Jeweled Fire

[alobear]

Jeweled Fire is the third in the Elemental Blessings series by Sharon Shinn, and I finished listening to it on the way into work this morning.  I really love this world - the cultures and societies are very interesting, and I like a lot of the characters.  This one was particularly good because it ventured out into the wider world, and introduced me to different countries within the world.  It's a political murder mystery, based around the succession in a particular realm, and one of the characters from the previous books, who travels to that realm and gets caught up in proceedings.  She's a strong, female character, with well-formed opinions, who isn't afraid of taking action to help her friends.  Towards the end, the story falls back into age-old gender tropes, with the loyal guardsman rescuing the princess from mortal danger - but it was so sweet and romantic, that I just didn't care.  And he does generally have his work cut out for him, keeping up with her!  Great fun overall.