Rating: 4.5 ✨
Here’s another fantastic magical science fiction series from the married authors (Ilona and Andrew Gordon) known as Ilona Andrews. They have quickly become my favorite authors and a must read, with my bookshelf full of great books and series of theirs.
The Innkeeper Chronicles is a complete series,a true delight of worlds and characters. It starts with Clean Sweep, a sentient inn in a small town in Texas where The Innkeeper, a actual galactic title associated with the house and its current owner is still getting herself established with her own Inn and her clients.
Dina Demille is the daughter of Innkeepers, her parents and their famous Inn mysteriously disappeared without a trace while Dina was in college and her siblings were away from home,far far away from home on other worlds. After years of searching and no clues, Dina has followed in their footsteps and become an Innkeeper herself.
Dina Demille is such a fabulously written character. She really stands out from the other characters in this genre of strong female characters in that she has her own unique history and challenges that she’s been working with. She’s incredibly strong, quietly intelligent and able to be flexible with multiple personalities and situations while still being a relatable person. Full of emotions, a width and depth of experience that is only slowly revealed, Dina is a whole new level of main female character energy!
She’s also got a very strange monster tiny dog that is her companion, a sentient Inn that’s home and more, and a current client who’s a lifetime resident and galactic criminal. And a favorite character!
We get to know the backgrounds and histories for Dina and those around her through the drama that descends on the town. Monsters are killing the townspeople’s pets.
It’s a fantastic storyline, we meet many important characters such as alpha werewolves and vampire royals. All beautifully crafted and supplied with a great history and dramatic backstory to tell.
This particular storyline is wrapped up completely and in a very satisfying way. But leaves the ending open for more adventures and further development for the three main characters and the group that is forming.
Honestly, it’s enormously difficult to hold myself back from binging this all the way through like I did with the fabulous Kate Daniels series.
Highly recommended!
Art by Doris Mantair
Innkeeper Chronicles:
Clean Sweep #1
Sweep in Peace #2
One Fell Sweep #3
Sweep of the Blade #4
Sweep with Me #5
Sweep of the Heart #6
Buy link
Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles)
Blurb
This is a short novel, about 60,000 words.
On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is…different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, “normal” is a bit of a stretch for Dina.
And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night…Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.
- Publisher: NYLA
- Publication date: December 2, 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 250 pages
- Book 1 of 6: Innkeeper Chronicles
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 