Sarah A. Hoyt

So in one of my favorite movies, there's this scene. It involves an older chef stepping in to fix a mess, and as he's tossing things together, someone runs up and frantically asks "But what do we call it?" and he says, "A Belle Melange, a beautiful mess."

For some reason as I was reading this book, that came to mind. It's not that the book is a mess, far from it. It's tightly plotted, the action is almost continuous, with enough let-down and talk moments to give you a breath, even if the show more characters never get a break. No, this book is a beautiful mixture. Regency romance, fantasy, modern Earth, dragons, dryads, fairyland, the nature of magic… it's all in here. Assassination plots, kidnapping, more kidnapping, and in the middle of it, a prosaic Earthwoman. It shouldn't work… but it does.

I can't tell you how many times I have picked up a time-travel romance book over the years, to put it back down in disgust as my suspension of disbelief was mauled beyond endurance. I eventually stopped reading them. Sarah Hoyt touches on this in Witchfinder, with accuracy and humor, and her solutions are pragmatic without losing the charming romance. The ending was perfect.

The weaving of the worlds, the explanation of magic, where it came from, and why some worlds lack it, that alone is worth reading this for. You will rarely find such a well-developed system for magic, nor one so believable. Magic has consequences, and a price, and not only to an individual, but to a society.

All in all, I am looking forward to re-reading this one. And I am hoping for a sequel, or at least a related book. show less

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Title: Monster Hunter Guardian
Series: MHI #7
Author: Larry Correia & Sarah Hoyt
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 436
Words: 118K

Synopsis:

While Owen and the other Monster Hunters are off in show more Russia fighting the big baddies, Julie (Own's wife and former Shackleford) is in charge of running the skeleton crew of MHI. She's also taking care of her dying grandfather and her newborn son.

She has a recruitment possibility but it goes sideways and turns out to be just a lure so a malevolent being can kill her grandfather and kidnap her son. Brother Death then contacts Julie and says he'll trade her son for a powerful artifact he knows Julie is guarding, even though she told MHI it was destroyed. She reluctantly agrees but creates a backup plan to recover the item and her son if Brother Death double crosses her. He does. Julie ends up in Germany alone and with almost no weapons. She tracks down the group of cultists who took possession of the artifact only to find out that the kidnapping of her son and artifact were unrelated. In the process of recovering the artifact, Julie breaks about a bajillion german laws and the german version of MCB makes MCB look like a kind and benevolent grandfather.

Julie goes on the run. With the help of Management (the last dragon in existence), she finds a man who is a European Monster Advocate. She needs his help to track down a monster known for kidnapping children, who will hopefully then lead her to Brother Death. Turns out the Monster Advocate was killed years ago and his body taken over by the child killer monster. Julie kills it and lets Management into its computer system. This gets her an invite to an auction that Mr Death is holding, with her son being the main item on the agenda.

Julie heads out with a lawyer from Management. At the auction she becomes aware that her mother is there and wants Julie's son to raise as her own (Julie's mom is a nutjob of a super vampire). The auction goes bad and Julie shoots her way out. She rescues her son only to see him taken from her by her mother. With the lawyer's help she escapes Brother Death.

Julie tracks her mom down and calls all the dregs of MHI to assault the mansion, along with the local branch of government monster hunters. They succeed against all odds and Julie has her son back. She also finds out that MHI is back from the Island.

With help from Owen and some of the other MHI Crew Julie finds out Brother Death's real name and uses that to kill him. During all of this her Guardian marks have grown and she finds out that as the marks grow, her humanity will shrink until she ceases to be human. At which point she will become a monster herself.


My Thoughts:

Another grand entry in the Monster Hunters International series. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think this is the best written series ever. I gave the first book 3 stars when I read it back in whenever and wasn't sure I was going to continue the series, but here I am, 7 books later and still enjoying them. For me, these are delightful books. Evil, in the form of monsters and other supernatural baddies, being taken care of from the business end of a gun. I find that extremely appealing.

I'm going to talk about the negative first though. This is a book about a woman who has lost her son to an unspeakable evil. There are emotions flying around like confetti at Mardi Gras. My issue isn't that it rang false or anything, but that it was there at all. I don't read books to souse myself in feminine emotion. Julie Pitt is no shrinking lilly nor does she allow her feelings to overcome her ability to act, but the mere fact that they are part of the story wasn't at all enjoyable for me. This is definitely a personal dislike and not some “I'm so Unbiased, look at me judging this book” kind of thing. Other readers might absolutely love Julie and her contrast to Owen Pitt, the man who saved the world. But for me, it was a negative. Now with that out of the way.

