I’d like to briefly introduce my blog, ScatteredThoughtsandRogueWords, a LGBTQ centric book blog (reviews, author interviews, essays on writing, contests and such). While I review all LGBTQ offerings, fiction and non-fiction, SciFi, Fantasy and Paranormals are deep favorites of mine.
I would like to post two of my reviews today as a sort of introduction. One was by a new author to me, Mina MacLeod and the other by Theo Fenraven (a paranormal trilogy).
Theo Fenraven wrote his Precogs in Peril between 2012 and 2013, a terrific paranormal trilogy which came to a conclusion in January 2013. My series review can be found here http://wp.me/p220KL-W0
Swords, Sorcery and Sundry by Mina MacLeod
Suitable for YA and Adult Readers, minimal sexual content
First story in a new series
Rating: 4.75 stars out of 5
“A wizard, a soldier, and an assassin walk into a bar …”
Wizard Sylvain has just recently arrived in Abelia, the large capital of the Firmiana Duchy. He’s hot, tired and just wants a drink before going up to his rooms. Soldier Ashe is at a table nearby wanting to enjoy her food and friendly banter with the bar owner. Assassin Niklas is situated right in the middle, with an agenda of his own and hopes not to be interfered with. Alas, once the trouble starts and it seems that Niklas has been ganged up on, then Sylvain and Ashe just naturally jump into the fray with sword and sorcery at hand.
But quickly things go awry as Sylvain accidentally sets the bar on fire and the culprits escape. No one has any money to pay for the damages they caused. With the Duchy’s guards at the door, and gold needed to repair the damage to the hotel and bar, the wizard, the assassin, and the warrior team up (it was their fault after all) to earn the money they required to keep them out of the jail and maybe make them even solvent. But the mission they were hired for will take them into the Deadlands and in order to survive, the three will have to become a team to contend with. What happens when a wizard, an assassin and a soldier combine and become something much more than any of them expected….
When a story opens with a tongue in cheek reference to a long-standing bar joke, I just knew I was in for a rollicking great time and Mina MacLeod’s Swords, Sorcery & Sundry delighted me at every turn. How I loved this story and MacLeod’s characters! From the very premise,three disparate people meet in a bar and bonding over a combined debt, I was hooked. And I stayed that way to the end of this adventure and the possibility of a series. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Swords, Sorcery and Sundry is that wonderful and rare story that be listed either as a YA book or M/M Romance, an element that was intentional on the author’s part. That is due largely because it is a story about the tight bonds of friendship first, and then the beginnings of a m/m romance between two of the friends second. But always it is the ties of friendship that guides them and forms them into a family of sorts as well as a business.