Blood Heir
Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews is $3.49 at Amazon! This is a spin-off of Andrews’ Kate Daniels series with the main character being Kate and Curran’s ward. Obviously this will be a more nuanced read if you’ve finished or are familiar with the prior series. I dropped off that train around book three.
From award-winning author, Ilona Andrews, an all-new novel set in the New York Times #1 bestselling Kate Daniels World and featuring Julie Lennart-Olsen, Kate and Curran’s ward.
Atlanta was always a dangerous city. Now, as waves of magic and technology compete for supremacy, it’s a place caught in a slow apocalypse, where monsters spawn among the crumbling skyscrapers and supernatural factions struggle for power and survival.
Eight years ago, Julie Lennart left Atlanta to find out who she was. Now she’s back with a new face, a new magic, and a new name—Aurelia Ryder—drawn by the urgent need to protect the family she left behind. An ancient power is stalking her adopted mother, Kate Daniels, an enemy unlike any other, and a string of horrifying murders is its opening gambit.
If Aurelia’s true identity is discovered, those closest to her will die. So her plan is simple: get in, solve the murders, prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled, and get out without being recognized. She expected danger, but she never anticipated that the only man she’d ever loved could threaten everything.
One small misstep could lead to disaster. But for Aurelia, facing disaster is easy; it’s relationships that are hard.
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Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy is $2.99! I mentioned in a previous Hide Your Wallet, as I was a fan of Kennedy’s early new adult romances. Did any one you read this one?
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Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor is $2.99! This is a YA fantasy with some romantic elements, and it’s the first in a series. I’ve heard so many good things about this book, and several friends compared it to a fairy tale. However, readers admit that it’s a tad confusing at the start, as they tried to get their footing in the story.
Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”, she speaks many languages – not all of them human – and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.
When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
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Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters is $2.99! This is book one in the Amelia Peabody historical mystery series. I’ve seen this recommended in the comments a few times, especially for people who like historical mysteries or Phryne Fisher.
Set in 1884, this is the first installment in what has become a beloved bestselling series. At thirty-two, strong-willed Amelia Peabody, a self-proclaimed spinster, decides to use her ample inheritance to indulge her passion, Egyptology. On her way to Egypt, Amelia encounters a young woman named Evelyn Barton-Forbes. The two become fast friends and travel on together, encountering mysteries, missing mummies, and Radcliffe Emerson, a dashing and opinionated archaeologist who doesn’t need a woman’s help — or so he thinks.
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I’m a huge Kate Daniels fan, but BLOOD HEIR was a massive swing and a miss for me. Just awful. Andrews seems to be continuing with Kate’s story independently, so I’m just pretending that BH doesn’t exist as an instalment.
I enjoyed Blood Heir so I don’t think it dropped the ball at all. And I love the Amelia Peabody series. Read them all as library books and then had to buy them so I can own them.
FYI, narration and dialogue in the Amelia Peabody reflects the British racist imperialism/white savior perspectives of the time period. I couldn’t get past it and it was a DNF.
I started disliking the Amelia Peabody books when we got later in the series, everything became comedic… and I loathe their perfect, flawless, brilliant son Ramses. Oh, how I loathe Ramses.
I think it’s unfair to compare Blood Heir (written about a young adult overcoming a bunch of adversity and insecurities but still spending most of her life knowing she was loved, and after a while, also with a fair amount of privilege) with Kate Daniels (written about someone who was trained to kill from the time she could walk and didn’t have anyone to rely on but herself until late 20s). As much as I loved reading her books, it would be a highly messed up world if everyone turned out like Kate because it would mean adults failed their children in the most spectacular manner.
I DNF’d Good Girl Complex because I hated every single person in the book, main and supporting characters alike. (the dog was cute though) Mac is “not like other girls” because while she’s rich, she’s a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl (she says it outright), and Cooper is a jerk with a chip on his shoulder and who spends all his time ignoring it when Mac says she’s got a boyfriend. Maybe I’m not the audience for this sort of new adult book, but I felt like it could have been done so much better if even one trope had been tweaked a tiny bit. Anyway, life is too short to rage read so I quit.
Loved Blood Heir – patiently waiting for more in this series. In the past I really enjoyed the Amelia Peabody archeological mystery series with several strong, competent female characters.
I highly highly recommend Laini Taylor’s ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ and the following two books in the series. When I read it I thought it was very original, and fell in love with the characters, the concepts and the world building. The romance is very satisfying as well. Definitely worth picking this one up.
