Ballad of the Bone Road

Overall Rating: 4/5

Port Aster was once the seat of power for the beautifully brutal fae courts... before they seemingly up and left Port Aster 40 years ago... now Port Aster is a shell of what it used to be.... haunted by spirits and ghosts of the past.... haunted by its once colorful history...and these spirits want to take Port Aster for their own.

Brix and Bellefeather are paranormal investigators, finding themselves in the city to investigate these haunts, these spirits and ghosts of the past.... They both are all too familiar with these sorts of activities, as Brix has trapped the soul of his dead fiancée in the world of the living and Belle shares her body with a demon.

And when they meet a couple with a concerning connection to one of Port Aster's most infamous tales at the notoriously haunted Peony Hotel... they soon realize that this is not just any specter... nor is it any normal ghost.

The "ghost" of Jimmy Valentine is here for a reason....

For the fae never forget.

And they are coming back to take what is theirs back for the Hollow Queen.

This is a short, and yet none-the-less fantastical sort of read... that borders on the dark in a most beautiful sort of fashion. The idea behind Ballad of the Bone Road is deliciously haunting, and the premise is nothing short of flawless. However, while the world is beautifully made, and I adore the very many mystical and fantastical elements that are involved in Ballad of the Bone Road, there were a few grating flaws that I just didn't feel comfortable in giving this book a five-star rating no matter how amazing most of it is.

For one thing, while I usually am quite welcoming of multiple POVs, especially from main characters, I feel like these POVs could have most definitely had a bit more thought put into their execution... because this turned-out way clutzier than anything I've read in a bit...it's almost as if two novellas from the two characters were somewhat hodge-ploddingly mashed together with actions to be way too busy sometimes... another thing that I found intensely grating were the fact that the "spicier" side of things just sounded .. awkward at best and randomly inserted in at worst... to be honest I probably would've been fine without any spice at all.

Overall, though, this was still a deeply gothic, haunting, somewhat horrific novel that I quite enjoyed, and I hope that you too will delight in Ballad of the Bone Road as I have.