kate Daniels has attempted to strike out on her own with her own business. Unfortunately, she has failed to win many new clients, because the Order is busy spreading rumors against her. Moreover, Kate is now the acknowledged mate of the Beast Lord, which keeps certain people well away from her. When Ghastek, one of Atlanta’s Masters of the Dead, finally contracts for her services, Kate is thrilled, but not for long as she confronts a new menace to the world she knows and the people she’s finally grown to care about.
I reread the entire series in preparation for this book, something I hardly ever do but which I felt was very warranted. I’ve said far and wide that this is one of my favorites, somehow making me completely fall in love with prickly, brave yet vulnerable Kate and the many characters who populate the world around her. It was absolutely delightful to spend so much time in this universe; once you’ve grown an affection for the characters, it’s easy to enjoy all of the books even more.
And then I moved on to this one, which is a game changer, which feels just as epic as the last few. I’m not sure how long the series is going to last, because there are certainly threats hanging over Kate’s head and she can only delay them for so long. Another one of the characters who Kate loves comes into grave danger in this book, with her increased vulnerability becoming ever more obvious to her. She was trained to let no one in, and now that she’s let in a ton of people, she’s become more at risk than ever. Watching that transformation has been one of the best parts of the series for me, and now it’s coming full circle as she confronts the consequences.
One of the fun parts of this book was learning more about Kate’s past and getting an insight into where her parents came from. We’ve slowly gained bits and pieces of Kate’s past and heritage, with the pace increasing over the past couple of books. This time, we learned more about Kate’s mother, who hasn’t featured very strongly in previous books, and Kate’s history on that side of the family.
With every book I continue to wonder what’s going to happen in the finale; I think there is only one outcome to this series (which has two books left) and I am looking forward to where it goes. What is certain for me is that the quality hasn’t dropped at all and, if anything, each book has simply gotten better. I’m already waiting for book six with anticipation.
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 Blood Work is a multi-pronged look at the history of blood transfusion during the Scientific Revolution in both England and France. Tucker mainly tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Denis, a physician outside the cult of Paris-educated noblemen, who in what could have been a world-changing experiment transfused calf’s blood into a madman in Paris. The madman died and Denis wound up framed for murder as a result. Tucker also looks at the race between the English and the French to transfuse faster, and their struggles to publish first and occasional glossing over of facts as they did so. The book is also a deeper look at the ethics behind blood transfusion; the many ways people questioned what they didn’t understand, tried to stop it happening, and eventually wound up slowing progress for hundreds of years.
Blood Work has been on my wishlist since well before it was published. I bought it almost immediately afterwards, but for some reason took a while to actually get around to reading it. I think my expectations were slightly too high. I needn’t have worried, as this is truly a riveting account of a story I’d heard little about. Blood transfusion is an essential for our modern day doctors. It saves lives every day. As a result, it’s somewhat shocking to read about the origins of it and the many crazy things people thought would happen. Would cow’s blood turn a man into a bovine? Would he start to baa like a sheep? If you transfused blood from people of different colours, what happened? These questions made people very nervous, some so much so that they would do anything in their power to stop the process.
I have to admit one of the questions foremost in my mind as I was reading this book was just how people and animals weren’t dying left and right from the transfusions. There was no idea of blood types then. These scientists thought they were transferring blood from all different species, including at the final experiment, and most patients seemed to have only mild symptoms. Tucker thankfully reveals the answer to this; there probably wasn’t actually that much blood being transferred. The technology wasn’t really advanced enough until the 20th century, when luckily blood typing was also discovered.
The philosophical issues surrounding transfusion were also fascinating. Tucker explains in the book that she was inspired by George W. Bush’s statements against stem cell research. Many of the same arguments we hear now against stem cell research were employed in the battle against blood transfusions. That treatment saves lives every single day. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but it certainly provides much food for thought.
I haven’t even touched on the historical mystery that Tucker explores within the book, but it also works quite well and the threads of the book fit perfectly together. My only reservation is that parts of the book made me a bit queasy – I’m not even good with this sort of thing written in words! For someone who isn’t particularly bothered by descriptive language about transfusions, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Blood Work is a very engaging, fast paced narrative work of history that will appeal to any curious about the Scientific Revolution, how blood transfusions began, or even the issues surrounding experimentation on human beings. Recommended.
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 Lady Elaine Warren began her first season full of excitement and verve, ready to have her chance at the world. But slowly, she began to fade away and turned into a wallflower of the highest order. The culprit? Evan Carlton, the Earl of Westfield, made Elaine his target. With his insecure cousin in tow, Evan made Elaine’s life miserable, until she lost all chance of finding a well-placed husband. But in reality, Evan has always liked Elaine, and his mocking of her was simply an immature reaction to an attraction he didn’t know what to do with. Returned from the Continent, and several life-changing experiences, Evan longs to show Elaine just how stupid he was and see if he can have a chance at winning the woman he loves most of all, even if she wants nothing to do with him.
