2:120 One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Dina has received a message that her sister is in trouble and without hesitation she goes to help.  Now besides Caledonia, her only permanent guest, and her chef, she now has her sister and her daughter staying at the Inn and Arland, the vampire whose help she requested, is also staying there and Sean is now hanging around more and more.  Gertrude Hunt, Dina's Inn, is feeling better with more people there but now a guest has come that brings with him danger unlike anything Dina and Gertrude Hunt have ever had to deal with.  It is one of the Hiru, a repulsive smelling being covered in metal armor of some sort.  Their race has been hunted almost to extinction by the Draziri and now there are but a handful left but that handful has saved up enough to find the answer to why the Draziri have done this but they need the sanctuary of Dina and her Inn to do so.  This is quite the tall order, even bigger than the peace conference they hosted but if she can bring them all through it alive, she may get the answer to her biggest question as well: "What happened to her parents?"  It's an answer that is worth the price.



Page count: 257p/347p ytd/275,822p lifetime

79:120 Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews

The second book in the Innkeeper Chronicles.  Dina is the Innkeeper of Gertrude Hunt Inn.  An Inn is in need of guests for the energy to sustain itself and Dina is in need of guests for money to pay the bills.  Unfortunately, she has only one full time guest, Caledonia, who is a sadistic tyrant in hiding from the galaxy.  When the Arbiter shows up at her doorsteps asking if she is willing to host a peace conference made up of three species who want nothing more than to kill each other, Dina has to think long and hard about accepting but ultimately the health of the Inn makes her decision easy.  Unfortunately, while all three factions have lost dearly enough in the war to come to the table, getting them to put their pride on the back burner to make the deal is another thing altogether and the Arbiter has many strings to pull to try and bring the peace about and is not afraid to pull every last one out.

My thoughts on this book are all over the map.  I really enjoyed the first one and was thrilled to get the second one as I'm just horrible about reading things on a blog on a weekly basis so don't bother.  I enjoyed the world building and OMG, Orro the chef is fabulous!  But at the same time, I had issues with it.  It was definitely darker in tone which I don't mind but wasn't quite what I was expecting.  The constant "I'm exhausted", "I'm the Innkeeper, it's my job to ...", and "I wonder what Sean is up to right now" inner monologue by Dina got old less than half way through and never let up.  Maybe that worked in a more serial type of format but reading it straight through was annoying.  Many of the other characters were simply drawn with very little in the way of depth to them.  I love how rich the characters are in the Kate Daniels series so I'm not sure why these got so little.  I still enjoy the world and hope to see more books in it but I also hope they are a bit more polished.


Page count: 237p/21,382p ytd/270,532p lifetime