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

Magic carpetships, Royal Were-Hunters and an amazingly sexy dragon who may or may not be spying for Queen Victoria. Original
doesn't even begin to describe HEART OF LIGHT. It's set in the Victorian
Age in an alternate British Empire - in this one, magic is a sort of
commodity and the British ruling class controls more than its fair
share. A young man named Nigel is sent to Africa to find an ancient
ruby that could help Queen Victoria consolidate her power. He drags
along his new bride Emily, show more hoping to use some of her powers to aid
him in his quest. But along the way, Emily develops a mind of her own
and decides that marrying Nigel might have been a huge mistake.
Particularly since Nigel's best friend is so much more handsome and
braver and kinder. Emily and Nigel both learn some startling things about themselves and about the supposedly "inferior" native peoples of Africa. Lush settings, vivid magical details and a wonderful romantic subplot all combine to create a fantastically involving read. show less

Fantasy isn’t normally my thing, but this is something I read as a reviewer and found really entertaining. It is basically a “taken” (movie) with the abductor being a vampire, lots of amusing underground economy stuff, and plenty of action. There were a fair number of pro-gun and anti-regulation messages throughout (especially US vs Europe), but it wasn’t sufficiently libertarian to really be a libertarian novel, although still great.

By far the best character was Mr. Trash Bags — a show more normally truck-sized monster which had been damaged and was suddenly pocket-sized, very loyal to a human (rather than pure evil, the default for that type of monster), and really cute while trying to be terrifying. 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