Steampunk Review: 'Emperor's Edge' Short Stories by Lindsay Buroker

I’ve been catching up with a few short reads these past few days, which does wonders for the tbr list. There’s not enough to say about these to justify a review each, so I’ve gathered them into a compilation.

Shadows Over Innocence (Emperor’s Edge 0.5)

A nice little short story giving a glimpse into the background of Sicarius the emotionless assassin and Sespian the future Emperor as a child. One for the fans, and best read after some of the Emperor's Edge series to fully appreciate the nuances. Two stars.

Ice Cracker II and other stories (Emperor’s Edge 1.5)

The Frozen Water Trade, Through Fire Distilled, Ice Cracker II

These are fun, light-hearted reads which follow a similar formula: Amaranthe is going about her business when she stumbles across a dead body or an exploded machine, leading her to investigate, whereupon things get much, much worse. Two stories feature Sicarius, and one has Books in it (but sadly there’s no sign of Maldynado). Three stars.

The Assassin’s Curse (Emperor’s Edge 2.5)

A nice spooky haunted island is the star attraction here. Amaranthe and Sicarius are training in the lake when they spot something odd going on. Can Amaranthe resist investigating? Of course not. This leads to an encounter with another of the author’s ingenious steam-powered machines, and the usual implausible but entertaining fight scene. Three stars.

All of these are recommended for fans of the Emperor’s Edge series, although there isn’t a whole lot of backstory revealed. They’re also a pretty good introduction to the author’s steampunk world and mayhem-and-explosion-rich style of adventure.

Steampunk Review: 'Beneath The Surface' by Lindsay Buroker

This is part of the Emperor’s Edge series, a novella that fits squarely between part 5, ‘Blood and Betrayal’, and the two-part finale, ‘Forged in Blood’. Those who’ve read any of the series will know exactly what to expect: seemingly small events rapidly escalate into madcap chaos, increasingly impossible-to-get-out-of situations and an implausible number of fights, explosions, wrecked vehicles and other general mayhem. Given the inventive steampunk setting, mixed with some more advanced technology (post-apocalypse? or alien? not sure, but it doesn’t really matter), the series is an entertaining riot, where the reader simply can’t imagine what might be round the next corner.

Or perhaps I should say: what’s round the next bend in the river, because for this outing the team is aboard a paddle steamer, leading inevitably to equipment and people splashing overboard, diving into cabins to avoid being seen, climbing between decks by hopping over railings and hiding away in funnels. Oh, you didn’t think hiding in funnels was inevitable in fantasy? Well, in a Buroker novel, expect the unexpected (and you’d be surprised what characters can get up to while suspended inside a funnel – well, I was surprised).

The characters are, as always, the high spot of the book. However serious and potentially fatal the situation, former Enforcer Amaranthe’s unlikely bunch of heroes can be depended upon to carry on sniping playfully at each other and tossing out witty asides as they go. No matter how ludicrous the plot (and, let’s be honest, you just have to switch off the logical part of your brain altogether for this sort of caper), the jokes made me laugh out loud more times than I can remember. The author gets the tone just right, too. In the previous book, the way Amaranthe and iceman assassin Sicarius inched towards an understanding was note perfect. In this book, it’s Maldynardo who has his delicate little romance reach fruition and given Maldynardo’s constant flirting and outright skirt-chasing, the temptation to ham it up must have been almost irresistable. But no, every moment between Maldynardo and his lady was perfection. Beautifully judged.

For anyone who’s read the first five books in the series, this is the perfect palate-cleanser before the final course. If you liked the others, you’ll enjoy this one too. I liked that recaps of the previous books are dropped in effortlessly, so that I never had to struggle to remember what happened. And the background plot is warming up nicely. For me, the relentlessly ramped-up action gets a bit wearing after a while (I like my fantasy just a tad more realistic than that), but I have to admire the author’s ability to develop her characters and their relationships just enough to maintain interest while never losing sight of their basic personalities. A good three stars.

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Romantic Mystery Review: 'Wounded' by Lindsay Buroker

The author describes this as a rom-com, and that's as good a description as any. It's superficially an action mystery, but the romance is the core of it and also the part that works most effectively. If I tell you that the mystery part involves ruthless and evil - erm, mushroom researchers who’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on a particularly rare specimen which will cure antibiotic resistent TB, you'll probably get the point.

