Published in paperback, audio and digital formats by Louise Walters Books on 8th November 2018.
Read May 2020.
Welcome to Old London, almost part of the world we know and yet not quite, because this is a world where paranormal races exist alongside humans, and criminal cases are judged by all-seeing beings from another plain of reality - and the Heralds of Justice are infallible... or are they?
Yannia Wilde has left behind the restrictive life of her people, the Wild Folk, to pursue a career as a private detective and to find a place for herself in Old London. She is the only one of her kind living here and, like them, she can draw on the sensory abilities of all living things. She has attracted a certain amount of attention from the other paranormal races, and not all of it is welcome, but Yannia has no interest in celebrity. Although being an outsider does not worry her, since her people have always been seen as reclusive and insular, Yannia is struggling to adapt to city life away from the power of nature that she needs to recharge her abilities - and she is a little lonely.
When an unusual case falls into Yannia's lap, she recruits the help of her only friend, the Bird Shaman Karrion, to help her, and this is going to be tough case to crack. A mage has been found guilty of the murder of another of his kind, but his daughter is convinced he has been wrongly accused of the crime, even though he has been judged by the supposedly infallible Heralds of Justice.
Can Yannia and Karrion do the impossible and prove that a man who has been found guilty under their flawless system of justice is in fact innocent?
Welcome to Old London, almost part of the world we know and yet not quite, because this is a world where paranormal races exist alongside humans, and criminal cases are judged by all-seeing beings from another plain of reality - and the Heralds of Justice are infallible... or are they?
Yannia Wilde has left behind the restrictive life of her people, the Wild Folk, to pursue a career as a private detective and to find a place for herself in Old London. She is the only one of her kind living here and, like them, she can draw on the sensory abilities of all living things. She has attracted a certain amount of attention from the other paranormal races, and not all of it is welcome, but Yannia has no interest in celebrity. Although being an outsider does not worry her, since her people have always been seen as reclusive and insular, Yannia is struggling to adapt to city life away from the power of nature that she needs to recharge her abilities - and she is a little lonely.
When an unusual case falls into Yannia's lap, she recruits the help of her only friend, the Bird Shaman Karrion, to help her, and this is going to be tough case to crack. A mage has been found guilty of the murder of another of his kind, but his daughter is convinced he has been wrongly accused of the crime, even though he has been judged by the supposedly infallible Heralds of Justice.
Can Yannia and Karrion do the impossible and prove that a man who has been found guilty under their flawless system of justice is in fact innocent?
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Fallible Justice is a book that has been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for quite a while now, and I am kicking myself that it has taken me so long to pick it up and read it, because it is brilliant!
Laura Laakso has created the most intriguing urban fantasy world in this book - one where humans and magical folk live alongside each other, fully aware of each other's existence - and it works beautifully. Our author has clearly put a lot of thought into how humans and magical folk might live together in a kind of harmony, and the world she has built is well formed and very appealing.
This is a book with a wealth of different kinds of magical folk, some more pleasant than others, and they seem to be as much motivated by all those pesky emotions as the non-magical folk are, which makes them both strangely human and very realistic. Although most may prefer to live in the protected environment of Old London, in many ways they are quite similar to the humans they live among, albeit with added powers, and some even choose to marry their human neighbours. This all adds to build a credible world that is just the right amount of different from our own, so that you can almost taste it. Perhaps you may even find yourself looking a little differently at the mad cat lady who lives down the road, or the old man who always sits by the fire down at the local pub?
There are some wonderful characters for you to fall in love with, who you meet as Yannia goes about her quest, which form into an interesting little band of compatriots that I can see being a very big feature in the following adventures. And there are some delicious baddies too!
However, this is not just an urban fantasy tale. It is also a cracking crime thriller as well. Yannia may not be your ordinary private detective and she and her friends do use their magical powers to good effect to help solve the case, but there is plenty here to for the most ardent of human crime story fans too. This is a proper gum shoe story, with questions to be asked, clues to be tracked down and pieces to be put together to solve a very tricky case. It is all perfectly paced, tense, and full of suspense, with just the right mix of menace and humour - and it has a very intelligent twist at the end that will set you thinking too.
I found Fallible Justice to be a most engaging and impressive debut book. I absolutely inhaled it, desperate to find out whether Yannia and Karrion could do the apparently impossible. It seems surprising to me that Laura Laasko has now written three books and yet her work is comparatively little known so far, especially when she is writing books of this quality. I cannot wait to read the next two books in the Wilde Investigations series - Echo Murder and Roots of Corruption - which are also fortuitously in my possession.
You can be sure that I will be singing the praises of Laura Laakso's books from now on, and the fabulous independent press behind them - Louise Walters Books - which is rapidly becoming one of my favourites!.
Fallible Justice is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer, or via the links below.
Thank you to Damp Pebbles Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
From the cover of the book:
In Old London, where paranormal races co-exist with ordinary humans,
criminal verdicts delivered by the all-seeing Heralds of Justice are infallible.
After a man is declared guilty of murder and sentenced to death,
his daughter turns to private investigator Yannia Wilde to do the impossible
and prove the Heralds wrong.
Yannia has escaped a restrictive life in the Wild Folk conclave where she was raised,
but her origins mark her as an outsider in the city.
Those origins lend her the sensory abilities of all of nature.
Yet Yannia is lonely and struggling to adapt to life in the city.
The case could be the break she needs.
She enlists the help of her only friend, a Bird Shaman named Karrion,
and together they accept the challenge of proving a guilty man innocent.
So begins a breathless race against time and against all conceivable odds.
Can Yannia and Karrion save a man who has been judged infallibly guilty?
About the author:
Laura Laakso is a Finn who has lived for most of her adult life in England. She is an accountant, dog trainer and author. Fallible Justice is her debut novel and the first in her paranormal crime series Wilde Investigations.
Find out more abut Laura Laakso here:
Thanks so much x
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