R.K. Ashwick

Emry the Bard really, really wants to be in the Auric Guild, it would help him earn something from his craft, and open a lot of doors. There's a mystery he's seen going on in his world where there are ripples appearing and things are going wrong where the ripples happen, he's finding it curious until he is in a grove that has a spirit and the ripple causes the spirit to jump into his lute. The spirit is curious about the human world and is also curious about what's going on with these ripples. Emry enlists the help of Cal, his ex; to research the problem who also finds it interesting.
It was interesting to see the travails of a musician and also interesting to see how the Spirit's curiosity about the world would manifest. It took a while to get started but took off from there.… (more)

An absolutely wonderful cozy fantasy with a grumpy/sunshine achillean romance that I was totally rooting for. The DnD-style world is brilliantly realised, with the action all taking place on a street full of artificer shops, including the two rival potion makers. The collection of store owners functions as a wonderful queer found family with great diverse representation.  This is a lovely heartwarming book, 4 stars. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 was because of some sad character backstory that hit a little too close to home for me, but that’s a personal thing. Highly recommend this to everyone.… (more)

This book was ok at best. I liked the main characters, especially once the story moved past the kind of silly and pointless rivalry and on to the collaboration part of the story. But a lot of plot points were not integrated especially well into the story. I also felt like the book could have ended better.

The worst thing was when Ambrose and his friend Dawn were searching dangerous caves for potion ingredients. They had an argument and in response she used their return-home portal and abandoned him in a dangerous cave, alone. I honestly hardly have words for how much that horrified me (I admit I may be relating a bit too much to Ambrose in this particular situation), and the resolution of it is even worse. Ambrose made it back fine, but he soon decided that he needed to apologize to her, which I simply find breathtakingly awful. He did literally nothing wrong. Their argument was even because she wanted them to do something unsafe!… (more)