Tag Archives: Emma Hamm

Book Review: Bleeding Hearts, by Emma Hamm

I bought a copy of Emma Hamm‘s Bleeding Hearts, way back in late 2021.

Find the Duke. Prove he’s a vampire. And kill him.

Maeve Winchester is out of the vampire hunting game. She’s killed enough of them, and risked her life for long enough. Working for the Holy Brotherhood didn’t make that easy, however. Especially when she has witch blood. Regardless of her past, the Inquisition agrees to release her and her magical sisters, under one circumstance.

She has to complete one more job.

Through the moors and mire, she travels to the illusive Castra Nocte. Home of the Carmine Duke. His gothic castle has stood for centuries with a single rule. If you enter, you will never leave. It is here Maeve makes her last stand. She must prove the Duke is a vampire and then kill him as she has so many others.

When she enters the castle, not all is as it seems. The Duke is charming. The castle grounds clean. His words tantalizing. She will have to keep her wits about her if she is to save her sisters… and her heart.

This was entertaining enough. I generally enjoyed it. I didn’t quite feel Maeve’s transition from enemy to lover, though. It was too abrupt and required she show a level of trust and naivete that everything up to that point suggested she would not do. I also felt that she was seduced as much (if not more) by the glitz, glamour, and wealth that the Duke could provide her as by the man himself, and that didn’t feel very romantic. I did appreciate that he fell first in a truly obsessive way. It felt a little like love-bombing. But I also thought the banter between him and his butler provided the levity the plot needed.

I liked the world Hamm created, though it’s only lightly sketched out and doesn’t stray far from ‘the church’ as we are all familiar with it as the villain. However, the side characters that are in the future books look fun. I’ll probably read their books.

Other Reviews:

Myth and Magic Bookclub: Bleeding Hearts, by Emma Hamm

Book Review of The Raven’s Ballad (The Otherworld #5), by Emma Hamm

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I’ve been very into Emma Hamm‘s books lately. This is book five in the Otherworld series. However, books one and two are a duology, as are books four and five. (I’ve not read the standalone third book). I borrowed this fifth book, The Raven’s Ballad, through Amazon Prime.

Description from Goodreads:

Once upon a time…

A curse can only be broken by luck or an impossible feat, and Aisling has tried numerous impossible feats. Every morning she changes into a swan. Every dusk she has a few moments with the man she loves, only to watch him forced into the form of a raven by the same curse.

When it becomes clear the curse is directly connected with an ancient, awakening evil, she sets off into the depths of Underhill to find answers. Unfortunately, this is a journey that must be made alone.

Bran refuses to believe there isn’t another way. Split off from his queen, he joins forces with the Seelie Fae and the Druids. Darkness spreads throughout the Raven Kingdom. Both king and queen fight to protect their people, their home, and the love they have for each other.

Review:

As I said, this is the fourth book by Emma Hamm I’ve read and I have to say it was my least favorite. That isn’t to say I didn’t like it, just that it wasn’t as strong in the things that made me love the others. Also, it’s the only one I got in kindle instead of audio. So, I suppose there’s a chance that the lack of Siobhan Waring’s narration affected me. Though, I don’t think that was the case.

The reason I say I didn’t love this one as much, is that what I liked about the previous three books in this series is that Hamm subverted a lot of the expected tropes, especially around women. Here she played into them. While this still made a readable story that I enjoyed, it didn’t light me up as much as it would have if she hadn’t. As examples (and this is a spoiler), the female villain is trying to destroy the world because she was spurned by a man. This has to be the number one most common reason women in fiction go bad. *yawn*

Also, what I most enjoyed in The Faceless Woman (the beginning of this duology) was the banter between Aisling and Bran. They spend 95% of this book apart and I missed them as a couple, even if I understood why it had to be that way.

Lastly, I noticed several copy edit mistakes. For example, ‘she’ is ‘se’ at one point and Aisling came out AIsling more than once. None of them disrupted my reading and they aren’t super common, but they are there. They may be in all the previous books too. But as I said, I listened to them, rather than read, so I wouldn’t have noticed.

I did appreciate the presence of a strong M/F platonic friendship. Neither character was even gay, thereby prohibiting a romance. Two people of opposite genders were simply allowed to love each other as family, despite there being no blood between them. I wish we could see that more often. (As a side note, I would love to see a gay pairing in this universe somewhere. I don’t even understand why creatures like the fae would conform to heteronormativity. I mean, that just seems so human and beneath them. *shrug*)

I also still liked Aisling and Bran as characters and recognize how much they grew as people, especially Bran. I look forward to reading more of Hamm’s writing.

Book Review of Heart of the Fae and Veins of Magic, by Emma Hamm

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Last week I listened to Emma Hamm‘s The Faceless Woman and so enjoyed it that I went in search of the beginning of the series and spent this weekend listening to Siobhan Waring narrate Heart of the Fae and Veins of Magic.

Description:

Once upon a time…

A plague sweeps across the emerald hills of Uí Néill, leaving a young midwife’s father with months to live. To save her people, Sorcha makes a deal with a dangerous Fae. She must travel across the sea, through merrow and kelpie lands, to find a forgotten king on a crumbling throne.

Born king of the Seelie Fae, Eamonn fought battles unnumbered to uphold honor, duty, and freedom… until his twin brother sank a blade between his shoulders. Crystals grew from the wound, splitting open skin and bone. His people banished him to a cursed isle for his disfigurement, now king of criminals and fools.

With the help of brownies, pixies, and will-o’-the-wisps, Sorcha battles to break through his crystalline shell and persuade him to take back his stolen throne.

This determined beauty could come dangerously close to stealing his beastly heart.

Review:

Since Heart of the Fae and Veins of Magic form a duology, neither standing alone, I’m going to write a single review encompassing both. But one of the main takeaway potential readers should understand is this point that they need both books for a complete story.

I really enjoyed this, both the story and the narration. I really like that Hamm’s fae are old school scary fae, her female characters are strong and full of agency, and her male ones aren’t afraid to show need. I especially appreciated that it was Sorcha who took the lead in most sexual situations.

My only complaint here is how very gendered everything is. While I appreciate that Hamm’s goal was to emphasize that both a king and a queen are necessary, neither an accouterment to the other. (A pleasant change from most stories that center a king and make the queen little more than an accessory or political pawn.) But the book leans hard into women being soft and kind and caring and men being violent, rough and in need of tempering. True, Sorcha had to go against that in the course of the story but it was still a strong theme in the book. (As was how much bigger he was than her, another classic gendering technique.)

All in all however, I can’t wait to dive into more of Hamm’s writing and Waring’s narration.