A young human painter and an ageless gentry queen fall in love over spilled wine-at the risk of his life and her immortality. Pulled into the Veil between Worlds, two feuding neighbours (and a living statue) get swept up in a brutal war of succession. An investigative reporter infiltrates the Seafall City Laundries to write the exposé of a lifetime and uncovers secrets she never believed possible. Returning to an oak grove to scatter her husband's ashes, an elderly widow meets an otherworldly friend, who offers her a momentous choice. Two gentry queens of the Valwode plot to hijack a human rocket ship and steal the moon out of the sky.
Dark Breakers gathers three new and two previously uncollected tales from World Fantasy Award-winning writer C. S. E. Cooney that expand on the thrice-enfolded world's first introduced in her Locus and World Fantasy award-nominated novella Desdemona and the Deep. In her introduction to Dark Breakers, Crawford Award-winning author Sharon Shinn advises those who pick up this book to "settle in for a fantastical read" full of "vivid world-building, with layer upon layer of detail; prose so dense and gorgeous you can scoop up the words like handfuls of jewels; a mischievous sense of humour; and a warm and hopeful heart."
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Elliot Howell considered the glittering company about to assemble in the dining room and sighed. 1: THE VOLUPTUIST
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(@mythicdelirium, 15 February 2022, ebook, 424 pages, #ARC from the publisher via @edelweiss_squad and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is a new author for me. I requested a copy of Dark Breakers after I saw it promoted on Twitter. It sounded like something I'd enjoy. This is a collection of stories set in a world created by the author in other books and featuring recurring characters. I struggled with the first story. I enjoyed it but felt something was missing because I wasn't familiar with the other books. This didn't apply to the other stories in the collection which I found thoroughly enjoyable. I was impressed with the amount of world building and level of detail in the stories. I will definitely read more of the author's work.