The plot (such as it is) involves heroine Tara making a temporary stay at an eco-village to produce blog material for a local newspaper. She arrives in the middle of a dispute with a neighbour involving escaped pigs and decapitated chickens. The neighbour, naturally, is a hunky heap of muscular maleness, called Malcolm (after the Scottish king; hurray for Scottish kings!). Tara manages to exploit her blogging and website building skills to impress said hunky heap, but thereby finds herself sucked into the ongoing adventures, which involves much racing around hillsides in the dark, climbing out of bathroom windows and the like, while the hunky heap manages to get his shirt off at frequent intervals.

All this is fun if not terribly surprising. Nor is Tara herself a particularly plausible character. Although she's smart enough to set up websites in the blink of an eye, she's apparently not smart enough to bring along anything useful on a police-evading night-time chase, even when she stops at her own house along the way. Plus she trips over every tree-root in the state, seemingly, and ends up face down in the mud. I have to confess, I like just a tad more competence in a main character.

As for the hunky heap, he's got demons from his past to deal with, and, wouldn't you just know it, the climax of the book involves him having to face up to those demons. I realise there's a school of thought that requires characters to move forwards during the course of the story, making visible progress in the demons department, but frankly this was all just too contrived for my liking. A little more subtlety would have helped.

On the other side of the coin, the romance works really well. The banter between the two main characters is brilliant, and there are some very funny moments along the way. It amuses me to consider the research the author must have carried out for this book, covering (among other things) hallucinogenic mushrooms, pipe bombs and the feasibility of operating a mobile phone using only your nose (and I'd have paid good money to watch the experimentation on that one). Apart from Tara's tree-root incompetence, the two main characters are well drawn. The gradual inching from deep suspicion through grudging tolerance to tentative trust and the inevitable romantic entanglement is perfectly judged, and completely credible. For anyone who likes their romance sweet rather than hot, with plenty of light-hearted action and a great big dollop of humour, this is ideal. Three stars.

Urban Fantasy Review: 'Torrent' by Lindsay Buroker

The author’s steampunk series, ‘The Emperor’s Edge’, has built up quite a following, but this is something very different, the start of an urban fantasy [*] series, set the southwestern US. The setting may be different, but the principle is the same: a collection of interesting characters, a pacy action-packed adventure with loads of unexpected twists and some great humour.

Here’s the starting point: archaeology drop-out Delia and geek Simon are trying to get a business off the ground discovering buried artifacts and flogging them to collectors. Temi is a old friend of Delia’s, a former tennis pro on hard times. There’s also another old friend who handily analyses DNA samples when necessary, and a couple of weird guys on Harleys. Oh, and a monster. A going-round-randomly-killing-people-in-the-dead-of-night type monster. When Our Heroes stumble across a body in a cave, they find themselves sucked into a bizarre monster-hunting expedition. And when I say ‘sucked into’, I mean, of course, that they rush around following mysterious footprints or bloodtrails or exploring underground caverns with wilful disregard for their own safety.

For the first half of this book, I felt like I was reading the script for one of those cheap summer horror movies. Monster. Check. Bunch of nice, harmless kids. Check. Lots of stalking, screaming and desperate attempts to escape. Check. Yes, it’s all a bit cheesy but then there are some wait-what? moments. The two Harley riders who speak no known language (‘It’s not Klingon’, says the linguistics professor, deadpan). The non-human blood. The magic glowing sword (I kid you not). And the monster’s made of what? And the humour made me laugh out loud, which is always a plus, in my book.

The characters don’t sparkle yet, but this is the first in the series, and it’s hard to squeeze in all the character-building background when Our Heroes are frantically trying to escape the monster’s claws. Simon is a stock geek, more interested in apps and gadgets and blog posts than common sense, and a bit awkward with the ladies. Delia - well, I don’t get much of an impression of Delia. Both of them are far too ready to go careering after monsters or mysteriously hostile men, but then there wouldn’t be much of a story if they weren’t. Temi is more interesting, with her falling out with her family, her tennis and the sudden loss of that, and another mysterious quality which I won’t reveal but it’s intriguing. She was a little uneven, on the one hand perfectly ready to dive into whatever adventure the other two were haring off on, but also the voice of reality: “Guys, is this a sensible thing to do?” But if the main trio fell slightly flat, the two men on Harleys more than made up for it. I do like ultra-mysterious but very cool blokes. And there is one other character now on the loose that I am very much looking forward to seeing again.

