Violet Zennor’s father trained her to be a weapon her entire life, ranting about terrible monsters all the while. Now that Hedrek Zennor is dead, Violet looks forward to a life without hearing about Leech Lords or waiting to be attacked at any moment. A.G. Slatter’s The Crimson Road is another entry in her Sourdough Universe series, featuring a prickly, conflicted, and absolutely lethal protagonist who only takes up her father’s fight when she realizes just how much is at stake. Readers who’ve picked up other books in this loose series will be delighted at the extended cameos of characters from All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar Book of the Dead.
Violet Zennor is a reluctant hero. If she had her druthers, she wouldn’t be a hero at all; she would just quietly live out her days finally doing what she pleases instead of following her father’s lunatic dictates. Even learning that her inheritance is tied up in following her father’s last wishes doesn’t pursue Violet. But then her loved ones are taken hostage by some of her father’s enemies. You can try to take Violet’s money but you can’t harm a hair on the heads of the women who mothered her. Violet is the kind of highly practical protagonist I love. She never dithers. She might be stubborn but she never dithers about her next steps.
Although Hedrek shaped his daughter into a match for the undead Leech Lords, he either didn’t know or just neglected to tell Violet exactly how she’s supposed to stop the great evil from the north. On the road, Violet has to seek out others who might know who she’s after and how to stop them. The side quests provide opportunities for Slatter to share more of the Sourdough Universe’s lore: clerics who try to document everything, how the Leech Lords came to be, and hints about the true nature of the witches. I ate it all up. In fact, I’m so happy that I’ve got another Sourdough Universe book already on my Kindle.
Another thing that I loved about The Crimson Road is that, although Violet has always expected that she will have to fight the Leech Lords alone, she finds a lot of people who can join her in her possibly deadly quest. She worries about the allies she attracts, of course, because the Leech Lords and their hench people are just as deadly as her father warned, but they’re almost as stubborn as Violet and refuse to let her head into the darkness on her own. The two women Violet meets in the far north are especially outstanding characters—I kind of wish we’d gotten to spend more time with Rikke and Adlisa the Bloodless.
I recommend that readers read All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar Book of the Dead before reading The Crimson Road. While it’s possible to read this book on its own and understand what’s going on, the world and the characters are so rich I think the cameos work better if you already know who Asher, Miren, and Ellie are before joining Violet on the road.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.