Booklog 23/2025: Shannon MacLeod: Embrace the Lace

Before I start a review I have to say that this has one of those cringeworthy covers that I hate: the half-naked, well muscled male torso with a dipping waistband and no face. It also has a title that doesn't reflect the story. I don't recall much lace at all. However, having said that, I was in the mood for something light and this fitted the bill. It's a time-travel-to-17th-century-Scotland story which owes something to Outlander and pays its debt with a plethora of pop-culture references.  Widowed Andrew McIver, head of his clan in his mid twenties, needs to remarry quickly to provide an heir before his grasping uncle steps in to take over at the upcoming clan gathering. Modern American geek Evangeline (Van for short) goes off to a SCA event and wades into a pond, nearly drowning and emerging four centuries earlier and half a world away. Andrew rescues her from drowning and from then on is stuck with her because she's having way too much fun to attempt to go home.  She manages at once to be an annoying motor-mouth and the saviour of the castle kitchen. Expect an unconventional heroine, a family feud, interference from the local Fae, and the unexpected invention of a 17th century bicycle.

Booklog 24/2025: Murphy Lawless: Gladiator Bear – Gladiator Shifters #1

Murphy Lawless, pseudonym for C.E. Murphy, has written a whole series of shapeshifter romances. This is the first. Anna is a conservationist who spends her time on expeditions observing and protecting rare animal species. She's mostly funded by the Gladiator Foundation owned by the reclusive Garius Beren, who just happens to be a bear shapeshifter tied into the tradition of Roman gladiators. Within hours of meeting (at a gala for the foundation) Garius and Anna fall instantly in love and are kidnapped together by Remus, a wolf-shifter and Garius' enemy, who runs illicit arena games on a secret island off the Italian coast. Anna proves up to the task of outwitting Remus and releasing Garius (in bear form) from the arena. But that's just the start. It seems that Anna and Garius are fated mates (that's a thing in the shifter world) but Garius is overprotective and it nearly causes disaster. This is a fun read, tightly written and a real page-turner. Lawless is an assured writer and not a word is wasted. I read it on kindle which meant I could ignore the tacky half-naked male torso on the cover. I hate those kind of covers, but I guess the reader knows exactly what they're getting.

Booklog 25/2025: V.E. Schwab: A Conjuring of Light – Shades of Magic #3 – Audiobook

Audiobook read by Kate Reading & Michael Kramer

This is the final book in a trilogy chronicling the story of four parallel Londons (Grey, Red, White and Black) begun in A Darker Shade of Magic and continued in A Gathering of Shadows.  My review of the second book said it was plot-light, and on consideration I think the events in the second and third books could have been covered in one book. There's plenty happening in A Conjuring of Light but the narrative jumps around to various different viewpoints, many of them unnecessary characters you are neither interested in nor care about. Lila and Kell, the main protagonists, are together, and Captain Alucard's love affair with Prince Rhy is more to the fore. Holland, in White London, has been inhabited by Black London's Osaron, a powerful being, a god-like entity who wants to be a king. Osaron seems pretty much set to subsume Red London. He's taken the city, all except for the warded palace, and so Kell, Lila, Alucard and Holland (in chains) set off for the floating market to acquire a device which they hope will trap and destroy him. This is the final book in a trilogy so you can pretty much guarantee peril followed by success. Unfortunately by the time I got half-way through this book I was losing the will to live, and then I followed an advert and read the blurb for The Fragile Threads of Power, set seven years on from the trilogy - and the blurb told me who lived, who died and what the two main protagonists did afterwards. It somewhat took the shine off listening to the rest of the story, but I'm no quitter, so I upped the reading speed to 1.3 and kept going. Schwab's writing style is elegant, but by the end neither Kell nor Lila had really developed much. We never found out about their origins, so questions asked earlier in the trilogy were left unanswered. Prince Rhy, Kells adoptive brother, grew up out of necessity, but the most convincing character arc was Holland's. He is, in fact, the hidden hero of the trilogy. The first book was read by Steven Crossley. The second and third were read by Kate Reading & Michael Kramer, depending on whether we're in a male or female point of view. I actually preferred the narrator of the first book, as I always prefer a single voice telling the story.