This is a slightly lumpy start to the series, but that’s a very common problem. Once the characters settle down and start to gel I’m sure a lot of the rough edges will be smoothed away. For now, this is a straightforward, lightweight adventure caper, easy to read and a lot of fun, especially once the main chase begins, around the halfway point. There are a number of implausibilities, but, for me anyway, the humour more than makes up for it. The modern setting allows for a lot of quick-fire jokes, which you don’t actually need to be a Trekkie to appreciate (although maybe it helps). I wavered between three and four stars, but I’ll be generous on the grounds that a new series always needs time to iron out the kinks. Four stars.

[*] Look, the author self-defines it as urban fantasy, OK? So I'll go with that. But honestly, I don’t know what the hell it is - sci-fi or fantasy or paranormal or some wild mash-up of all of them. And honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you call it.

Steampunk Review: 'Blood and Betrayal' by Lindsay Buroker

This is book 5 is the Emperor's Edge series, and this review is going to be full of spoilers for the first four books of the series. If you don't want to know secrets, or the outcome of the cliffhanger ending of book 4, look away now.

The end of book 4 left our heroes in a bit of a pickle. Their dirigible was shot down by their enemies, leaving Amaranthe to be captured by the evil Major Pike, while the survival of the rest of the group was in doubt. Surprise! They made it more or less unscathed, and since Sicarius sets off after Amaranthe, that leaves Maldynado to take charge of the group, following the plan of rescued boy emperor Sespian. Meanwhile, back in the capital, Sespian has been declared dead and evil conspiracists Forge are making their move for world domination.

The series has always taken a lighthearted tone, with every madcap adventure ending with a lot of wrecked machinery, a heap of accidentally dead enemies, a few scratches on the gang and a metric tonne of entertaining banter along the way. Book 4 became slightly more serious, as Sicarius went on a cold assassin killing spree, but nothing much was made of it apart from a bit of internal angst by Amaranthe. Book 5 shifts into a different gear altogether, as Amaranthe is subjected to sustained torture at the hands of Major Pike.

I found this section uncomfortable to read, and not because of the torture itself (I've read much worse). I have no problem with a story that delves into difficult territory, but I found the treatment of it here skirted round the issues raised. Amaranthe is treated with appalling brutality (which I won't describe here), yet she never cracks under the pressure, and is still able to joke. Some magical salve is conveniently used to heal her injuries between sessions. She is never raped, even though Major Pike, we're told, is famous for it. When she eventually escapes, she manages to evade capture despite her physical condition (she herself doubts she could have survived much longer), and is soon sufficiently recovered to be quite happy to enter a building alone to meet with an unknown male. The only long-term effect of her experience is to make her more likely to jump with surprise when Sicarius sneaks up on her. Oh, and she doesn't want to talk about it. Obviously not every book needs to be grimdark, and I can see how it might have been necessary, plotwise, to underline Sicarius's childhood experiences, but to my mind torture is automatically a grimdark subject and shouldn't be treated as just another violent experience, like being bopped on the head or taking a few cuts and bruises. The author does make some attempt to describe Amaranthe’s suffering, but there’s a fine line to walk: too serious a tone clashes with the light-hearted nature of the books, but too flippant would be wrong too. To my mind, it would have been better to leave the torture out altogether.

The second major problem is Maldynado. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Maldynado. He's probably my favourite character (after Sicarius; what is it with ice-cold assassins anyway that makes them so appealing?), and I'd vote for his statue in a heartbeat. But he's essentially a shallow character, the comic relief who can always be relied upon for an entirely inappropriate comment of sexual innuendo or boasting about his triumphs in the bedroom, usually while beating up random villains with practised ease. Here he's the other point of view character (apart from Amaranthe), and since she's tied up - hmm, unfortunate phrasing there - being tortured, which we see only briefly at intervals, it means that dear old no-brain Mal is carrying the first half of the book virtually single-handed. Frankly, he's not a strong enough character for that. There's a certain amount of backstory to be revealed, but it's not wildly interesting and most of what we get is Mal whining internally about being misunderstood. Honestly, much as I like him, there's only so much of that I can take.

