Sarah Beauhall is a blacksmith living in modern Seattle, who is grappling a) with the fact that her favourite sword turns out to be a relic from the Norse mythos, pursued by dwarves and dragons, and b) with her own relationship with her girlfriend. It’s not the first urban fantasy I’ve read set in the Pacific North-West – ‘s Walker Papers series are also set there, though her central character is a police mechanic swept into a combination of Celtic and Native American myth. Oddly enough the last fiction I read outside my self-set reading lists was also sfnal, also set in Seattle, and also had a title whose first word was “Black”.

Black Blade Blues is not terribly profound, and probably won’t win any awards. But I thoroughly enjoyed it: Sarah getting to grips with the sword and Katie, and the dragon in pursuit of both, in the context of the Renaissance Faire / SCA subculture of the states of Washington and Oregon, makes a cracking good yarn, with groundwork laid for more books to come – which I will certainly try and get. If you’re not sure if you like urban fantasy, this is not a bad place to start; if you do like it, you’ll probably like this.