A Restless Truth
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4.3 • 53 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"A breathtaking romp of a plot, prose as sparkling and luxuriant as a diamond sautoir, and at the heart of it all a sense of wondrous possibility."—The New York Times
Now an International Bestseller, a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick, an Indie Next pick, a Bookpage Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads pick—with three starred reviews!
A Restless Truth is the second entry in Freya Marske’s beloved, award-winning Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light.
Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance!
Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady’s companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago.
What she didn’t expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who’s also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can’t help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal.
Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they’ve both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for—without ending up dead in the water themselves.
The Last Binding Trilogy:
A Marvellous Light
A Restless Truth
A Power Unbound
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maud Blyth takes center stage in the charming follow-up to her brother Robin's story, A Marvellous Light—and thereby creates a conundrum, because nothing in that book renders plausible the notion of Robin sending his 19-year-old sister, alone and undercover, across the ocean to foil a plot laid by known murderers. Yet there she is on a 1909 White Star ocean liner, acting as companion to elderly magician Elizabeth Navenby, when Mrs. Navenby is murdered. Now Maud must determine whether the killer also stole a potentially world-altering magical artifact. With a combination of brains, instinct, and charm, she enlists the help of Violet Debenham, another magical Englishwoman aboard, who ran away to America and is sailing home now to claim an unexpected inheritance. Violet is 23, outrageous, and openly bisexual, presenting Maud with quite a different set of urgent questions as romance blooms. Marske writes with tremendous period detail and—to use a period term—incident, but without quite the drama or tension of a true suspense novel. This is a cozy mystery at heart, with a sprinkle of romance and magic—and some plot gaps to be sure, but not enough to spoil the fun. It makes for intelligent and pleasant reading over a cup of tea.
