You know what's a good book? Burn Me Deadly by Alex Bledsoe

(via alexbledsoe.com)

Actually read this book during the Summer and thanks to laziness, never got around to posting a review or anything else about it. Too late for that now, since it's been a while, but I still want to talk about it. Here's two reviews from two awesome blogs, though. First, here's the blurb:

Eddie’s riding back from a routine investigation when he nearly tramples a half-naked blonde who runs in front of his horse. The frightened young woman is clearly in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, Eddie promises to protect her, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body.

Eddie isn’t the kind of guy to let this pass. But who killed Laura Lespertitt? Eddie’s quest for payback soon leads him to a tangled mystery involving a notorious crime lord, a backwoods dragon cult, royal scandals, and a duplicitous femme fatale who has trouble keeping her clothes on. As bodies pile up, attracting the unwanted attention of the king’s own men, Eddie finds that life is cheap compare to “the fire that dreams are made of….”

Burn Me Deadly is a really, really good book. It's a fantasy story with a seemingly standard grim and gritty setting, but with touches of detective and noir fiction. Eddie, for example, has a collection of swords with model names like what you would find today with firearms. Eddie is a sword jockey, a kind of man-for-hire and private dick (in more ways than one, badum bssh) who lives in a backwater town in a backwater kingdom. I like the modern touches because Bledsoe never allows them to overwhelm the medieval-ish setting. Then there's the assholes. MAN, are there assholes in this book! There's more than a few that you'll personally want to beat the living crap out of. I wish I had written a post about this book sooner, because I am leaving a lot out that I can't recall clearly.

Overall, Burn Me Deadly is worth reading.