The first book in the follow up trilogy to Heartstrikers. It does say at the beginning of this book that you don’t need to have read Heartstrikers to enjoy this trilogy, but there’s so much in this book that is predicated on what happened in Heartstrikers and i really think you’d be missing out on a whole lot of background and enjoyment if you didn’t read Heartstrikers first.
Plus the fact, Heartstrikers, although tedious in places, is a really good yarn and just worth reading for it’s own sake.
So, anyway, this trilogy begins a few years after the events of Heartstrikers and the DFZ is now relatively calmed down after all those shenanigans. Part of the being relatively calm is that the spirit of the DFZ has become rather strict on her tenants and anyone a month late in their rent gets their place cleaned out by “cleaners” and taken back by the DFZ to rent to someone else.
Basically, there are auctions twice a day for places to clean, and the cleaners go and bid for them. Whatever is in a place then becomes the property of the cleaner who wins the auction for it. The cleaner also has one month to get the place to the standards the DFZ sets to rent it out again. If it’s not fit for re-rental in that month the cleaner has to pay that month’s rent.
A bit like those people who buy storage units, but with magic traps and all kinds of other weird stuff lurking around.
This book is about one of those cleaners. A cleaner who owes a lot of money and who keeps winning auctions on places that fail to turn a profit.
But maybe, this one day, her luck is about to change and she can pay off her debts and be free. Or maybe not, you’ll just have to read and see.
It’s really good. And all those tedious bits i kept moaning about in the Heartstrikers books, the ones that kept slowing the pace down, well they aren’t in this book. And those tedious bits were my only complaint about Rachel’s writing before. So yeah, super good stuff and i dived straight into book 2, Part Time Gods.
If you enjoyed the first book in this trilogy then you’ll enjoy this one just as much.