I had a BLAST with this book. I feel like my Quote post really summed up this book. Action, snark, non-explicit gun porn (I was surprised at how much I understood and found interesting when Julie was talking about various guns) and humor. The orcs are babysitters for baby Ray and the few paragraphs about them had me in stitches. They pretend to be wargs and let Ray ride them while having mock battles. It had me almost laughing out loud.

The action is just unrelenting. Julie has very few fall back options and almost no time and we as the readers jump from one scene to the next as she battles her way through various groups in various countries. From the death cultists who steal the artifact, to the baby stealing monster to the fight at the auction to the fight with Julie's Vampire Mom to the final scene with Brother Death, it was all drizzled with awesome sauce.

This book didn't feel like it was written by 2 authors. Whether Sarah Hoyt does another collaboration with Correia or not, I really enjoyed this work by the 2 of them. It does make me want to check out her other stuff to see if it would work for me.

★★★★☆ show less

Who was Shakespeare's Dark Lady, and where did he get some of his most memorable lines? Hoyt tells a tale of a power struggle amongst the elves, in which young Will Shakespeare (he's just nineteen at this point) and his family get sideswiped.

Quicksilver, a young elf who is mostly male but sometimes female, is the rightful heir to the throne of the elvish kingdom, but he's been displaced by his elder brother. This seems reasonable, when we first meet them, because while the brother's show more arrogant, Quicksilver is entirely self-absorbed, unable to see beyond his own wants and his own "rights," without the slightest regard for duty, responsibility, or the feelings of others. Any ra tional set of noblemen would have preferred the arrogant Sylvanus to the wholly irresponsible Quicksilver--especially since they don't know that Sylvanus murdered his parents, Oberon and Titania.

Sylvanus had taken a human wife, and the wife has now died, leaving an infant daughter in need of a wetnurse. To fill this need, the king has kidnapped another human woman with a young daughter--Nan Shakespeare, and baby Susanna. He also intends that Nan will be his new wife, a plan that doesn't please Nan. When Quicksilver meets the worried Will Shakespeare, looking for his missing wife and child, the young elf has the beginnings of a plan to get his revenge on his brother and regain his rightful place in the elvish scheme of things. Quicksilver needs someone else to strike the fatal blow against his brother, because whoever strikes that blow will die. Impetuous young Will, eager to be a man in the support and protection of his young family, will be easily persuaded, and not know enough to ask the right questions. It's a neat scheme, which will cost him nothing; the human will die, but human lives are so short anyway, that doesn't matter. Quicksilver presents himself to Shakespeare as the Lady Silver, and promises to help him regain his family in exchange for his help in avenging "her" parents' deaths.

And, of course, things immediately stop being neat. Quicksilver, despite his extreme self-involvement, does have a few real friends, especially the lovely Ariel and her brother Pyrite, and Ariel in particular attempts t o give him good advice. Will Shakespeare is a genuinely decent young man, who wants to help the distressed Lady Silver even while keeping focussed on trying to get his wife back from the elf king. The more Quicksilver has to pay attention to other people in order to get them to play their assigned parts in his scheme, the more he starts to see a reflection of himself in their eyes, and it isn't pretty.

I think it's fair to say that Quicksilver gets the kicking around he deserves in this story., while other characters do the growing up that they need to do. Interestingly, the only false notes I found were the intrusions of Shakespeare's lines into the mouths of the elves at critical moments. It's a clever touch, I suppose, but I think in this case it was a little too clever for an otherwise delightful book. show less

This is an enjoyable beginning to a cozy mystery series. Although Dyce and I don't see eye to eye about taking a paint brush to a piece of furniture, I did learn several good tips about furniture refinishing, and I loved her irreverent sense of humor. Another part of her charm for me was Dyce's ability to look at a piece of furniture and see its potential. It's the sort of ability that anyone who's decorated a house on the cheap can appreciate, and it bodes well for future mystery-inducing show more finds for her store.

Hyatt has a different take on parents who have a bookstore background, and between family, former spouses, and friends, there's quite the support group to help her in future investigations. I found the plot to be a bit weak, but the characterization and writing style are winners, and I look forward to reading more in the series. show less