Well that’s a fun story (and a great cover and title 😄).
Basically, take a struggling thief/con artist (with a tendency towards fire magic), give her a job bodyguarding a soon to be married young Lady and… see what happens. There are some crazy fight scenes, a few light plot twists, a skeletal mouse that goes BONG1, and … perhaps a chance to fall in love2?
Characterwise, man this is quite a cast. We have the Delly–our protagonist thief that can light things on fire–but the supporting cast are even better. Winn. A part troll illusionist/brawler–with quite the accent and past. Mrs. Totham, the Necromancer Body Scientist. The academic. The lady. The mother.
And of course Buttons.
I’ll leave that one for you to discover, but each time I the narrator read ‘Buttons said, “Bong.”’ I found myself grinning. It’s just weird and delightful.
Settingwise, it’s quasi-Victorian, which is a lot of fun. The language is a bit weird at times, with quite a few unexpected ‘fucks’ jumping out at you.. but apparently that’s about when the term really started to take off and branch out, so…
…her perception of egregious enfucktation in her current, present, and unfortunate familial circumstances…
It’s a fun setting though, going from the cities you most often see in a Victorian style out into the country and back. I want to see more of this world!
Plotwise, I didn’t expect the ‘protection’ mission itself to take up such relatively little of the book. It’s more an inciting incident than anything, but I’m glad for it. When we moved on from that–I was not at all ready to move on from this book. It’s all fairly straight forward (I expected a late book twist that never really materialized).
Overall, that was yet another delight of a book and if anything in this review struck your fancy–well worth the read!
Side note: This is apparently a sequel of sorts? Oops. From what I’ve seen, it’s more set in the same world with minor crossovers. But I’m going to have to go back and read it now!