Midlife Alchemy

 Midlife Alchemy, Kate Swansea, Independently Published, 2021

Elise Clair is a married dentist, working with her husband, also a dentist, in the Upper Midwest. At the same time that she catches him fooling around with a couple of his dental assistants, she gets a strange and unsolicited job offer. A town called Black Lake Falls, Washington, needs a town dentist. Elise gets on a plane.

The first thing she notices is that the town is protected by magical wards. Elise knows her way around the worlds of witches and "real" magic, having been taught by her mother. The town is built around a portal between this world, and the world of the umbra, which are hideous, carnivorous creatures. Elise is given an amulet to wear. It is the portal's (called the paraval) early warning system, flashing whenever there is a breach. 

A major breach occurs, and the umbra pour into the town, looking for a way into the wider world. This forces all the townspeople into the well-lit town square (umbra don't like bright light). They can't stay there forever. Elise comes up with a surprisingly easy way to kill umbra. Is the "invasion" thwarted, and the paraval closed again? Do the townspeople return to "normal" life?

This is a first-rate piece of writing. It is just weird enough, without being too weird. It has lots of good storytelling, with good characters. This is an excellent start to a series.

Rose Red and Other Modern Fairy Tales

Rose Red and Other Modern Fairy Tales, Kate Swansea, Rainhouse Press, 2020

These four novelettes are modern re-tellings of lesser known fairy tales, with a good amount of romance included.

Rose is a struggling entrepreneur in present-day San Francisco. She is being pushed, hard, to sell her business, and the entire building, to a shadowy entity called VF Enterprises. They have gone so far as to spray paint graffiti on her front window, and leave dog droppings by her front door. During a vacation at Lake Tahoe with Snow, her sister, Rose meets Matthew, a tech millionaire with his own connection to VF Enterprises.

A male medical student from the East Coast intentionally to attend a small college near Seattle. It is to get away from his rich and domineering family. He is about to be thrown out of school, on a charge of fraternity graffiti. That is, until he meets the science nerd daughter of the female Dean of the college, a Dean who sets new records for being cold and domineering. A modern re-telling of "The Princess And The Pea" takes place at a California winery.

This collection is very much worth reading. They are modern stories, with very good writing. The best part is that the romance is not overwhelming (coming from a non-reader of romances). The reader will not go wrong with this one.