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Booklog 21/2022: Jodi Taylor: A Catalogue of Catastrophe – St Mary's #13
Max and Markham have left St Mary's, but has St Mary's really left them? They are bounty hunte—er—recovery agents working with Lady Amelia Smallhope and her fearsome butler, Pennyroyal. Max wonders if she's going mad. Zipping around the timeline is seriously affecting her physically and mentally. She needs to reset her body clock before the ghosts of the past kill her. But her idyllic recuperation time with husband, Leon, and son, Matthew, comes to a very abrupt end. When Max and Markham set out to scupper a sinister organisation, founded in the future, but affecting the past, they really do bite off more than they can chew. Was this shadowy organisation behind their arch-enemy, Ronan?
This is excellent but it isn't the place to start with the St Marys books. I suggest you go back to the beginning and start with 'Just One Damn Thing After Another.' You can thank me later.
Though she's the daughter of the House of Xy and half-sister to the (incompetent and paranoid) king Xymund, Xylara has chosen to be a healer and, so far, she's been allowed to get on with it. She knows there's always the possibility of being dragged off into a royal marriage, however she never expected to be traded into slavery in order to protect the kingdom from the marauding Firelanders. She becomes the Warprize of Warlord Keir, stepping into a culture she knows nothing about. This is a romance as well as a fantasy and much of the uncertainly in Lara and Keir's relationship arises from a basic misunderstanding which is eventually resolved, but not before duty drags Lara in a different direction. I enjoyed this, but realising how many books there are in the series (six at present) I'm not going to get drawn into reading them all back to back. 
This is a post-Roman Arthurian story, but don't expect the sword in the stone trope. The story is told by the elderly monk, Derfel Cadarn, who is writing the story of Arthur in secret. We pick up the story when Derfel is little more than a child, raised by Merlin who has gone off to seek 'the matter of Britain'. The resident druid, Nimue, Merlin's lover, is Derfel's childhood friend, whom he loves but knows he cannot have except in friendship. Also resident is Morgan. The High King, Uther, dies, leaving his baby grandson on the throne - that's Mordred, born with a club-foot. There's a lot of politicking between the tribes, and eventually Arthur, Uther's bastard son, already grown and a fine warrior, returns to protect Mordred and his kingdom from Saxon incursions and the other British tribes. Everything's going swimmingly and Arthur is about to be betrothed to the lovely daughter of a rival tribe when he sees Guinevere and all common sense goes out of the window, leaving the Dumnonians vulnerable on several fronts. This is really a coming of age story of Derfel. Arthur doesn't appear until about half way through and Merlin eventually slips in and out of the story even later than that. And the names? I'm presuming Welsh in nature with a lot of double Ds. Though I'm sure they're authentic-ish, I could wish for some of them to be a little more pronounceable. Though this was a fresh take on the Arthurian legend, the first half was a little too slow I'm not rushing to read books two and three yet, though I do have them on my kindle in case I get the urge. I don't think this is a patch on Cornwell's Richard Sharpe novels (which I read avidly about twenty-some years ago). I haven't read The Last Kingdom, though I've very much enjoyed the series on TV. I should give that a try next.