2024 fantasy. Kiela and Caz flee from the sack of the Imperial Library
with all the books they could save, and go to Kiela's birthplace on a
remote island. They plan to keep their heads down. But problems aren't
going to solve themselves.
This is another cosy fantasy in the vein of Legends & Lattes:
it's not low stakes exactly, people's lives are certainly threatened,
but it's small scale. Kiela, coded as an introvert perhaps bordering
on mild autism, is faced with the need to make friends while trying
not to be too obvious about her illegal magic; fortunately almost
everyone here can be befriended.
The writing is workmanlike, but never sparkles; the narrative
viewpoint is tight third person, but with significant internal
monologues, and sometimes gets quite repetitious. And the fantasy
animals are perhaps a little too overly cutesey (winged cats and
actual sea-horses).
Caz, meanwhile, is a sentient spider plant.
But the main plot is pretty much "city girl moves to small town and
finds love, eventually" and the predictability of that does get a bit
wearing in the gaps between dealing with various sorts of mild peril.
Still, the book is intended to be about All the Feels, or as the
author puts it
I wanted to write a book that felt like a warm hug.
and it achieves that goal.