This little novella by Courtney Milan has received rave reviews pretty much everywhere. I’m not going to lie, I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered I could buy it for 86p on my Kindle, even though I’m in the UK. I downloaded it and read it within two days. It’s a short novella, equivalent to about 100 pages in print, so it’s best read straight in an evening (preferably alone, and with tissues if you’re anything like me).
Anyway, despite the reviews, I was genuinely surprised at how well this worked. I often have trouble buying into short romances, because it’s hard to believe they’d fall in love so fast, but this one just clicked with me instantly. The back story comes thick and fast, so we’re prepared for the characters’ reactions immediately. Plus, they tap right into that stereotype of the popular teenager longing for the wallflower, turning around and falling in love with her, then grovelling in order to win her heart back. I’m sure we’d all wish to avoid the torment that is actually inflicted on poor Elaine, but watching Evan try impossibly hard to win her back is gorgeous reading for someone who loves romance.
Plus, if you’ve ever been made fun of, even if not to such a degree, it’s impossible not to empathise with Elaine. Who wouldn’t want their former tormentor to turn around, beg forgiveness, and proceed to do everything in his power to make things perfect? At the same time, how hard would it be to trust that person not to turn around and make it all a living hell once again? It’s all so well done and so true to real life emotions. I’d never really Courtney Milan before, but trust me, this will not be the last time I do so, and I will be purchasing her backlist the minute I allow myself to buy books again.
If you’re a romance reader, you simply must give this novella a try. It’s available for every e-reader through All Romance ebooks, Amazon, or Amazon UK.
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 In 1876, fancy mail order magic is driving out homespun magic, the kind Emily Edwards practices. As her and her father’s situation gets more and more desperate, she decides to snare a wealthy husband with a love spell. Her efforts, though meant well, completely backfire, and soon she finds herself racing across the country with Dreadnought Stanton, a snobbish warlock from New York City, on a frantic effort to reach the centre of the warlock’s world before it’s too late.
This was a great book in so many different ways. I love the setting – like other reviewers before me have said, it’s that wild west meets magic that is surprisingly appealing. It reminds me of Firefly in a way, both set in a world full of cowboys but with added twists to make them fresh and new. Here we have not only magic but echoes of steampunk and a few other bits and pieces.
Hobson’s ideas about magic are different from anything I’ve personally read, but the contrast is so apt for the time period when the mass catalogues started going out and people began to crave something other than homespun, homemade goods. This is a few years before that started to happen in real life, but it has that feel about it of the new pushing out the old, and the old struggling to survive in any way possible. The magic system develops very much along the course of the book, with new discoveries coming rapidly. It’s obvious that Hobson has a lot of ideas and I’m really looking forward to her fleshing this version of our world out more. The end of the book hints at a sequel and I am crossing my fingers that this is true, because I would definitely like to spend more time here.
And then, of course, there is a fantastic romance, and I can’t spoil that for anyone as it’s right on the back cover. Plus, tension sparks between Emily and Dreadnought almost immediately, and I think it would be difficult to miss their eventual romance from the opening chapters of the book. It’s a well done romance, too, without getting at all in the way of the plot. Instead it feels natural, inspired by the tension they’re both experiencing and the chemistry that springs up between them. There are very few types of novels that I like better than a good fantasy with a side romance, so needless to say this book ticked all of those boxes for me.
The Native Star is a solid satisfying indulgence of a read, well worth the time for anyone who likes fantasy or romance. And it was a nominee for the Nebula award this year, which is a third-party agreement of this book’s excellence.
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 On the eve of the French Revolution in Paris, Marie Grosholtz runs the Salon de Cire with her uncle Curtius, sculpting wax figures of prominent public figures and placing them in realistic settings for public viewings. Their wax figures are so famous that even the royal family come to pay a visit and many nobles request sculptures of themselves. But revolutionary talk is set to change everything and Marie, as new tutor to the king’s sister at Versailles, is in a position to hear everything and witness the fall of the monarchy from the inside. When the revolution begins to threaten her life, Marie must decide between staying in Paris with her family or fleeing to England with her lover, Henri.
I have been really looking forward to this book for months. I’ve loved all of Michelle Moran’s books set in Egypt and Rome and was thrilled that she’d chosen a time period more to my overall tastes this time. I’ve always been curious about Madame Tussaud and this just seemed like the perfect way to learn a little bit more about her. It would have been easy to be disappointed given the high level of my expectations, but I loved this book just as much as Moran’s previous books. It was immensely satisfying in every way. In fact, the only thing I didn’t like was the cover quote, ‘Can Love Survive the Revolution?’, which just didn’t convey what the book was about at all to me.