You do have to read Crocodile on a Sandbank with a grain of salt for sure, it was written in the 70s and the imperialist parts don’t age well.
On the other hand, Amelia Peabody is a great character, very much like Alexis in the Parasol Protectorate, practicality, thumping umbrella and all, and the book has one of my favorite love declarations of all time.
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I loved the Amelia Peabody series when I read it, but haven’t revisited it in a while/couldn’t speak to how the imperialism shows up. I will say, like many longer series, it has stronger and weaker entries. Some of the ones in the middle with Ramses that WS mentions really drag, but it does pick back up again later. I also love Emerson (Amelia’s initial love interest and subsequent husband.)
I’ve started listening to the Amelia Peabody books on audio and the narrator is wonderful at evoking Amelia’s personality. But I would definitely say the imperialist attitudes haven’t aged well and definitely have to be taken with a heaping spoonful of salt.
Ruby Tandoh’s latest COOK AS YOU ARE is on sale for $1.99 on several platforms (not sure how long). The GBBO winner’s book devotes itself to comfort food, in many definitions: easy and quick when you need it in a hurry, more complex things you make for the love of it, foods that remind you of your home or heritage, and so forth. So, the organization of recipes may seem a little counterintuitive, but you really feel Tandoh’s voice throughout and she provides tons of resources (other cookbooks and recipes, and even books to read if eating is triggering for you). I haven’t cooked from it yet, but inhaled the library ecopy and plan to buy as soon as I’m done here…
I saw an article that a musical based on the GBBO playing in London. Wish it would come to where I am in the US.
I’m glad readers are concerned about imperialist attitudes in historical mysteries. I’d suggest, however, that those spouted by Peabody are part of the author’s poking fun at her. Peabody considers Emerson’s lack of racial bigotry as uncivilized, but his attitudes prove sound in the plots. He’s more likely to be speaking for the author. The attitudes spouted by imperialist racists (amusingly, in the case of Percy’s “memoir”), of course, just help to show that they’re bad guys.
And of course making Peabody (and Walter and Evelyn) finally face her own racism is the central plot twist in one of the later books (The Ape Who Guards the Balance, I think). That moment of truth was telegraphed by the adoption of David a few books before.
I loved the whole series, with a couple of minor exceptions. Still fondly remember finding the first book on a low shelf, crouching down to look at the opening pages and falling over backwards, laughing, when I hit, “What is it like?”
I would like to second @Msb’s take on Amelia Peabody. She is also a very unreliable narrator. And her attitudes change significantly over the course of the books. Not every book is a gem, but a lot of them are. Barbara Rosenblatt is a great narrator and really brings all the characters to life.
I like the Amelia Peabody series, but I do agree with the series is uneven — for several of the books the series feels quite static with the same plot line used over and over and there’s little character development. In those books Peters became tiresomely obsessed with poking fun at various late 19th/early 20th centuries adventure novels and “sensational’ stories (think of the books by H. Rider Haggard or Conan Doyle’s Lost World or the spiritualism craze). And precocious Ramses in those books can definitely be just too much.
But in the later books as the series moves into the 20th century and the beginning of the struggle for Egypt’s independence from colonial rule, Peters becomes interested in developing her characters and showing their recognition of the negative impacts of colonialism on Egyptians, their reactions to the rise Egyptian independence movement and to WWI (along with changes in English society, including the fight for women’s suffrage). Amelia in particular is forced to confront her own unthinking attitudes about British imperialism and superiority. Amelia prides herself on being more cosmopolitan and open-minded and fair to Egyptians than those other British people (in part because she supports the women’s suffrage movement in England). But Peters sets up situations later in the series that force Amelia to recognize her internal racism and prejudices. Amelia is never going to be recognized as modern 21st-century progressive, but Peters I think does a pretty decent job of showing how Amelia, who is a product of her time, learns to reassess her internal prejudices and to rethink what it is means to be progressive (it’s has to be about more than votes for white women in England). Peters, who had a PhD in Egyptology, had an excellent grasp on the history of the 19th and early 20th century Egyptology and on the history of Egypt in that era and in the later books that also shines through more.
Seconding @Saryta’s rec of Laini Taylor. She writes like a dream and her world building is fabulous. This series of three, plus the two Strange the Dreamer novels are just gorgeous.
YMMV on Daughter of Smoke and Bone–I didn’t find it confusing whatsoever. It’s one of my all-time favorite series in any genre.