I just spent four months rereading this, mostly while in line at the grocery store and such. My review from back when I first read it in 2014 still stands. The main things I'd add are that the fluffy "dealing with passengers" stuff in the beginning of the book still meshed a bit oddly with the later more action-y stuff. Also, while

, I couldn't help it, I still loved that character. I had also forgotten how much I liked R.J. And I still want to read some kind of spin-off or sequel with Loren and Roger. A combination sci-fi and cozy mystery starring those two would be so good.

"Loren returned to its luggage cart, but stayed out of the way until Captain Manderson left the room. At that point, the Sapient wheeled out to where Corvhey and Marrin were dancing, and inquired if Roger intended to monopolize the fair damsel, or if it could perhaps have the honor of a dance. With Lady Marrin, of course; it could dance with Roger any time. The result was less surreal than Sarafina had assumed it would be, but still attracted attention. Mrs. Selsda gave the couple such a wistful look that Sarafina expected her to claim the next dance with Sapient Loren."

Looks like Booklikes is having another slow day, at least for me. :-(

Anyway, Loren's a free AI. Although I haven't forgotten about and still strongly disapprove of one thing it does near the end of the book, I still love this character. A Roger and Loren spinoff series (because of course one book wouldn't be enough) would be perfect.

I'm not sure what you'd call this. A fantasy world's folktale? Myth? Anyway, “The Legend of the Morning Star” is the story of how Kiro, the servant of the sun god Alyyon, fell in love with a beautiful human girl named Kasinda and defied his master. It also tells the story of how a particular star came to be created. It's set in the same universe as McCoy's story “The Bear Prince,” which means it'd be a story characters in McCoy's Lord Alchemist series might tell each other. However, it's not necessary to have read any of that in order to enjoy this story.

I can't really say much about this except that I really enjoyed it and think it's better than the fantasy folktales/fairy tales in McCoy's The Bear Prince collection. And, unlike that collection, this story is free.

Also, although it was jarring at first, I loved that the narrator occasionally interrupted the story in order to make a few comments. It gave me a mental vision of someone talking to a Lord Alchemist series version of the Brothers Grimm.

Extras:

The story ends with an “author's afterword” that confirms that, yes, this does take place in the same world as “The Bear Prince.” Also, there's a tiny “about the narrator” section that gives the story's narrator a name. I thought the narrator, Ches, was maybe in Herb-Wife, but I wasn't able to find that character. However, Kessa and Iathor did have a Wind priest at their wedding.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

This takes place after the other Kintaran story I read, “Spoonfuls of Sugar.” Klarin-yal is now in command of the clanship Choosaraf, and she has a problem. Not only does the Choosaraf need more crew (which in turn means that the clan needs more members), most of the younger members of the current crew would prefer to leave and live planetside. At this point, that would destroy the clan.

Klarin-yal and her fraternal twin sister, Coli-nfaran, are able to find a few new crew members on Kintara Station, but not a Negotiator. That's when Coli-nfaran gets an idea: if their younglings were born on a ship but would prefer to live on a planet, couldn't it work the other way around? And so Coli leaves the Choosaraf in order to search Kintara for younglings that dream of living on a spaceship.

I liked this more than “Spoonfuls of Sugar,” but it was still disappointing. McCoy's greatest strength, in her novels, is her characters, and yet this story was too short for the characters to shine much. Also, Coli's strategy for finding suitable Kintarans was somewhat lacking. She basically just walked around on the planet until she stumbled into a clan, and then hoped that one of them would be interested in leaving with her.

I should mention that I still have zero familiarity with GURPS, which, according to a note in the copyright info, inspired at least parts of this story.

Extras:

The story begins with a glossary and names list. Even though “Recruiting Drive” was very short, I found that I had to flip back to the glossary a couple times to check the meanings of certain words, because those meanings were not evident in the text.

There were at least two errors in the names list. First, both Ch'ichat and Neeri were listed as Coli-nfaran's mother. I thought maybe they were lesbians or that Kintaran family structures resulted in all females in the clan being younglings' mothers, but then the story mentioned that Neeri was Coli-nfaran's grandmother. Second, Coli-nfaran's grandmother's name was spelled a couple different ways, and I have no idea which one was correct. She was “Neeri” in the glossary and “Neerri” in the story.

