Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Sleight of Heart
SERIES: Morality of Magick Book 1
AUTHOR: Aisling Mancy
PUBLISHER: CoolDudes Publishing
LENGTH: 194 Pages
RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2016
BLURB:
Aisling Mancy’s breakthrough Romani novel. Lord Taliesin Solitaire was born albino, cursed mute by the fey, and betrayed by a vampire lover. For two hundred years the vampire mage has vowed never to love again and has only used sex as a means to a meal. Until a palm-reading gypsy finds himself in peril and Taliesin can’t resist rescuing the beautiful young man.
Pesha is the eldest but smallest son of King Vaida Sinclair, the oppressive ruler of the Kåle RomaniCompania. Deemed impure by his father, Pesha is shunned and mistreated by his band and four half-brothers, and one brother in particular wants him dead. His pale, silent savior gives him safety, security and a love he never could have imagined. As Pesha falls in love with his handsome white knight, his half-brother does the unthinkable.
Can Taliesin rescue Pesha from the cruel clutches of his half-brother a second time?
REVIEW:
This book comes under my heading of books that I really liked, and that had a huge amount of potential, but didn’t live up to it as much as I had hoped. It was a good story. We had a Vampire Lord, his half fey daughter, a Romani Royal Family, Werewolves, humans, a whole slew of other fey races, and even a dragon. It had everything you could hope for. Except for enough details.
I so wanted more details of almost everything. There were very vague hints of the inappropriateness of the relationship between Lord Taliesin and Pesha because they are both Mages, but after a while nothing more was said about it. There was also the fact that the human world knows about Vampires and the other fey, but I felt like there was a huge chunk of background on that which was missing from the book. It kind of felt like jumping into a story in the middle or on book two, although I believe this is book one in the series.
Then let’s talk about sex. There was a lot of it in this story, while the two MCs are developing their relationship. Honestly, I would have much preferred more details on the world and less on the sex. Some people like a lot of sex in their stories, I’m not one of them.
I’m going to call this one, a “Liked it / Above average” because the writing was well done. There just needed to be a whole lot more in my opinion. I know some authors tend to overdo it with world building in a new fantasy series, but this author was the opposite. There just wasn’t enough to draw me into the story and the world. I’m not 100% sure that I would pick up another book in this series in the future, but it will depend on the blurb. If it captures me again, like this one did…we’ll see.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Thanks for the good review, Dan! I mention in a number of posts that this novella is a spinoff of a much larger series coming toward the end of the year. In that larger series is much world building and I hope you give it a chance! Nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to read my book!
I’ll totally give it a shot when the others come out. As I said, the writing was above average, as we’ve come to expect from you, and I liked it…just wanted more. 🙂
I respectfully disagree with parts of this review. I realize what one may like, another may not. However, I read Sleight of Heart and found the world building to be exceptional. When I started the book, I’d never heard of the Romani people. There is world building in this book and the master series promises more. I now know more about these secretive people and their customs. There is a fair amount of sex in this book, but it was so well written it didn’t feel overdone. I truly enjoyed this book.
Wow. I thought the writing was very well done and the amount of detail was perfect for a novella length story. In fact, it had an incredible amount of depth for such a short work.