The last thing half-dragon, half-fairy private investigator Twig Starfig wants to do is retrieve a stolen enchanted horn from a treacherous fae, but there’s no denying the dazzlingly gorgeous unicorn who asks Twig to do just that. Literally, no denying, because compelling the reluctant detective is all part of a unicorn’s seductive magic. To add to his woes, Twig is saddled with the unicorn’s … unicorn’s cheeky indentured servant, Quinn Broomsparkle. Dragons are supposed to want to eat humans, but Twig’s half-dragon side only wants to gobble up Quinn in a more . . . personal way. Making matters worse, it’s obvious the smokin’ hot but untrustworthy sidekick is hiding something. Something big. And not what’s in his trousers. In the PI business, that means trouble with a capital Q.
Throw in gads of zombies, a creepy ghost pirate ship, a malfunctioning magic carpet, and Twig’s overbearing fairy father’s demands to live up to the illustrious Starfig name. Naturally, an old but abiding enemy chooses this time to resurface, too. Those inconveniences Twig can handle. The realization he’s falling for a human who isn’t free to return his affections and whose life may hang on the success of his latest case?
Not so much.
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This is a really cute story.
And it’s amusing and good fun. But it’s not funny as such and it didn’t make me laugh.
So, an okay pastime but I won’t be reading the sequel.
For books that I return to again and again, writing a review becomes a challenge because I will never be finished reading them. This was definitely the case with the Starfig Investigation series by Meghan Maslow. But it’s time to let this one fly as it’s too good to continue to hold close as my favorite M/M fantasy series. At the very beginning, I was delightfully drawn in as the half-dragon, half-fairy Twig Starfig is visited by one truly devilish unicorn with his indentured sex servant, Quinn Broomsparkle. The job involves him locating and returning a missing horn but all is not as described and Twig is saddled with Quinn as collateral. Quinn proves himself valuable to Twig by helping him in several fundamental ways. Along with the search for the unicorn’s horn, Twig and Quinn have a series of incredible adventures including their understanding of the value each has for the other! I love the series for this part alone but check out all the other excitement that includes a high-stakes card game, a magic carpet ride, discovering a pirate ship that sails in the desert, hundreds of zombies, confrontation with several other baddies, and meeting several really good folk. There is pacing in the book that is beautiful and magical. The writer never leaves us bored, frustrated, or overloaded. It’s just awesome, so very awesome!
I was so happy when I won a copy of this book from the author. It sounded like a fun read and the author said the narrator was great, which made me even more curious. By Fairy Means or Fouls is a fun fantasy romance book set in a fantasy realm called The Elder. I had fun listening to this on and the narrator really did a great job with this one.
This was such a fun read, the couple gets in some funny situations. And I liked how things took an unexpected turn at times, when I was expecting things to go a certain way and then something else happened. The book has a light feel, but still deals with some serious topics as well. Mostly this book just made me smile. It was just a lot of fun and there are plenty of great characters and the narrator was awesome.
This book is told from the point of view of Twig Starfig who runs Starfig Investigations. The story starts when a new client enters his office, it’s a unicorn who ask Twig’s help to retrieve his horn from a fae. The unicorn has some special magic and Twig can’t say no. As the unicorn can’t pay the upfront fee he ends up having to take the unicorn’s indentured servant Quinn while he investigates. What starts off as a pretty straightforward quest turns out more and more complicated with some interesting twists and turns. And Twig finds himself falling for Quinn along the way.
Twig and Quinn get in a variety of dangerous and funny situations. They end up making friends with some interesting creatures, land in situations they hadn’t expected and end up making some enemies along the way as well.
I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the romance at first. Quinn basically is a slave and Twig at first is very controlling and keeps telling him what to do. They both keep secrets and don’t communicate, which could be frustrating at times. They also seem to go from one emotional extreme to the other at times. But slowly I found myself warming up to their romance. Quinn’s bite was more a defense mechanism and he and twig develop a sort of banter that could be entertaining to read about. They actually work great together too when Twig let’s Quinn. And they were great together and both could use the other in their live. I was happy with a certain development later on in the book as it made them feel a bit more on even footing. I also kept wondering how the whole Quinn being a slave thing would be dealt with and in the end I quite liked how that was resolved.
Overall I liked both Quinn and Twig, they both had been dealt a difficult hand and weren’t always treated right by others and they had trouble finding their place in the world. At times I wasn’t fully happy with their behavior, twig could jump to conclusions at times and could be a tad rude at times. While Quinn could be ridiculously stubborn, which at times was a nice touch and other times it could be just annoying. As the book progressed their personalities get rounded out a bit more and I ended up liking them more. It also made a bit more sense why they were they way they were. I was still surprised how Quinn ended up being such a nice person even after everything that had happened to him.
