I've been putting off reading this for a while and I wish I hadn't because it turned out to be a rather lovely adventure. This book is all about the storyline, it had enough interest and suspense to keep me reading and guessing. As others have mentioned it is a combo of the fantasy and mystery genres. ( )

DNF I was uncomfortable how the female characters were described in this book, the author seems obsessed with describing females by their breasts and most of the women he meets have been raped. I could have coped with this as the mystery was slightly interesting But the thing which made me put the book down is the hero meeting a diseased goddess and making love to her ( )

I gave it a second shot and liked it much better the second time around. ( )

This was one of my audiobook series-sampling listens, to see if I might want to pursue this series in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Stefan Rudnicki. Listening to him was a relief after the narrator of the last audiobook I listened to! Rudnicki reads with what I would consider a normal pace. His tone is matter-of-fact and not overly dramatized. He has a distinctively deep voice that’s pleasant to listen to, but I did think that negatively affected his ability to do different character voices. His male voices were ok, but his female voices were a little painful. They sounded too pouty, angry, and/or flirty, more so than I thought was intended by the text. Even so, I liked him better than many narrators I’ve listened to, and I would happily listen to another book he had narrated.

Story
The story centers around a detective named Eddie LaCrosse. We start off with a mission that has little relevance to the main story, I guess mostly to provide an introduction to the character and the world he lives in. The main story picks up shortly after that and involves Eddie investigating a murder for his best friend, the King of the city where he grew up. Apparently the Queen has (I’m putting it in spoiler tags for excessive grossness more than for spoilerishness; it’s revealed relatively early) murdered, cooked, and eaten their infant son.

This feels like urban fantasy. The word choices, the expressions, and the attitudes all feel much more modern than the setting actually is, but the world’s inhabitants ride horses and fight with swords. It was a little jarring at first, but I got used to it. Eddie has what I would consider the stereotypical detective’s tragic past, but at least he isn’t an alcoholic, so that was something. There isn’t a lot of magic in the book. There is some, but I can’t explain it without spoiling the story.

I chuckled several times at the humor, but this book can't stand too much logical scrutiny. Things tend to happen too coincidentally and/or conveniently. The main character does things that hardly seem like the best way to go about solving the mystery, yet his actions lead him to one tenuous clue after another until he eventually finds the answers. Meanwhile, he fails to predict some obvious things and gets into trouble I would have considered avoidable.

Although this is the first book in a series, it tells a complete story. It worked well for me as an audio, holding my attention but not demanding too much of it so that I could easily cross-stitch while I listened. I don’t think I’ll keep this series on my list to follow up on in print someday, but I wouldn’t be afraid to try the author’s work again either. ( )

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Title: Sword-edged Blonde
Series: Eddie LaCrosse #1
Author: Alex Bledso
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 320
Words: 82K

Synopsis:

Eddie LaCrosse is a sword jockey, ie, a private detective. He's hired by his childhood friend King Phil to prove that King Phil's wife didn't kill and then eat their newborn baby.

Along the way Eddie has to revisit his past and the reason he left the kingdom that Phil now rules.

Eddie solves the case, vindicates Phil's faith in his wife, takes down an evil dwarf that has been alive over 500 years and finds the love of his life prophesied about over 10 years ago.

My Thoughts:

While I was reading this I was fully into the story and enjoying it. However, once the story ended and I began thinking about what I had read, a couple of things came to the forefront for me.

First, I am reading more and more noir'ish Private Eye books. What's more, I am generally liking them too. The Grimnoir, The Arcane Casebook, Garrett PI, etc. The thing is, those all have elements of the PI AND some other element (urban fantasy, fantasy). This, though, only gave lip service to the fantasy element. The only fantastic thing was that the wife of King Phillip used to be a goddess and that the evil dwarf was actually just a human who had messed with the goddess and been punished. That's it. No other races, no magic spells, no grimoires, not even one magic sword. Not cool.

In conjunction with that was the deliberate anachronisms that the author uses. Between names of people that you'd expect to meet on the street today, to terms about weapons and businesses that fully belong in the 21st century, Bledsoe kept pulling me out of the story. It was obviously deliberate and meant as some sort of selling point to distinguish the series but it did not work for me one tiny bit.

I've been debating about whether to keep on with the series. Like I said, while I was reading I was enjoying, but the moment I stopped, well, it all came crashing down. And it wasn't like I was enjoying the read on a Neal Asher level. This was a grocery store frozen cheese pizza kind of enjoyment. With that, I don't think I'll be continuing the series. There are so many other books I can try out (and hopefully enjoy more) that it isn't worth continuing this “just because I didn't hate it”.

★★★☆☆ ( )