A Restless Truth

by Freya Marske

Overview

A Restless Truth is the second entry in Freya Marske’s beloved, award-winning Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light.

“Sublime prose, top-notch world-building, delightfully queer.”—TJ Klune, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, on A Marvellous Light

Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance!

Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady’s companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago.

What she didn’t expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who’s also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can’t help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal.

Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they’ve both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for—without ending up dead in the water themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250788917
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Series:	The Last Binding , #2
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	22,317
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Freya Marske is the author of A Marvellous Light, which was an international bestseller and won the Romantic Novel Award for Fantasy. Her work has appeared in Analog and has been shortlisted for three Aurealis Awards. She is also a Hugo-nominated podcaster, and won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. She lives in Australia.

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2022

Maud Blyth takes center stage in the charming follow-up to her brother Robin’s story, A Marvellous Light—and thereby creates a conundrum, because nothing in that book renders plausible the notion of Robin sending his 19-year-old sister, alone and undercover, across the ocean to foil a plot laid by known murderers. Yet there she is on a 1909 White Star ocean liner, acting as companion to elderly magician Elizabeth Navenby, when Mrs. Navenby is murdered. Now Maud must determine whether the killer also stole a potentially world-altering magical artifact. With a combination of brains, instinct, and charm, she enlists the help of Violet Debenham, another magical Englishwoman aboard, who ran away to America and is sailing home now to claim an unexpected inheritance. Violet is 23, outrageous, and openly bisexual, presenting Maud with quite a different set of urgent questions as romance blooms. Marske writes with tremendous period detail and—to use a period term—incident, but without quite the drama or tension of a true suspense novel. This is a cozy mystery at heart, with a sprinkle of romance and magic—and some plot gaps to be sure, but not enough to spoil the fun. It makes for intelligent and pleasant reading over a cup of tea. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"In this sparkling continuation of A Marvellous Light, we get more magical puzzles, more intrigue and trickery, and more romance, this time all packaged into a transatlantic steam liner with extra opportunities for mischief, mystery, and discovery. The perfect book if you're looking for oceanbound queer shenanigans, suspense in a coherently magical world, or opulent historical fiction!"—Malka Older, Hugo Award finalist and author of Infomocracy

"Maud Blyth takes center stage in the charming follow-up to her brother Robin's story, A Marvellous Light. . . . Makes for intelligent and pleasant reading over a cup of tea."—Publishers Weekly

"From the staggeringly excellent world-building to the fleshed-out and lovable characters, A Restless Truth is a delectable sapphic fantasy-adventure on the high seas. Maud and Violet stole my heart from page one. Never has the term "to ship" been more appropriate."—Megan Bannen, author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

Praise for A Marvellous Light

"The prose is sublime, the world-building top-notch, and the magic system is fascinating and unique. But what made me the happiest is how delightfully queer this story is. Robin and Edward have my whole heart, and I adored watching their relationship blossom."—TJ Klune, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The House in the Cerulean Sea

"Mystery! Magic! Murder! Long looks full of yearning! This book is a confection, both marvelous and light."—Alix E. Harrow, author of The Once and Future Witches

"A delightful book, with richly developed characters rooted in family dynamics and period flavor. It manages the remarkable trick of introducing a trilogy while being satisfying in its own right, leaving plenty to explore in future volumes while completing a complex story in this one."—The New York Times

“Perfect.”—Jenn Lyons, author of The Ruin of Kings

"Marske is an extraordinary talent who writes compelling characters, entertainingly awful families, and love stories like nobody else."—Everina Maxwell, author of Winter's Orbit

“A magical world of exquisite refinement, where peril skims beneath manners, interiors bespeak both faultless taste and deadly secrets, and the sexual tension crescendos until it literally makes sparks fly. A dazzling debut.”—Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun

"If you ever wished Downton Abbey was sharper-edged and full of magic, this is the book for you."—Kat Howard, author of An Unkindness of Magicians

"This romantic fantasy is full of fascinating world-building, layers upon layers of delicious magic, and characters I adored. I want to spend so much more time in this alternate England's enchanted libraries and sinister hedge mazes!"—Stephanie Burgis, author of Snowspelled

From the Publisher