This whole adventure nicely gets wrapped up by the end, but leaves enough room for future adventures.
I am so glad I got an audio copy of this book as the narrator really added something to the book. I liked how different Twig and Quinn sounded, where Twig’s voice was more gruff and low, Quinn had a totally different voice, slightly higher and it sounded very different. This made it really easy to know who was talking. And he did some great voices for the side characters too and had their personalities shine through, like the unicorn or Bill or the parrot. My favorite was probably the voice he did for twig’s father, who really sounded like a grumpy high pitched fairy.
To summarize: I had a lot of fun listening to this book. While this book has a simple enough set-up it quickly gets more twisted when things go in a different direction than I had anticipated. They have to deal with a variety of weird and strange and dangerous situation. Sometimes it bordered on ridiculous, but in a good way. It was quite funny at times and the author really has some great imagination with how she came up with some of these things. I liked the characters, although they could be a tad annoying at times especially first, but I grew to like them more as the story continues. The romance between the characters slowly grew on me, there were a few parts that didn’t quite work for me and sometimes they had the same argument over and over without really communicating, but they were good for one another and I liked seeing them try and figure things out. There also is a variety of great side characters. The narrator did a great job with this book, each character had a distinctive voice and their personalities shone through in their voices. I liked how different Twig and Quinn’s voices were as it always was easy to know who was talking. This was such a fun listen and I look forward to the rest of the series.
Twig Starfig is a half fairy/half Dragon that can’t fly, shift or do much magic. He runs a PI business.
Quinn Broomsparkle is an indentured servant to Brandsome Nightwind, a unicorn who gambled his horn away. Twig is hired to get the horn back and he’s given Quinn as collateral. Twig and Quinn go in search of the horn, getting through one bad situation after another, only to come up short. There’s instant attraction from both Twig and Quinn but they both fight it. There are a lot of supporting characters, some good and some bad. First encounter is with Lapus Rainbowpebbles an evil club owner who likes to cheat and deal out pain. During this encounter they end up meeting a virgin sprite with a potty mouth. She calls Twig Fucko. On the way to the second encounter they meet Pie, a ghost parrot manning a ghost ship all alone. Second encounter Sahara Burningwood at Rottingvale Quagmire. This encounter changes Twig in a big, yet good way. Onto the third encounter they come across Twig’s half brother Nyx a fairy that’s jealous of Twig. He has a demon named Bill captive. Twig saves Bill and then Bill saves Twig and Quinn. Bill has Brandsome’s horn and he’s not ready to hand it over because he’s leary of anyone using the horn to control him. After getting free of Nyx; Twig, Quinn and Bill head back to Lighthelm to return Brandsome’s horn and free Quinn. Back in Lighthelm Twig offers to buy Quinn and it’s shut down. Quinn has been keeping a secret and when Brandsome tells Twig things heat up. Twig ends up asking his father Auric Starfig an Elder Council member for help. Auric ends up getting a suitable solution to the situation.
I liked this book a lot. It has a good story that hooked me from the beginning and I didn’t want to stop for work or sleep. I would’ve liked a little more antagonism between Twig and Quinn but it was ok like it was. I didn’t like the ridiculous names everyone had, which had me rolling my eyes. I hope there’s more books to come because I’d love to see more world building. There was only one grammar error I caught and funny enough it was on page one. I’d definitely recommend this book and will read it again myself.
Independent reviewer for Gay Romance Reviews, I was gifted my copy of this book.
So, cute! Really a rather amusing read, not laugh out loud funny, but one of those that kept me chuckling at random points long the way.
Twig is half dragon, half fairy and cannot shift. Quinn is traded (yes, traded) with Twig as payment for services to find the unicorn’s horn. Quinn thought he was a wizard, but failed the last test to find a familiar, and was bought by said unicorn as a slave. Twig and Quinn must work together to find the horn, but also to find themselves.
I liked this, a lot. It is busy though! Lots going on, lots of side characters, and lots and lots of action! I got a bit concerned when zombies were mentioned! Usually I steer clear of book that mention the Z word in the blurb and I must have missed it in this one, but the zombies here are only on page long enough to be . . destroyed . . by someone(spoilers, don’t ya know!), so I didn’t have to worry about them too much.
I liked all the twists that were thrown at Twig and Quinn. The shifting, or not as the case may be for Twig. The wizard thing for Quinn.
What I didn’t like was how FAST the book moved. There was no let up, once Quinn and Twig were off after the horn, not one! It was one thing after another and another and they had no time to process what happened at each encounter before moving on to the next.