If this all sounds negative - actually, it is negative. I just didn't enjoy the book as much as previous ones in the series. There's an increasing reliance on sophisticated technology for the hero-chomping machinery, too, which is too close to deus-ex-machina for my taste. Not enough to have our heroes trapped underground beneath a lake surrounded by armed villains? Let's have a few mysterious black boxes lying around which can remain inert to start with but will come to life and start shooting at everything at the most difficult moment. Blech. However, there is one element which is worth the price of admission all by itself. Sicarius chooses to leaves Sespian to the rest of the gang in order to rescue Amaranthe, and regular readers know exactly what a difficult decision that was for him. When they do eventually meet up again, there are some truly wonderful moments. Sicarius is never going to fall on Amaranthe's neck weeping, but the tiny (and not so tiny) ways in which he opens himself up to her and makes himself totally vulnerable are brilliantly written. Easily the best thing in the series so far.

The ending is the usual machinery-and-scenery-demolishing mayhem, where hordes of bad guys may (or may not) die but our heroes improbably emerge injured but still intact. There's a really cheesy moment right at the end, one of those dramatic reveals that's abruptly cut off before anything crucial actually is revealed, and some truly clunky exposition to explain the villains' motives, but generally speaking things come to the usual end, with everything more or less as before (a few plot developments but no actual character progression, as such, beyond that infinitesmal lightening of attitude by Sicarius). I already have the rest of the series, so I'm committed for the long haul, but I have to be honest and say that this book was a disappointment. Three stars.

Steampunk Review: 'Conspiracy' by Lindsay Buroker

This is the fourth in the Emperor’s Edge steampunk series, and everyone should know the drill by now: former enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon leads her team in a madcap escapade that results in an unfeasibly large number of explosions, shooting incidents, highspeed chases and crazy machinery encounters, but miraculously all ends well. Or does it? Be warned, this ends with a serious cliffhanger.

The setting is heavy-duty steampunk, with trains and airships and an array of bizarre machinery. I have to be honest, there were times when the machines seemed to be designed for no other purpose than to generate a dramatic how-will-they-survive moment. There’s an early scene where Amaranthe and cold assassin Sicarius are trapped in a cellar being chased by robotic devices capable of blowing chunks out of the walls and demolishing all the equipment down there. Since that includes large amounts of gunpowder - well, why would you do that? I had a bit of a Galaxy Quest moment, reading that chapter; it reminded me of the chompers:
“What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?”
This is the sort of book that requires the logical part of the reader’s brain to be switched off for the duration. No, some of it makes no logical sense, but it’s fun and exciting so who the hell cares?

The nice thing about this series is that is blends steampunk with magic (which rather nicely is known as the Science here). The combination is quite awesome, and leads to some interesting approaches to dealing with the vast number of obstacles the team have to contend with. There are also hints of something (still undefined) in the distant past, some kind of even more advanced technology than steam, which is totally cool. I love these sudden swerves in the world-building; just when you think you've got it straight in your head, along comes a whole new line of development, which was even foreshadowed from the start (for those who paid attention, which I obviously didn't).

The plot is to kidnap the emperor from a moving train filled with soldiers, which if you thought about it for even a second would strike anyone as probably not the sanest thing to do. But - logical brain switched off, right? Besides, the plot is just an excuse for some dramatic highjinks on the train, involving guns and crossbows and smokebombs and who knows what else, not to mention clambering from carriage to carriage, along the roof and even under the train. Plausible? Not really, but that's not the point.

The real joy of these books lies with the characters. Besides Amaranthe and Sicarius, slowly inching towards a romantic relationship (actually not even inching, this is sixteenth of an inch stuff), there’s Maldynado the delightfully self-obsessed nobleman, Basilard the mute former pit fighter, Books the academic, and Akstyr the magic-worker. This time we also get Yara, the gruffly upright enforcer, and Sespian the young emperor too, which livens up the mix. All of them have their own distinct personalities and industrial-strength back-stories as well, so they're all believably well-rounded characters. The charm is in the banter between them and the peculiarly daft way they go about things. There's enough laugh-out-loud humour here to lighten even the tensest moments.

The ending, sadly, is a great big cliff-hanger of a moment. Some of the threads specific to this book are resolved but our heroes are plunged into a major crisis. I'm not a big fan of this trick, but sometimes an author has to follow where the plot leads, and this is, after all, the fourth in the series, so anyone still reading is probably in it for the long haul. Luckily for me, the next book is already out (actually the series has now wrapped up, so I'm way behind), so - onward and upward. Four stars.

