Review: Sweep in Peace, by Ilona Andrews

[Russ Allbery]

Sweep in Peace
by Ilona Andrews

Series:    Innkeeper Chronicles #2
Publisher: NYLA
Copyright: 2015
ISBN:      1-943772-32-0
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     302

This is the sequel to Clean Sweep. You could pick up the background as
you go along, but the character relationships benefit from reading the
series in order.

Dina's inn is doing a bit better, but it still desperately needs
guests. That means she's not really in a position to say no when an
Arbitrator shows up at her door and asks her to host a peace summit.
Lucky for the Arbitrator, since every other inn on Earth did say no.

Nexus has been the site of a viciously bloody conflict between the
vampires, the Hope-Crushing Horde, and the Merchants of Baha-char for
years. All sides have despaired of finding any form of peace. The
vampires and the Horde have both deeply entrenched themselves in a
cycle of revenge. The Merchants have the most strategic position and an
apparently unstoppable warrior. The situation is hopeless; by far the
most likely outcome will be open warfare inside the inn, which would
destroy its rating and probably Dina's future as an innkeeper. Dina
will need all of her power and caution just to stop that; peace seems
beyond any possibility, but thankfully isn't her problem. Maybe the
Arbitrator can work some miracle if she can just keep everyone alive.

And well fed. Which is another problem. She has enough emergency money
for the food, but somehow cook for forty people from four different
species while keeping them all from killing each other? Not a chance.
She's going to have to hire someone somehow, someone good, even though
she can't afford to pay.

Sweep in Peace takes this series farther out of urban fantasy territory
and farther into science fiction, and also ups the stakes (and the
quality of the plot) a notch. We get three moderately interesting alien
species with only slight trappings of fantasy, a wonderful alien chef
who seems destined to become a regular in the series, and a
legitimately tricky political situation. The politics and motives
aren't going to win any awards for deep and subtle characterization,
but that isn't what the book is going for. It's trying to throw enough
challenges at Dina to let her best characteristics shine, and it does
that rather well.

The inn continues to be wonderful, although I hope it becomes more of a
character in its own right as the series continues. Dina's reshaping of
it for guests, and her skill at figuring out the rooms her guests would
enjoy, is my favorite part of these books. She cares about making rooms
match the personality of her guests, and I love books that give the
character a profession that matters to them even if it's unrelated to
the plot. I do wish Andrews would find a few other ways for Dina to use
her powers for combat beyond tentacles and burying people in floors,
but that's mostly a quibble.

You should still not expect great literature. I guessed the big plot
twist several chapters before it happened, and the resolution is, well,
not how these sorts of political situations resolve in the real world.
But there is not a stupid love affair, there are several interesting
characters, and one of the recurring characters gets pretty solid and
somewhat unusual characterization. And despite taking the plot in a
more serious direction, Sweep in Peace retains its generally
lighthearted tone and firm conviction in Dina's ability to handle just
about anything. Also, the chef is wonderful.

One note: Partway into the book, I started getting that "oh, this is a
crossover" feeling (well-honed by years of reading comic books). As
near as I can tell from a bit of research, Andrews pulled in some of
their characters from the Edge series. This was a bit awkward, in the
"who are these people and why do they seem to have more backstory than
any of the other supporting characters" cross-over sort of way, but the
characters that were pulled in were rather intriguing. I might have to
go read the Edge books now.

Anyway, if you liked Clean Sweep, this is better in pretty much every
way. Recommended.

Followed by One Fell Sweep.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2017-11-04

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>