 Hello my darling extraterrestrials, I am Kim, this is Dustmoats and Velikor, and today I'm going to be talking to you about The Heart Forger by Rinchpeco. Yes, my shirt has dinosaurs on it and no, I'm not certain that I didn't get it from the kids section. This is the wibbly-wobbly, time-y-wimey, twisty-turny sequel to The Bone Witch, which if you haven't read, I recommend starting with my review here so that you can avoid, you know, massive spoilers for this fantastic book. I just want it on the record here. I will not be blamed for spoiling something so delightful. Here, there be spoilers. You have been warned. So, The Bone Witch and its sequel to Heart Forger follow the story of Teya as she, you know, raises her brother from the dead and then gets whisked off into a world of magic and beauty and some death. There's actually quite a bit of death given that she's a necromancer. The story is told from two directions. The bard giving perspective as Teya prepares for war and Teya telling the bard her story. The Heart Forger sees Teya beginning her war and starts to unravel why she's doing what she's doing and who and what she is truly fighting. Rin Shibako does a really wonderful job of building tension. Try and figure out what are you doing? You, the reader, are allowed and encouraged to try to piece together the story. Figure out who or what they're alluding to and you almost never get it right. The bard, our narrator, has been brought along for purposes of record-ship. Teya wants her story to be told and told correctly and honestly. And in order to keep the bard unbiased, they tell him next to nothing. And even with the massive influx of information, you can never know if this particular part of the story that they've just revealed is actually correlated at all with the particular mystery you're working on at the time. I think it's beautiful. I think it's really beautiful. This book also introduces the blight and aspect of magic that nobody really understands. In this context, instead of being a plague, the blight is people turning into literal monsters, untalking wings, horns, fangs, the whole shebang. It's a sign that someone has stepped over to the dark side, if you will, has aligned themselves with a faction called the Faceless, which are an interesting villain to begin with. The Faceless is an organization of magic users that seek power and control. They also have a quest that you learn more about in this book. There's an interesting political difference between the Asha and the Faceless as well, which is the censorship of quote-unquote dangerous magic. The Asha Council has been hiding knowledge, and that makes Teya look at them slightly differently. Agents of the Faceless have been trying to seduce Teya to their side with the lore of secret knowledge. Knowledge that must have been known at some point in order to have been suppressed. Kind of makes you go, hmmm. And now I get to talk about romance. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger, no, Will Robinson. So at the end of the first book, Teya raises her beloved from the dead. And it's not who you expect. I thought it would be prince cons. You thought it would be prince cons. Everybody thought it would be prince cons, but it wasn't prince cons. It was lord Katelyn. And at the end of the book, I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense. No, he's been nothing but rude to her. And yes, he's very good at his job, but no. I was siding that decision a lot. The Heartforger does a lot of legwork to establish and solidify that relationship. And it does it without, one, taking any focus away from the crazy shitstorm that follows them everywhere they go. And two, without compromising her characters. You know, characters. Everybody grows up in this book. And they get about halfway to where they are in the Bard's perspective. And a lot of gaps are filled and even more gaps are created. But nobody is relinquishing anything they held dear in the last book. It just really frustrates me that a lot of times in order to become a romantic couple, each character has to give up something that was important to them or even worse. They find that the thing that made them so important to the person that they end up with in the first place was never really a part of their character at all. Entering into a relationship, you don't just give up the things that make you a person. That's not how it works. I was really happy that this book didn't do that because there were several... Nobody likes you. Everyone's left to it. It doesn't happen in this book and I'm really grateful. Both Taya and Kaylin are really very bad at telling each other how they feel. Kaylin is self-sacrificing to a fault and Taya has really poor emotional self-awareness. And they've been falling for each other basically since they met. They are young and dumb and they're just starting to figure it out. But they are starting to communicate. And I think that deserves some appreciation. Rinchpeco has also included some very interesting romantic side plots for side characters. And that just makes me really happy. There's unrequited crushes because some people are just oblivious. And there's one couple that start as unrequited love and then they get together because one of them just really enjoys making the other one embarrassed. And it's just so cute, okay? There's forbidden love and jealousy and platonic love. And there's just so much love, okay? I don't understand how Rinchpeco fits so much love into a book about necromancers. It's really impressive. What can I say? Some books have interesting plots and some books have interesting characters and some books have worlds that you just want to live in. And this book has all three. My main problem with this book was the printing errors. That is an ice cream truck. Please ignore the ice cream truck. He doesn't seem to want to go away. My main problem with this book is the printing errors. There's a section in the second half that it's one paragraph that is punctuated like it's one person speaking. But the context of the paragraph, it sounds like it should be two or even three different people talking. There are a few hominem switches and there's one that it says something, something, someone, something, something, someone. And it should very clearly be something, something, someone, something, something, something. It's like that. That's an easy one. So basically I'm just saying it needed a third pass from the copy editors. Hopefully they'll fix the type setting in second printing. And that's my thoughts on the Hart Forger by Rinchpeco. Look forward in bookstores and libraries and mystical portals to alternate dimensions near you. And let me know what you thought in comments. I'd love to chat with you about it. A viento.