#the innkeeper chronicles
Books I Read in 2022
#21 – Sweep with Me, by Ilona Andrews
- Rating: 2/5 stars
A return to Earth and the inn and Dina coincides with a drop in how much I like it, but we’re back down to the level of the first book, not its follow-ups. This was thin, and I was never able to engage much with either the Space Chicken plot (though I did very much like the illustration of one of them, and I did find them funny as occasional comic relief) or the “main” plot involving the Drifan. Either I missed something, or something that would have made the arc of her plot clearer needed to be included, because I just didn’t ever get what was going on there. Sure, she’s human, she misses Earth, I’m fine with her personality as a character, but why does she have to meet her uncle again and what are the stakes here? The motives behind the action didn’t track for me, and without that, the climax wasn’t particularly satisfying.
This is so short, as well, and romance in the main series plot is so incidental, that I didn’t even feel much at Sean becoming an Innkeeper and living and working with Dina. I should be happier for them, but there just wasn’t much meat to any of this, so I had nothing to sink my teeth into.
Books I Read in 2022
#20 – Sweep of the Blade, by Ilona Andrews
- Rating: 4/5 stars
The best of the series so far, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence I like it better because there’s more cohesive world-building as we dive deeper into vampire culture, and more romance, since this is functionally a spin-off where we have one book to get Maud and Arland together, rather than stretching it out over the course of a series.
I like Maud better than Dina as a protagonist, because she’s got more going on than the constant refrain of “make the inn happy, but also someday maybe find my parents,” which is certainly a reasonable goal but not a very exciting one because nothing ever happens to further it, it’s always just hanging over her head as a mystery. Maud, on the other hand, has a half-vampire daughter to raise and decisions to make about how best to do that, which give her much more immediate goals to pursue.
And also puts Arland in her way as a romantic hero. I’ve always liked him; in fact early on, when it still seemed he was one choice in a love triangle, I actually liked him better than Sean, who fortunately has grown on me since. But Arland shines here in his element as a leader of his people, as a skilled combatant, and as a stellar candidate for a step-dad. His budding relationship with Maud is tense and uncertain at first, and when she tosses barbs at him, he gives as good as he gets.
This wraps up their part in the larger story pretty neatly, and I doubt we’ll see more of them, but I’m glad we got this at all–I see a lot of other reviewers weren’t happy at the series going off on apparent tangent, but I think this was the best bit yet.
Books I Read in 2022
#19 – One Fell Sweep, by Ilona Andrews
- Rating: 3/5 stars
I liked this about the same as the one before it, which is to say, better than the series opener but still not nearly as good as most other IA books in other series.
While I like how this book makes it even clearer that Arland is no longer a romantic prospect for Dina, utterly abolishing the love triangle established in the first book, the main plot is darker even than the second book, and the stakes have yet again been raised, to the point where I question how the series can keep escalating threats while still having Dina and her inn Gertrude Hunt be capable of handling them. This one is such a doozy.
The B-plot of Maud and Helen is actually excellent and I have basically no complaints. Great new characters.
Even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main plot, I do like how it ended, and how the romance progressed. I think what I might be struggling with in this series is how minor the romance arc is. Yes, in Kate Daniels it took a while to get going, but once it was established the payoff was huge. In The Edge, the series was comprised of individual romance novels telling a cohesive story together. Hidden Legacy might be the best marriage of worldbuilding and romance I’ve seen in the genre as a whole. So this? This just feels lackluster by comparison. I thought I’d be getting more romance, and it’s just so tame.
Books I Read in 2022
#18 – Sweep in Peace, by Ilona Andrews
- Rating: 3/5 stars
Better, and darker, than the first novel, but still not great.
Part of the charm of a world set up like this is that there’s freedom to introduce literally any sort of alien being the author pleases, which is how we get my favorite new character, Orro the oversized hedgehog chef. Much like Caldenia before, he’s a breath of welcome hilarity in the middle of the huge stakes this story sets up.
Some of the other “new” characters actually aren’t new at all–good thing I read The Edge series before this, though it was long enough ago that it took me maybe a few pages too long to recognize the names. I’m torn here between being glad that the younger generation of Edgers have gotten more development, disappointment overall in what that development is (George, you are such an asshole now,) and a mild annoyance that this series even asked me to remember these characters from another property that I haven’t read more than once, and not for a while. Like, at this point I think in sheer number of books Ilona Andrews is probably my most-read author (if it’s not Stephen King, which I suppose it still could be, darn you GR for taking that feature away) so in one sense I’m a super-fan, but in another, I’m not, because I haven’t read any of her books more than once, SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY. I wouldn’t call these obscure characters, but if I hadn’t read their series at all, or I hadn’t read it even semi-recently, then their presence in the story would be full of weird holes.
I think I like Sean better now that he’s a little more world-wise (or should it be universe-wise in this case?) and a little less cocky, but I didn’t love that the war zone he spent time in ran on an artificially fast timeline, in a clear attempt to allow him extra time to “catch up” to Dina in terms of his understanding of the worlds beyond Earth, to give them more equal footing for their romance. It was so obvious that that’s the only reason it was truly necessary for Nexus to run faster than everywhere else.
On the other hand, the fact that Sean needed that extra development at all means he’s clearly endgame for Dina and we got to downgrade Arland to flirty side-man. Which isn’t to say I don’t like Arland, I do, but I don’t like love triangles, so I’m glad that’s basically over.
It’s a better novel than its predecessor, and it’s better enough that I’m going to keep going with the series.
