Review: Coronets and Steel

Sherwood Smith is a favorite author of mine.  She's not as high as Jim Butcher, Brent Weeks, or Brandon Sanderson, but she's up there.  I've read her Crown Duel books (both the duo of Crown Duel and Court Duel, plus the prequel, A Stranger to Command) and A Posse of Princesses.  All of those were very good, and I certainly don't think I'll stop reading that particular brand of her books.

Coronets and Steel is a different kind of book.  It's an urban fantasy set in modern times.  Coronets follows the journey of Aurelia Kim Murray, a college student from California.  She's on a search for her family's history on her maternal grandmother's side.  Her search takes her to Europe, where she runs into dead end after dead end.  That's when she meets a man she dubs Mr. Darcy upon first meeting him.  And the first time she sees a ghost.

 I find this book very well written and certainly up to par with her previous works.  Smith has also stepped out of the usual area of her fantasy writing.  I don't often read urban fantasy because I just don't find many well-written books that are like that.  This book left me wanting more.  The author masterfully led up to her ending and chose to leave me where I would certainly go after the next book in this series.

Overall, I would give this book three and a half stars.  It's clean, it's well-written, Kim is a likable main character, and it's just a great book.