Steampunk Review: 'The Deadly Games' by Lindsay Buroker

This is the third of the ‘Emperor’s Edge’ series, featuring former enforcer (cop) Amaranthe and her motley band of outlaws cum undercover agents - Sicarius the assassin, Maldynado the ladies’ man, Books the scholar, Akstyr the learner mage and Basilard the former slave wrestler. The steampunk setting is, as always, a nicely drawn backdrop and convenient plot device, so that one of the events in the games of the title is the clank race, where contestants compete on a mechanical (and rather unpleasant) obstacle course. As usual, there’s a mysterious series of events for the team to investigate in the hope of ingratiating themselves with the young emperor, and restoring themselves to respectability. There are also some ongoing backstories, and the author is brilliant at reminding the reader of past details at just the right moment, and without it ever feeling contrived. If only all authors were so skilled.

This is a million miles from the gritty realism end of fantasy. The characters are just the right side of caricature, and the plot - well, it really doesn’t matter. It rolls along nicely, a jolly adventure that is always one wobbly step away from disaster but never quite teeters over the brink. It’s predictable in the sense that the eventual outcome is never in any real doubt, but there’s a huge tangle of twists and turns along the way, most emanating from the fertile (if not always sensible) imagination of Amaranthe. You’ve got to love a character who never fails to have a hairbrained idea, however dire the circumstances. There are moments when it’s tempting to pause and think - how on earth did they get into this situation? And how can they possibly get out of it? There are times, too, when it all got a little bit over the top. The amount of punishment the characters manage to take, the number of armed and/or magic-wielding opponents they tackle simultaneously, and the sheer number of problems they encounter, all of it becomes just a little too cartoonish sometimes. And then there’s another brilliant bit of humour, and I just don’t care. In the end, it’s the characters who matter, and the funny, tetchy and even (occasionally) affectionate moments between them that make these books so wonderful. Even Sicarius the ice-cold assassin gets some bonding with Basilard, and... and... no, it can’t be... is that a romantic interlude with Amaranthe? Well, sort of, maybe.

For anyone looking for a light read, with plenty of action and huge dollops of witty banter between the characters, this fits the bill beautifully. These books are just so entertaining, it’s all too easy to think - just another chapter, and then another, and perhaps just one more... The book equivalent of a box of chocolates. Lovely stuff. Four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Dark Currents' by Lindsay Buroker

This is the second in the ‘Emperor’s Edge’ series of steam-punk fantasy adventures with Amaranthe the female cop and her unlikely bunch of sidekicks. They're more at the entertaining romp end of the fantasy spectrum, and it probably doesn't pay to look too closely at the precise details of the plot, a fairly ramshackle affair which would fail any logic test, so anyone looking for great insight into the human condition or gritty realism should probably move swiftly on. But light-hearted fun is fine by me, and this delivers by the (steam powered) truck load.

Amaranthe and her pals are still avoiding the long arm of the law after the misunderstandings of the first book, but trying meanwhile to curry favour with the emperor by carrying out helpful clean-up operations on the less reputable elements of the city. So even though they spend their time breaking and entering, snooping around and trying (not always successfully) not to kill anybody, they are really on the side of the law. Sort of.

The characters are rather a fun, if motley, collection. Amaranthe herself, once a rare female enforcer (cop) before she became a wanted woman, is a fine feisty heroine, not afraid to lead from the front, constantly getting into scrapes as a result but usually managing to get herself out of them again, by ingenuity rather than brute force. Rather charmingly, she believes that almost any situation, no matter how dire, can be resolved by talking things through. And she doesn't scream. I like her. Sicarius the ice-cold trained-from-birth assassin is an unlikely comrade-in-arms, and he is too often used as a get-out-of-jail-free card, turning up in the nick of time to effect a rescue for one character or another. I don't really see why bouncy, friendly Amaranthe has the hots for him, rippling muscles or no, but there you go. The rest of the bunch - the narcissistic Maldynado, the studious Books, the aspiring mage Akstyr and the outsider Basilard - are there to fill in the gaps and provide comic relief. Fans of Books will be pleased by his rather sweet little romance.

