Ash Fitzsimmons

A ROSE AMONG THORNS was such a cool book! Rose Thorn gets a text that she’s needed to fil in at her great aunt Lily’s flower nursery for a few days when a family friend falls ill. Sounds innocuous? Sure, at least until elves and fauns from the magical society that manages dangerous plants show up on your doorstep, informing you that your aunt is secretly an elf who grows highly dangerous magical plants. And that her sudden disappearance means that she may be in danger. I loved the characters in this one. Rose was lots of fun. Yven was a favorite and I loved hearing about the elves and his background. Sally the strangling vine was absolutely one of my favorite characters! She was like a dog or a cat and I loved how much personality she had. The world building was great, with glamours, cursed potions of all kinds, forbidden romances, and a mystery to solve as they try to determine what happened to Lily. I’m excited to read more in this series! 5/5 stars.… (más)

I love quirky books that have a snarky sense of humor and STRANGER MAGICS was such a fun read! Colin, half-fae son of Titania, has been content to live separate from the land of Faerie, running a used bookstore and performing the occasional exorcism when wayward fae are being pesky to the local humans. I immediately liked Colin, who is quite sarcastic and dry (who can blame him at over 800 years old, though with the Gregorian calendar being a new thing, dates are hard to pin down… LOL.) Colin starts out solving one mystery in the form of his former girlfriend Meggy’s child, a changeling named Moyna, who was taken by Titania when she was two weeks old and is now a 16-year-old. But this has complicated repercussions. I can’t say enough that this book is FUN with a snarky, sarcastic humorous voice. Where else would you find the fae you are trying to hunt down reciting Big Mac jingles in Latin? And I particularly loved the snarky way he wields magic against inferior magical enemies (complete with lots of sarcasm.) It rather reminded me of a fun Kate Daniels book in that way, one of my favorite series. The fight with Drago/Steve was a favorite, LOL. There are quite a few flashback sequences. I really enjoyed getting to spend time with all of the side characters, especially Joey and Toula. Looking forward to more in this series!… (más)

Colin Leffee is a dealer in used and rare books, living quietly over his shop in Rigby.

He's also a half-Fae prince, at odds with his mother, Titania, working with a priest to stop other Fae who amuse themselves by harassing humans.

His relatively quiet life is disrupted when a sullen, teenage changeling is dropped on his doorstep.

The teenager is his daughter, but she was raised to regard Titania as her mother. When Colin figures out that she is his daughter, he wants to return her to her mother--a woman he had a brief affair with years ago. This girl, though, whom Titania called Moyna but whose mother, Colin's old love, Meggy, named Olive, is absolutely determined to return to Titania, and doesn't believe Colin when he says that Titania won't allow a changeling she's thrown out to return.

Colin's troubles are just beginning.

Mab has her own disastrous scheme, that will restore her to control of Faerie, but will destroy the human world.

What we get here are Fae who are people, but who are not human--who have culture, traditions, and bad habits that feel real. Colin likes humans, but he's by no means an unambiguously good guy. He's got lines he won't cross, but other lines that he happily will cross. His priest partner, Father Paul, has notebooks full of notes on Colin, his own and those of his predecessors, on handling him safely. There are also humans capable of magic--wizards, now largely under the management of the Arcanum, which Colin has a very tricky relationship with. Wizards would usually rather kill him, and he's not fond of wizards, either.

Then there's his brother, Robin, whose fun he keeps interfering with. Also Oberon, Robin's father but not Colin's, who has largely retired from Faerie, with his own court, to live in southern Florida.

And there's Mab, and her evil plot, which neither Colin, nor Titania, nor Oberon, nor Robin, suspect, until Mab tricks Robin into triggering a trap, and it blows up in his and Colin's faces, incidentally sucking Moyna/Olive and her mother Meggy into Faerie, and closing off Faerie from the human world, apparently permanently.

Oh, and one side effective of this will be to let the Grey Lands into the human realm, destroying the human world has habitable space for humans.

Colin, Robin, Father Paul's new seminarian assistant, Joey, and a human wizard of really questionable background (her father was a wizardly mass murderer, and she's had her powers partially bound by the Arcanum) have to work together, with access to magic pretty thoroughly cut off, to undo the closing of Faerie and save humans, Titania's court, and Oberon's.

I love these characters and their world. There's no necessity for a sequel to this book, but I'd love to see more of this world.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.… (más)