Tainted Dominion Series By Krystle Matar.

   My first literary genre love was "Mystery."  It started with the Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J Sobol when i was just a wee one .  Then the Hardy Boys and the fabulous Nancy Drew. My Mom was a big Agatha Christie fan and I got to read those, as those were in the family's bookcase.  Yes, I was in the 5th grade and reading Agatha. To this day, I love a good mystery, although lately it has been a smattering of Scandinavian authors. 

    Which gets me to this fabulous tale. It was part of SPFBO 7 (Self Published Fantasy Blog Off or Spiff-Bo) contest, came in second but in my own personal ratings I had it tied with Norylska Groans which also did not win. (I blame one blog site, who have too many " It can't be a good book if it contains this subject" rules. In the recent SPFBOs the blog site is no longer part of the judging blog teams, which is good because their scores were way off compared to the other bloggers.)

      This book is a murder mystery set in a world in which individuals with magical talent are called the "Tainted," which gives the reader an impression of how the Government treats these individuals. This is a slow reveal type book. Worldbuilding happens without the reader noticing it is happening, which I always appreciate.  It is a Charles Dickens like setting, one the reader should recognize if they are any type of Anglofile like me. 

Two POVs narrate the story.  If you like the combination of a Fantasy/ Mystery plot this book is for you. 

                                                     

Second book in the Tainted Dominion series. I discovered the first book in the series, [book:Legacy of the Brightwash|55962500], when it was part of SPFBO 7.  Way back in 2021, and I still remember just about everything about it.  That is what you want in a reading experience, to have a book resonate with you and you think about it long after you put it down.  As with a lot of second book in the series, this is the set up for the third 'big explosive' series finale.  Sometimes, the set up second book has pacing problems, thankfully this is not a problem here. In fact, the only problem with this book is it screwed up my sleeping goals. I stayed up way too late and woke up way too early because I wanted to get back to the tale.  Needless to say, I am psyched for the finale.