Taste of Marrow, Sarah Gailey

Received to review; publication date 12th September 2017

Yay! More of Hero!

In a sense, I didn’t like this quite as much as the first story — because there’s a lot of dark stuff going on; Houndstooth is totally blinded in his search for Hero, and he doesn’t mind what he does (or who he does it to) along the way. In parallel, Adelia and Hero have to deal with Adelia’s baby being kidnapped, and Adelia doesn’t mind what she does (or who she does it to) along the way. That does give us some interesting development for Hero, as they try to help Adelia despite their usual tendency to stay in the background and the fact that Adelia tried to kill them. But mostly, I just wanted the old band back together again already.

The end of the book delivers on that, and was pretty much exactly what I wanted. I’d love to see more of these characters, together, with their hippos, and going on capers that don’t involve death, dismemberment, torture and bereavement.

In other words, hi Sarah Gailey, I am 10,000% here for Hero and Houndstooth setting up home, occasionally going on a riverboat to steal some shit or protect some hippos when they get bored.

Rating: 4/5