He Drank, and Saw the Spider

November 11, 2013
Bledsoe’s fifth novel featuring “sword jockey” Eddie LaCrosse (after 2012’s Wake of the Bloody Angel) continues to play with the conventions of hard-boiled mystery and cod-medieval epic fantasy. Seeing a stranger attacked by a bear, LaCrosse intervenes, killing the beast, but its victim has already suffered fatal injuries. Before the man expires, he hands over a baby girl, Isidore, to the nonplussed LaCrosse—who’s so startled that he drops and shatters the glowing glass ball that holds the proof of her identity. After he gets the child to safety with appropriate substitute parents, the action jumps forward 16 years to LaCrosse’s present, where his travels bring him to the very spot where he met Isidore for the first time. He goes looking for her and finds her in a heap of trouble, which he helps her to untangle, while narrating with his usual roguish charm. Plausible action scenes and a rough but good-hearted lead make this another winner.

December 1, 2013
Another independently intelligible outing for freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse (Wake of the Bloody Angel, 2012, etc.). As a beardless mercenary, Eddie fails to save a stranger from being mauled to death by a bear--although he does rescue the baby girl (named, oddly, Isidore) the man dies protecting. He leaves the baby and the stranger's bag of gold with a good-hearted shepherd's daughter and goes about his swashbuckling business. Now, 16 years later, sword jockey Eddie is between jobs ("on vacation") and traveling with his girlfriend, the dauntless and resourceful freelance wagon-driver Liz Dumont. Finding himself in the same village, Eddie's memories gradually surface, and he wonders what became of Isidore. Well, she's developed into an intelligent and beautiful teenager, Isadora, who's captured the heart of Jack, the incognito prince of the realm. But the least of the obstacles to their romance is Jack's father, King Ellis; the pair will also have to contend with neighboring monarch Mad King Gerald and his ghastly legacy, Gerald's overbearing sorceress, Opulora, and a huge, powerful, smelly and evidently simple-minded creature named Tatterhead. The plot's so mysterious, even to the characters, that, halfway through, Bledsoe introduces a wandering scribe to explain what's going on. Despite the sanitized medieval setting, speech and sensibilities are modern, with hints that the magic is actually immeasurably advanced science. And Eddie's professed cynicism is mostly a front--he's actually quite a humanitarian. The biggest failing is his narrative voice: He sounds exactly the same as a youngster and, 16 years later, as an accomplished veteran. Existing fans will enjoy this book, but it won't win many converts.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2014

The Eddie Lacrosse series of fantasy mysteries are hopelessly anachronistic--modern slang and attitudes stuffed into a epic fantasy world--but somehow they work anyway. In this fifth entry (after Wake of the Bloody Angel), sword jockey-for-hire Eddie looks back on his early days as a mercenary and the time he rescued a baby from a bear in the woods. Sixteen years later, Eddie and girlfriend Liz find themselves near the town where he left the baby and decide to check on the girl and maybe look into the mystery of where she came from. But there are old secrets and powerful magics tied up with the girl's origins, and Eddie's inability to resist a mystery will entangle him in dangerous waters. VERDICT Snarky humor and the great bantering between Eddie and Liz combine with a fun puzzle plot that is only slightly implausible. Fans of the lighter end of fantasy and smart-alecky heroes such as Harry Dresden might want to give this series a try.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2014
Eddie LaCrosse, swordsman-for-hire, returns to his past in his latest adventure. Nearly 20 years ago, Eddie tried to save a man from a bear attack and wound up the guardian of the baby girl the man was trying to protect. Eddie, being too young to be a daddy, gave the girl to a kindly family. Now, back in that remote area, Eddie decides to look up the girl. And wouldn't you know? He finds himself embroiled in a brewing war between a couple of kings, not to mention the evil plans of a sorceressand that's just for starters. Of all the clever things Bledsoe does with his LaCrosse novels, the cleverest is to set the stories in an unspecified era on an alternate version of Earth, thus allowing him to do whatever he wants without worrying about history. The blending of medieval-fantasy and private-eye tropesEddie's fee is twenty-five gold pieces a day plus expenses proves thoroughly entertaining for fans of both genres. Think of it as Rockford Files with some swords and sorcery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)