Read the Mail’s BRAND NEW Romantasy reviews: Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe, Blood Bound
Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe (Harper Voyager £18.99, 384pp)
What’s a princess to do? You stop off at a quaint old bookshop for a bit of respite from your busy schedule, only to find yourself doomed to stay there for ever.
Of course, it’s not the worst sort of curse for a bibliophile: your assistant is a bookish goth dragon schoolgirl, while your clientele comprises orcs, dwarves, a Creeping Horror called Caroline, and a devilishly handsome light-fingered pirate.
What’s more, to break your curse you have to find your heart’s desire which involves being kissed by a lot of princes – and a princess.
Fresh, innocent, deliciously funny, with a sprinkling of sapphic snogs, this is an enchanting, and enchanted, treat.
Love, laughs and orcs in enchanted treat
Death’s Daughter by S.A. Barnes (Headline £20, 400pp)
Death comes in many guises, and few less likely than Jocasta, a sociology student at Beecher University.
She’s Death’s spawn, progeny of the ancient god, and endowed with the power to suck the negative energy from her fellow students and, unless she’s very careful, leave them . . . you can guess.
But her campus life is about to be disrupted. Other spawn seem to be muscling in on her territory and when bodies start to stack up, she must fight to prove her unlikely innocence with the help of lust-inducing Devon and the horrendously hunky Carter.
Funny, fraught, sexy and savage, with one-line zingers: ‘Death conquers all, b*tch.’
Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter (Harper Voyager £20, 496pp)
The stakes could hardly be higher: the battle for magical powers between two realms comes down to a duel between royal firstborns.
One is Astrid, a witch with faulty casting powers; the other is Zryan, a teleporting hunk with thighs strong enough to grip the most monstrous dragon. Ahem.
Enter Skylar, a feisty itinerant knife juggler, a republican plot to overthrow Zryan’s tyrannical father, and more dragons and familiars than you can afford to shake a stick at. Added to which Skylar is not exactly who she thinks she is, neither is Zryan, and Astrid’s passions are all over the place.
A thumping, twisty, romantastic tour de force.