I contributed tothe Kickstarter campaign for a copy of W.R. Gingell‘s Splintered Path. It is book 4 of the Shattered World series, and I have been reading/reviewing them as they come out.
Viv thought that her life was gaining some sort of equilibrium.
Yeah, there’s something dodgy in her family tree, and yeah, she’s living in a magic Tea House in Melbourne that has fae residents and feathered-and-or-tentacled visitors; but at least she’s starting to get the hang of it. She’s been keeping an eye on her not-quite-sane and perennially murderous co-worker Luca (while convincing him not to kill quite everyone who looked at him sideways), getting closer to her mysterious and probably-fae-royalty boss Jasper, and catching humans and behindkind causing trouble between the worlds.
But now one of her house-mates has kissed her—and she may have accidentally kissed him back. Romance wasn’t meant to be a part of Viv’s new life at the Tea she’s still just trying to figure out how her mother connected with the world in which Viv now lives, and making sure she doesn’t get killed either outside or inside the Tea House. She would also settle for just figuring out what her father is hiding from her and why he has what he has in his safe at home. She doesn’t have the bandwidth for romance as well.
Meanwhile, outside the Tea House, the “men” from Forex have begun to take a closer interest in her…
As always, I enjoyed this new installment of the Shattered World series. I laughed frequently at Gingell’s (and the characters’) dry delivery of lines, enjoyed the small cameo-like references to characters from other books/series, and was caught up in the mystery. However, there was significantly less interaction between the main characters and less forward progression on the larger series-level plot arc than I might have liked. I suppose I could describe my complaint as the whole thing just feeling very middle-book; something to get through to get forward. All in all, I didn’t love it as much as previous books, but I still very much enjoyed it.
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