Sweep of the Heartby Illona Andrews
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9798364351043
Series: Innkeeper Chronicles #4
Publication Date: December 1, 2022
Pages: 440
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Publisher: NYLA Publishing
Life is busier than ever for Innkeeper, Dina DeMille and Sean Evans. But it’s about to get even more chaotic when Sean’s werewolf mentor is kidnapped. To find him, they must host an intergalactic spouse-search for one of the most powerful rulers in the Galaxy. Dina is never one to back down from a challenge. That is, if she can manage her temperamental Red Cleaver chef; the consequences of her favorite Galactic ex-tyrant’s dark history; the tangled politics of an interstellar nation, and oh, yes, keep the wedding candidates from a dozen alien species from killing each other. Not to mention the Costco lady.
They say love is a battlefield; but Dina and Sean are determined to limit the casualties!
What a weird blend of Eurovision, The Bachelor and Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera. Andrews sucked me in to the Innkeeper series by making the first one a gateway drug to what is ultimately a science fiction series – something that is definitely not my jam. But I thoroughly enjoy the recurring characters so I keep with the series.
This was, for an Andrews book, a door stopper at 440 pages and the plot is a story within a story. As it started as a serial, the complicatedness and length made sense and overall, it ready fast.
My biggest beef with the book and the reason for my rating is that, as a self-published book usually is, it’s terribly edited. In addition to the myriad missing words (usually of the article and conjunction variety), Gaston becomes Tony from one sentence to the next in a scene that has already put Tony off-planet, and the final climatic scene of the Bachelor-like competition is so convoluted that I had to read it three times before it made any sense to me at all. (The authors’ start with a countdown from 6th place, but then after 6th and 5th are announced, suddenly switch to counting up from 2nd.) Frankly, this just pissed me off and really took a chunk of my enjoyment away from the story as a whole.
I understand the reasons for established authors to self publish on occasion but I think the Andrews are making a mistake to switch wholly to self publishing. Their creativity might flourish, but their reputation, in the long run, won’t. Self publishing suffers from the lack of editorial resources, and most of all, the lack of big publishing’s marketing resources. While I’m a huge fan of just about everything this writing team puts out in terms of stories, I’m not about to haunt their website just to have some idea of if or when a new book comes out – and the odds of their attracting new readers to their body of work diminishes. I just really wish they’d find a balance between self and traditional marketing.
Digression aside, this was definitely my least favourite InnKeeper book so far, although I love how the end circles back to what will hopefully be a follow up to Maude’s book and its cliffhanger ending.