(by Charlie N. Holmberg)<\/p>\n
The Whimbrel House books (of which this is the third) are reliably fun\/quick comfort reads for me: the kind of book with a lot of action that I can happily devour over the course of a few days. They’re set in a version of the 1800s where magic is a thing; in this one, the main characters from previous books (Hulda, who’s an expert in the care of magical houses, Merritt, who’s a writer and her fiancé, and Owein, who’s a deceased relative of Merritt’s whose soul was in a house for centuries and is currently in a dog’s body) find themselves in England, where Owein and Merritt have been summoned by Queen Victoria herself. The queen has a proposal: one of her royal magicians can put Owein’s soul in a human body, if he marries a relative of hers, thus introducing some new centuries-old\/strong magic into the noble bloodline. Owein is into the idea; Hulda and Merritt are more cautious, but open to conversation. Meanwhile, the queen isn’t the only one who’s heard about Owein: some Druids would be happy to have him and Merritt join them in their life in the woods, which Merritt concedes would be kinda tempting if he weren’t engaged. Hulda, meanwhile, is a little nervous about getting married, even as she looks forward to it: will she be able to balance her career and her wifely duties? (Eyeroll. I didn’t love this aspect of this one\/I found these musings of Hulda’s a bit cringe-inducing.) <\/p>\n
Overall, though, this was a really enjoyable weekend diversion for me. I’m curious to see where the series goes next (there are some hints), though I will miss Owein in dog form. I liked his observations of the new-to-him sights and smells in this book, how he felt like “London engulfed him entirely, like it was a great beast of stone and wood and mortar with an open maw” and how when he goes on a fox hunt he thinks it’s “the best run of his life.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(by Charlie N. Holmberg) The Whimbrel House books (of which this is the third) are reliably fun\/quick comfort reads for me: the kind of book with a lot of action that I can happily devour over the course of a few days. They’re set in a version of the 1800s where magic is a thing; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13461"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13467,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13461\/revisions\/13467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}