Rating Note:

I initially gave this 2.5 stars, but I chopped off half a star because I realized that those errors really bugged me considering that this file was only 24 pages total on my Nook Simple Touch.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

This takes place quite some time after Herb-Wife – I can't remember if their exact age was ever stated, but my guess was that Kessa and Iathor's twin sons were at least in their late teens or early twenties. Jani is a grown roof-rat, hired to either assassinate Kessa (which she has no plans to do) or poison one of Iathor's servants. The poison is slow-acting, and the plan is to tell Iathor, who is known for being soft-hearted where his servants are concerned, that he can have the antidote if he disinherits Iontho, his heir.

What Jani doesn't realize is that the person she pegs as a servant is actually Iontho. Iontho is immune to the poison, but plays along and tracks Jani back to her hiding place, where she gives him what she thinks is either a temporary loyalty potion or a truth potion. Iontho is shocked to realize it's the dramsman's draught, a permanent loyalty potion. He drinks it all (again, he's immune) and plans to find out who Jani got the draught from, and why they wanted him disinherited or his mother dead. In an effort to test whether the potion has worked, Jani orders Iontho to kiss her (a moment of surprising stupidity on her part), which very slightly binds her to Iontho. Iontho, meanwhile, pretends to be a servant named Yan, and Jani's new dramsman.

So now Jani has (she thinks) an illegal dramsman and an employer who is involved in deadly politics and is therefore more trouble than he's worth. She comes up with a plan to cut herself loose and maybe make a bit of profit, while at the same time hopefully escaping punishment for having an illegal dramsman, however accidental.

I know all this sounds complicated, but I do think newbies to this world could start with this book, if they wanted, rather than McCoy's Lord Alchemist duology. Some character relationships and history might go over new readers' heads, but McCoy gives enough background information about those things and stuff like the dramsman's draught that it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

My feelings about this book are complicated. On the one hand, I thought it was better written and more tightly plotted than McCoy's Lord Alchemist duology, which I still feel would have been better edited down and released as a single book. I also loved Jani's creche and all the “pantsboys” stuff (roof-rat girls who dress as boys and who etiquette therefore dictates should be treated and referred to as boys). On the other hand, the romance in this book made me uncomfortable.

Part of my problem was that I wasn't sure what the dividing line was between a dramsman's wishes and his or her master's wishes. If a dramsman could tell that his or her master really wanted something, would a dramsman be influenced to want to do or provide that thing, even if his or her master didn't explicitly give them an order?

Let me back up a bit. Jani thought Iontho was her dramsman, although, as a commoner, she didn't always seem to understand exactly how deep a dramsman's loyalty went. I gave her a bit of leeway for that, even though I couldn't help but feel that it was unethical for her to begin a sexual relationship with her accidental dramsman. I didn't feel quite as charitable towards Iontho. He knew that Jani had tasted a little of the draught via their kiss and that she'd therefore had at least some of her ability to consent taken away. Whether he was attracted to Jani or not should have been irrelevant.

In some ways, I preferred Jani to Kessa – although Kessa was a more interesting and complex character, Jani had fewer jagged edges. However, I definitely preferred Iathor to Iontho. Iontho flubbed a few things that Iathor would never have been careless about (granted, I primarily know Iathor from his older and more experienced days). Also, Iathor would never have allowed sex to further complicate a relationship already complicated by the draught.

McCoy tried to work around that by making sure that Iontho always waited for Jani's permission and stopped whenever she said they should stop. The first couple sex scenes (yes, there were graphic sex scenes) were entirely about Iontho making sure that Jani was enjoying herself, and, in general, Jani's pleasure always came first. I appreciated that...but I was never able to forget that she was also being influenced by the dramsman's draught to an unknown extent.

This book is tagged as fantasy romance, but I think it would be more accurate to call it fantasy with romantic aspects, with the added caveat that it's HFN (happy for now) romance at best. I knew early on that Jani and Iontho's relationship probably wasn't going to end with marriage and babies. Iontho was his father's heir and would therefore be expected to marry an immune woman in the hope that he'd have equally immune children. There were no indications that Jani was an immune, and I wasn't sure that Iathor would approve of his son having a dramsman bride. I suppose a part of me never gave up hope, however, because the ending disappointed me. It was the best that Jani and Iontho could have hoped for, but for me it still wasn't enough.

Oh, I wish the dramsman's draught hadn't been a factor in Jani and Iontho's romance. I'd have liked this book so much more, otherwise. That said, despite the problems I've had with this series so far, I've generally enjoyed McCoy's characters and detailed world-building. I already own the next book, Crucible, and am interested to see how well that one works for me.

Extras:

• A glossary/cast list.

Rating Note:

This is one of my "I don't even know" 3-star ratings. I didn't dislike the book, but my discomfort with the romance kept me from liking it too.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)