Excellent fantasy (with a touch of wizardry and Firefly)

I was pointed towards this book by its narrator, Benjamin Fife. I've listened to a goodly number of his performances, especially in the genre of Austenesque fiction (Maria Grace's Jane Austen's Dragons series in particular). When he announced this one on social media, it immediately appealed to several of the geekdoms in me.

Mr. Fife’s performance is as masterly as always and Ms. Schmidt's writing is of a high standard, too. All of the characters are very much their own people, yet my inner geek can't help but see certain parallels with other works and media. Airship Captain Marik definitely has many of the traits of Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds, including a haunted past which we have yet to discover. He even has his own equivalent of Zoe Washburn! Dalmir combines some of the characteristics of Merlin and Gandalf. The younger characters, Grayden and Wynn who are the ones we meet right at the start, are engaging and stand up to the challenges they meet well, especially their unexpected encounter with Marik and his crew. I won't say any more about the plot, except that the twist in the Epilogue made my jaw drop more than a little!

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series coming out as audiobooks and highly recommend this to anyone interested in this or similar genres.

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