Posted by This is yet another Orbit audiobook that I dropped the ball on when I got my new job. I saw this title in the promotional email and how could I not ask for this?
Cinnamon lives on a cinnamon farm and is a spice seller by trade. Lol, yeah. She’s got a great “voice” and I really enjoyed her character from the start. She’s kind of sassy, but also laid back, she’s got a great family, good friends, and a comfortable life. I deeply connect with the idea of only wanting to read about adventures but not actually go on them. Why would you want to risk your life on some crazy quest when instead you can have cheese and wine and friends? I vibed with her so hard. Her best friend is a cheese maker and her name is Brie. This book sort of embraced the ridiculous names of its characters.
And then a demon comes to her family farm and fucks up her whole game. So this follows the unwilling hero trope as she gets dragged into one of those adventures she’s been trying so hard to avoid. The The demon who lands in her backyard turns out to be a dragon shifter and lots of mayhem ensues. He tells her that the demons really aren’t all that bad, and that they’ve been driven to madness by the “goddess” the humans worship. I love that she calls the demon “Mr. Snarlsalot.” When they first meet he’s still feral and he’s chasing her through a forest and her inner thoughts are, “Did this fool just smash his way through trees? I’m so fucked.” I was basically in love with her from the start. This all happens pretty quickly, too. There is not a lot of set up before we get thrown into demon action — in all the ways that could mean.
This is borderline erotica.
Esme is not really into erotica.
Esme struggled so hard with this one at points.
So, normally I’m bored by sex scenes. I’m demi-pan, and so I think I have finally figured out perhaps that’s why I don’t enjoy sex scenes? I am not emotionally bonded to these characters so books or scenes that get really spicy does not do anything for me, lol. That’s the best explanation I’ve got right now. It’s not that I’m prude and am horrified by what’s on the page. I can appreciate that at times a more detailed sex scene can build characters and give more depth to their relationships because how two people have sex can be an indicator of lot of things. That said, I still skim through most of it because I can catch the vibes well enough without spending 3 pages reading about members and whatnot. I also skim through one on one sword duals most of the time, too. So, I think I’m just bored when there’s two people just thrusting at each other, swords or otherwise — and goodness does this book have so much thrusting. For all you thirsty thrusters, this book is for you for sure. Now, this also is mild/light BDSM and there’s a lot of “dominance” stuff here. So… I think this is also why I struggled. If anyone tells me what to do because I’m “theirs” I will battle with an almost insatiable need to punch them in the face. I really don’t vibe with being dominated. Nor do I want to do the dominating. So, this just is a swing and a miss, lol. I still very much so liked Cinnamon’s character.
Going back to things I enjoyed, lol. It’s always nice to have a nice happy healthy family with no to little toxicity. Often times tension can be derived by bad relationships, particularly in family, but it’s nice when that’s not the case. Cinnamon has other siblings… also named after spices, Chili, Cumin, lol. But she’s lost a sister to a water demon and it weighs down the family even four years later, her name was Cherry and her only sister. They don’t play a huge role here, but when they are on screen they help give depth to Cinnamon when they’re on scene.
I loved the easy way the world building was developed, so much of it was just inferred and not outright told to the reader, and yet it was still super easy to absorb and there was a lot to take in. There were info dumps from time to time, but it wasn’t ever so much that I got annoyed. This also has a pretty strong Louisiana feel to it. The food includes a lot of spices, warm weather farming, and speaks of the bayou and crawfish. The accent put on by the audiobook narrator also pushes the reader in that sort of direction, too. Although I don’t believe this was set in some alternate Louisiana, I do think it felt Louisiana adjacent.
My primary complaint about this book is that things fall together very easily for Cinnamon. Whenever she’s met with a challenge, and there are many, she’s able to work through it without a lot of failures or trial and error. She tries a thing, it works out, then onto the next problem. This is written as a light hearted/comedic romance fantasy, so I wasn’t expecting a super complex plot with tons of intricate moving pieces, but this was a very straight forward and predictable story, to the point where it kept it at four stars and not five.
Ultimately, I would describe the ideal audience for this book to be for those who really love T. Kingfisher but wish she would write more explicit scenes than fade to black.
7.5/10 or 4 stars on goodreads.