Blodeuedd's Tuesday Review: By a Silver Thread by Rachel Aaron

Series: DFZ Changeling (#1)

Format: 380 pages, Paperback

Published: May 2, 2023 by Aaron Bach LLC

Own/urban fantasy

What can I say, in the end nothing compare to Heartstrikers. I know, I lost my heart and soul to that series.

This is DFC many years after what happened there. Now more beings have come to light, or are still hiding. Among them fairies, and Lola is a changeling. A magical thing brought in to existence. One that should have faded but she is still alive thanks to a bloodmage named Victor that uses her for his own good.

And so Victor goes missing. She needs him to stay alive. She meets new friends and foes and something sinister is growing in the DFC.

There was danger and intrigues. It was good, but alas nothing compares....

In the world’s most magical metropolis where spirits run noodle shops and cash-strapped dragons stage photo-ops for tourists, people still think fairies are nothing but stories, and that’s exactly how the fairies like it. It’s a lot easier to feast on humanity’s dreams when no one believes you exist. But while this arrangement works splendidly for most fair folk, Lola isn’t one of the lucky ones.

She’s a changeling, a fairy monster made just human enough to dupe unsuspecting parents while fairies steal their real child. The magic that sustains her was never meant to last past the initial theft, leaving Lola without a future. But thanks to Victor Conrath, a very powerful--and very illegal--blood mage, she was given the means to cheat death.

For a price.

Now the only changeling ever to make it to adulthood, Lola has served the blood mage faithfully, if reluctantly, for twenty years. Her unique ability to slip through wards and change her shape to look like anyone has helped make Victor a legend in the DFZ’s illegal-magic underground. It’s not a great life, but at least the work is stable… until her master vanishes without a trace.

With only a handful left of the pills that keep her human, Lola must find Victor before she turns back into the fairy monster she was always meant to be. But with a whole SWAT team of federal paladins hunting her as a blood-mage accomplice, an Urban Legend on a silent black motorcycle who won’t leave her alone, and a mysterious fairy king with the power to make the entire city dream, Lola’s chances of getting out of this alive are as slender as a silver thread.