There’s a certain amount of world-building in this book, and we see more of the technological capabilities of the empire. There are a few snippets of information about the world’s history, too. There is also more magic, and I have to be honest here and say that this is not a fully-developed Sanderson-esque magic system. It’s more a matter of whatever would lead to a particularly dramatic moment turns out to be something the shaman/villain can do. But there's no real attempt to create a believable in-depth secondary world here, and everything is sacrificed to a witty bit of banter between the sidekicks. Anyone who would be disgruntled to find a character saying "Yo, boss!" should probably not be reading this book.

The action increases, with our heroes getting into more and more difficulties, and the obstacles are almost insuperable, until... well, you can probably guess how it turns out. This is not the realistic gritty style of fantasy, but then it doesn’t pretend to be. It sets out to entertain and amuse, with a sprinkling of oh-my-goodness-how-will-they-escape dramatics, and it does it extremely well. An enjoyable, fun read. Four stars.

Review: 'The Emperor's Edge' by Lindsay Buroker

I was bouncing around websites looking at reviews for something else when I tripped over this. It was free, it had good reviews, it sounded intriguing - a female enforcer (cop) in a steam-punk fantasy setting - so I downloaded the sample, and just kept reading. It's not deep, but it's pacy, funny and has interesting characters, and sometimes that's just what I'm in the mood for.

I've never read anything steam-punk before, but it was well done. The setting felt perfectly believable, with steam-powered this, that and the other, and a lot of mechanical devices just there, without too much isn't-this-clever authorial explanation. And, being fantasy, there's magic too, which is cool, although it's a relatively minor part of the story. I very much liked the winter setting, which made the snow and the frozen lake significant factors in the plot. Combined with the steam-powered machinery, this gave the story a nicely atmospheric feel.

The main character, Amaranthe Lokdon (and no, names are not the author's strongest suit), is terrific - intelligent and self-sufficient, able to think her way out of trouble and only occasionally needing to be rescued by a bloke. I liked Sicarius the laconic assassin too, and super-smart emperor Sespian (see what I mean about the names?). And there's a backup team of colourful characters, and some perfectly credible villains, too. It's always nice to find bad guys whose motives are a little more complex than simple global domination (although there was an element of that, too, of course). And all the characters behaved believably; in particular, Amaranthe's conflicted emotions when face to face with her former enforcer colleagues or when seeing Sicarius in cold assassin mode was nicely done. She felt like a truly rounded personality, if a little unnaturally bouncy and resourceful, but then that very much fits with her being one of only a few female enforcers.

The plot - well, it's certainly imaginative (not the hackneyed emperor's-in-trouble motif, but the creative plan to rescue him). There are a lot of implausibilities, it has to be said, and Amaranthe's unlikely team falls into place surprisingly easily for such a motley crew. Sicarius, in particular, seems like a confirmed loner, yet he signs up for Amaranthe's slightly hare-brained scheme remarkably easily. And it surprised me how often they walked openly around town, despite Sicarius being a notorious assassin and Amaranthe having her face plastered over the wanted posters, and sometimes Amaranthe was a bit too keen to confront possibly hostile enemies or beasties. But still, her seemingly unlimited capacity for devising ingenious escapes more than compensated, and frequently put a big grin on my face as she insouciantly walked out of yet another scrape.

My only complaint is that sometimes the plot devices were a little too obvious; so when there's a piece of machinery or a spade lying around, you know it's going to come in handy before too long. And is it just me, or are there an awful lot of secret passages and ducts in these buildings? I don't know whether it's intentional (because the protagonist is mid-twenties), but the book would fit perfectly well as young adult. There's no swearing or sex, one not-very-graphic near rape (but isn't there always?) and the violence is not particularly gory. It's all good clean action-packed stuff, without a single sagging moment. The romance is fairly low-key, too.

The ending is suitably dramatic, and even though the outcome was never really in doubt, it becomes a real page-turner. As always, the situation is resolved by ingenuity and dogged perseverance rather than brute force or magic. Of course this wouldn't be fantasy without a certain amount of badassery on display, but still, the majority of the fighting is more of the elbow to the chin or tripping up variety, and there's always an air of disappointment from the heroine that differences couldn't be resolved more peaceably. It's notable, actually, how often Amaranthe simply talks her way out of trouble. This is an entertaining caper with loads of humour, a believable and interesting setting, and a nice mixture of characters. Despite the implausibilities and contrivances of the plot, it's a fast, enjoyable read. Four stars.