I loved the atmosphere in this book in particular. There is a constant sense of danger and suspense around Marie, even at the beginning, particularly due to the talk that occurs in her family’s salon. She can feel what’s going to happen, and as a reader, I know enough of the history of the French Revolution to sense that things aren’t going to go well. As she gets close to members of the royal family, Marie’s outlook on events starts to shift, and she starts to understand the depth of difference between the actual lives of royalty and the people’s perception of them. I particularly enjoyed the scenes set in Versailles – both because I’ve been there and because I recently learned how disgusting the palace used to be from watching a recent TV show, Filthy Cities on the BBC. These added a very welcome extra dimension to my reading and Marie’s Paris.
I also, predictably, loved Marie’s character. As you’ll undoubtedly have noticed, I am a very character-driven reader, and I was thrilled to have one I could really appreciate in Marie. She’s practical, with a keen eye for money and a determination to do her best, but she also has a romantic, sympathetic heart that does emerge on occasion. Her mission in life isn’t to get married and have babies, although she wouldn’t mind doing that as well as her job; she’s about as career oriented as an eighteenth century woman could get. And, we know from the beginning, she succeeded hugely and her name now graces wax museums the world over. I think she would have been pleased.
If you’re a historical fiction fan, I think you’ll love Madame Tussaud. It has the perfect mix of historical detail, atmosphere, story, and great characters. Highly recommended.
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 Love in the Afternoon, Lisa Kleypas
Beatrix Hathaway has always been the oddest member of her family. More at home with the animals in the stable than with other people, she’s content to be out of society and has always assumed that she’ll remain unmarried forever. All that changes, however, when she discovers that her friend Prudence has been completely neglecting one of her beaus, Christopher Phelan, even though he’s at war. Beatrix takes it upon herself to write letters in Pru’s name, with her permission, because she knows a soldier needs that kind of comfort. But what she doesn’t expect is to fall in love with her correspondent, who has never liked her, or for her reaction to his return to England.
This book won me over from the first few pages. I can’t resist a love letter and the first pages of this book are precisely that, Christopher and Beatrix’s exchange. I could genuinely feel the love between them and I was immediately won over, somehow – it was a perfect pairing from that moment on.
While the rest of the book didn’t quite match those letters, they still set up this love story very well. A few of the pieces didn’t fit – it’s impossible to believe Beatrix and Prudence actually ever made friends – but the strength of the main couple carried the book through very well.
This was a lovely ending to the Hathaway series and I’m sorry to see them go!
 When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James
Piers Yelverton, the Earl of Marchant, is a doctor in Wales. Despite having a temper, hating his father, and a leg wound that has never healed, Piers is a brilliant doctor; that won’t get him married, like his father wants. Linnet, meanwhile, has been ruined completely by accident, but lucky for her she can charm a rock, and is thus sent to become Piers’s bride. Despite the fact that he’ll have nothing to do with her, she’s determined to become his wife and persuade him to love her – but when she falls in love with him, she has to face the fact that he may never feel the same.
Eloisa James is one of my auto-buy romance authors. If a new book with her name on it is coming out, you can guarantee I will have preordered it somewhere (in the case, the handy Book Depository). I’m loving her latest romances based on fairy tales – this is the second one and doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. Beauty, naturally, is Linnet, who is not only gorgeous but charming and perfect in every way. Beast is Yelverton, who is not unattractive physically but has a bad leg and a temper to match. The author freely admits that she was inspired for his character by the TV doctor House which in my eyes (and I imagine in many others’) only made him a more appealing character.
What I loved about this book is the way that the author turned around the stereotypes by forcing Beauty to deal with unattractiveness and by showing Beast that he really isn’t horrible after all. It was very clever and well done – I am already looking forward to the next book by Eloisa James.
 Archangel’s Consort, Nalini Singh
The third book in the ongoing paranormal romance / urban fantasy series about archangel Raphael and his consort Elena, this novel focuses on the growing threat to angelkind from the awakening of an older, mentally unstable archangel – Raphael’s mother, Caliane.
This novel is very much a continuation of previous novels in the series – I wouldn’t dream of reading it on its own. Relationships continue to develop and the backstory of both characters is fleshed out more. I have to admit that so far, I am preferring Singh’s Psy-Changeling series, simply because I prefer getting to know two different characters. I like these two, but they’re already in love – they’ve lost a bit of that glow for me. Regardless, I enjoyed reading this one, and fully intend to pick up the next in the series, which in any case will be focusing on another character.
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