Swooning with Pleasure

Okay, now we're starting in on the backlog of books from my hiatus.  Unfortunately, just limiting myself to the ones I really want to talk about, that's still an awful lot of books, and as you all know, I'm much worse at writing about books I read a while ago.  Still, I have so very many things to say here!

Guys?  Guys.  Have you read Fortune's Pawn yet?  Have you read Honor's Knight?  If not, you should go out and do that, because I can now definitively say that the trilogy delivers from top to bottom.  Rachel Bach's Heaven's Queen gave me everything I wanted from Devi Morris, the phantoms, the Eyes, Caldswell, Rupert, and even the Lady Gray.  My only complaint is that there wasn't nearly enough of the secondary characters from the first book--I wanted more Nova and Basil and Hyrek.

We start out right where we left off last time--Devi and Rupert on the run.  They spend a little bit of time scrambling around, which is much more about being in love than getting anything else done, and I have to say it's the weakest part of the whole series. 

I just don't have strong feelings for Rupert.  There's a lot of telling instead of showing abut how attractive he is and how connected she feels to him.  Especially considering that I'm fully capable of falling hard for a literary character--hell, I'm half in love with Devi--Rupert just doesn't give me much to work with, and consequently the little period of sweet tranquility they experience just kind of drags, and everything that's supposed to feel all teamwork-romance-bliss is just kind of boring.

But, you know, it's not that bad.  The story moves forward, there are some complications, and when they come up with a plan and start to execute it, things take off.  Then you get what you want from the rest of this series--you find out about the phantoms, and Devi figures out her infection, and everyone is taken captive and the lelgis want to kill them and so do the Eyes but Devi outfights and outclevers them until she brings the whole system DOWN and saves the world and everything. 

Wait, were those spoilers?  Come on, you never though it wasn't going to end well, did you? 

This was a romp--if the love had had me convinced, it would have been the perfect book.  As it stands, it is merely an incredibly satisfying and ass kicking book that makes me want to read everything else Rachel Bach has ever written and also possibly to meet and be BFFs with Devi Morris. 

Highly recommended.