Shards of Time by Lynn Flewelling.

This book is: not as bad as the worst books in this series, but also not in the top 3.
Other elements: Familiar characters, sarcasm, magic.
Read it: if you love the first three books of the Nightrunner series and need another Seregil and Alec fix, even if it’s going to be a watery, diluted one.
Overall rating: 6.5/10

This book is the 7th in a series that is very dear to my heart. Or, rather, the first 3 books of it are very dear to my heart. They’ve become some of my favorite comfort books (meaning I reread them over and over and over again) and they played an important role in the formation of some of the most important friendships in my life. (With actual people, not fictional ones.)

I can’t talk about Shards of Time without talking about its predecessors, many of which I love too much to review in any coherent manner. Here is an overview:

Luck in the Shadows: 10/10
Stalking Darkness: 10/10
Traitor’s Moon: 9/10
Shadows Return: 5/10
The White Road: 4/10
Casket of Souls: 7.5/10
Shards of Time: 6.5/10

Shards of Time is supposed to be the last Nightrunner book, at least for a while. And I think that’s a good thing. The characters, the universe, the adventures: they all feel thin and stretched by this point. The characters have stopped growing and changing. The plot is small: really, the title of this book could be “Alec and Seregil Solve a Ghost Story.” I think it’s the most compartmentalized of their adventures yet, and it’s sad to see our heroes working in isolation away from the pulse of Skalan politics. When Seregil complains that he’s bored with life in Rhiminee, I suspect it’s actually Flewelling talking.

We do get some amazing scenes with characters whose roles were smaller in the earlier books, and that’s a lot of fun. Flewelling also shows that she remains gifted at creating really creepy monsters/bad magic. The new baddies in Shards of Time are delightfully creepy and impressively well thought out, just as I would have hoped.

Shards of Time is more than somewhat enjoyable, but it’s hard not to see it as a step down from the crackling wit and extensive and fascinating worldbuilding of the earlier books in the series. It’s also less complex and less successful at making all its disparate elements feel like part of the same whole. So it could have been much worse, but I was hoping it would be better.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random Random House Publishing Group – Del Rey Spectra for providing me with a review copy of Shards of Time.

The Escape by Mary Balogh.

This book is: refreshing and delightful.
Other elements: slightly illicit romance, war veterans, widows, narrowly-avoided scandal, Wales.
Read it: if you like historical fiction and character-driven romance novels with interesting plots, strong female characters, and good writing.
Overall rating: 8/10

I’ve always thought I would love romance novels if I could find the right romance novels, and Mary Balogh proved me right.

The Escape begins by introducing us to the “Survivor’s club,” a group of veterans who formed strong friendships while recovering together after the Napoleonic wars. The group is concerned about one of their number, Sir Benedict Harper. After many long months struggling to regain as much use of his legs as will be possible, Ben’s physical recovery from his war wounds is about as complete as it will ever be. He’s never going to walk again without crutches, and that is that. Ben is realizing that he doesn’t have much left in his life except for his injury. He can’t go back to the life he always wanted – the Army – so he has to figure out what else there is for him.

Samantha McKay is a woman trapped. After years of nursing her her sick husband through his war wounds (and crippling self-pity), she is now a widow under the iron thumb of her puritanical in-laws. Without a family of her own to turn to, Samantha doesn’t see a way out of her situation. That is, until one day when she runs into a rude gentleman who is staying with his sister in the neighborhood. When he calls on her to apologize for nearly running her down with his horse on their first meeting, Samantha discovers that Ben is a veteran of the same war that left her husband bitter and injured. The two strike up a friendship and struggle to observe the bounds of propriety as a crackling tension mounts between them.

When Samantha’s father-in-law moves to throw her out of her late husband’s estate, Ben and Samantha work to hatch a daring plan for her to escape her in-laws’ control. Self-discovery, unforeseen events, and opportunities for trysts ensue.

Things that rock about this book:

1. The heroine is a fully person with wants, needs, backstory, and personal growth who makes her own decisions and about her life and her body.
2. The hero is a fully developed person with wants, needs, backstory, and personal growth who makes his own decisions and about his life and his body.
3. Both characters go through significant growth of their own, separately. This is a novel as well as a romance novel.
4. There are no rape-ey, no-means-yes scenes where the woman isn’t into what’s happening at first and then changes her mind.
5. The romantic hero is disabled. His legs don’t work properly, but he’s still a strong, clever, virile man with physical desires.
6. Both of the romantic leads are willing to put aside their feelings of romance/desire for their own and the other person’s general well-being.
7. The writing is excellent.
8. It’s not just sex scenes stuck together by filler. It’s a story about two people and, as part of each of their stories, sex scenes do occur. But never at the cost of narrative or character development.

As you know if you’ve been keeping up with my What I’m reading posts, this book sent me into an epic romance novel binge that’s currently coming in at 31 books by Mary Balogh since I finished The Escape.  I can’t give you a higher recommendation than that.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Bantam Dell for providing me with a copy of The Escape by Mary Balogh for review.