I also didn’t like we didn’t get to hear from Quinn. Yes I knw that might have given some things away way before they were literally thrown at us, but still. I wanted to know about what the unicorn had done to Quinn, it is hinted at, and then . . left. So while you can put the pieces together, I still wanted to hear it from Quinn, you know??
A fun read, just far too fast moving, and I wanted a page or three to catch up!
4 good solid stars
**same worded review will appear elsewhere**
3.5 utter craziness stars
There is a whole helluva lot of stuff going on in this book. Not taking into account they myriad creatures that flit in and out of each and every scene of the story, there is a vast world of worlds, politics, societal issues, and machinations that could, and sometimes do, trip up the MC’s all along the way. While I do feel that the world-building is ultimately effective, it’s a whole lot to tackle and has the potential to derail whatever plot and character growth we hope to see in future installments. I’ll be keeping my eye out for that one.
It’s always a gamble tackling a fantastical story like this one and I think we’re on our way to a really great series if each element can be reeled in or woven well into whatever craziness Twig and Quinn get thrown at them. There are a lot of directions we could go with the framework given here and I’m fairly excited to see how it all pans out. Despite having a ton of potential, there was a lack of depth to the characters and their dynamic. I wish so hard that this story had an alternating POV.
With only Twig’s perspective he felt both obstinate and vacillating because we’re tossed from his resolute determination to stick it to his father even to his detriment and then seeing his resolve crumble at various moments where the capitulation was unnecessary. I had a hard time getting a grasp of who he is and what his real motivations were. He’s got a heap of baggage to sort through and I’m unclear as of yet if he’ll improve as he wades through it all and whether or not Quinn will help or hinder his personal evolution.
Quinn is much harder for me to like. I feel for his plight, truly I do, but his character is similar to Twig’s in that he’s stubborn just to be stubborn and also vulnerable because of the hand life has dealt him. Because of his stubbornness he puts Twig into situations where not only is Twig put in danger, but he undermines anything good Twig wants to do and ultimately is given credit for the good that does happen, like he’s the one leading Twig around and it feels forced and unnatural. I don’t have a good feeling for where their relationship is going if that’s going to be their dynamic from here on out. I’m hoping my gut is wrong on this one and that Quinn will support and strengthen Twig instead of patronize and placate him, effectively making him a powerless Alpha in the name of “empowering” Quinn’s character.
The world and all its intricacies are intriguing, to say the least, and I have a ton of hope for Twig. With all the complicated relationships he’s got going on and the bargains he ends up making with his father I’m excited to see where we go from here. I’m anticipating situations that will bring individual character growth for Twig, new characters and relationships that will bring humor and a sense of belonging, and deeper interactions (with more steam) with Quinn as the series continues. I’m definitely diving in to book two as soon as I can.
So entertaining!
This was a comedic pleasure to read. Over the top, but fun with it, the names of things and people, the stereotypical turned upside down, the witty banter….I had a great time with this book! It did have more serious moments and some real conflict, but everything was resolved happily, with more tales to come! Well written, with some interesting plot twists and lots of strange supporting characters. I’ll read this book again for sure.
Through this adventure you see Twig and Quinn deal with their attraction with each other and the snark and banter they engage in is humorous. This book is full of adventure and it’s funny, imaginative and unique. I really enjoyed reading this book I definitely recommend!
I am always game to discover new authors so I took the opportunity to read it when I received this book as ARC. As my first Meghan Maslow’s book ever, I wasn´t used to her writing style and sense of humor but I totally loved them. I especially enjoyed the way she created a very impressive back story and a wonderful world where many different types of magical and non-magical fantastic creatures and humans interacted with each other. Add to this a very interesting plot, that involved a mystery, in a context full of action, danger and intrigue and an unexpected and sweet love story and you got the cherry on top. I can´t wait for more books on this series and to know more about this author. Loved it!
I received this book as an ARC and this is my honest opinion.
I read this book thru Kindle Unlimited
By Fairy Means or Foul is a fun read. Sure, there is danger, but the main feeling I had was the excitement of getting to know these “fairy tale” creatures that are a far cry from Disney’s versions.
I like the premise, the execution and the wonderfully detailed characters scattered throughout the piece.
The couple, Twig and Quinn, are unique in their origins and/or backstory. The author gives Twig an implausible conception and Quinn an implausible backstory, but both make perfect sense in this wonderful and strange world the author has created. The results of their coming together, both physically and mentally, are satisfying and believable. I love this couple and their interactions. The snark and banter they engage in are humorous and their investigative case is interesting and filled with unexpected twists and turns.
This is the first I’ve read by this author. I look forward to book two.