Thank you to DAW and Netgalley for an advance copy.I’ve really enjoyed Jim Hines’s books ever since I stumbled into a release day signing for one of his Magic Ex Libris books at my then-local book store. So, liking Hines’s writing, when I saw “Buffy Meets Golden Girls” as the premise for this one, I was really excited to read it.The book revolves around three main characters who live together in a magical house with a bookstore they run attached. Jenny is a former Hunter of Artemis, who ran away from the work when she realized in her twenties what the Guardians had done to her making her a child soldier in her teens. Annette is a half-succubus retired PI with accounting skills keeping the doors of the bookstore open. Temple is a 99-year-old crotchety wizard whose family has owned the magical house for generations. The three of them are forced into action when magical drugs start moving among the students at Annette’s grandchildren’s school and Annette is attacked by a group of teenagers who claim to know what she is.The banter between the characters is great, and I love the way that many tense moments relate back directly to the flaws and strengths of characters. When a character fails or succeeds because of some trait, we’ve seen them express that before. Nothing really felt out of place. Hines’s humorous writing also shines through throughout.Overall, if you’re a fan of shows like Buffy or Supernatural but always wondered how those characters would fair in a decade or two, this is a fantastic book for you. It was a great urban fantasy read.Thing to Take Back to Your Story or TTRPGHere, I’m going with the house made sentient by generations of wizards living beneath its roof. There are often discussions of stories where the setting itself becomes a character, but this is one where that goes up an extra step and the house literally is one of the characters of the story.So, if you have an ancient wizard tower or an old ancestral estate, think about what opinions the building would have about what’s going on and how might it help or hinder your protagonists. Like, if a temple to Pelor has become a dungeon during misuse because some kobolds or goblins holed up there and now a paladin of Pelor is coming to clean things up? Might the place make some traps extra obvious so they can go around? Might it not provide a little extra blessing here or there for a favored hero acting as they should? Not in great big obvious ways (unless that’s where you want to go) but in tiny little “the setting is friendly to you” ways that maybe you don’t even mention where the bonuses are coming from and get them thinking.
