I’m a reader. Unashamedly. My parents wanted their kids to love books, and I’m sure that at some point, they deeply regretted it when the floorboards groaned and creaked, and the bookshelves overflowed. I’d read and enjoyed the first of the Maradaine Constabulary books, A Murder of Mages. But 2015 was a crazy year, and I never kept track of the subsequent books. It was a surprise to chance across Mr. Maresca’s Twitter feed as he was promoting A Parliament of Bodies. I reached out, and was beyond grateful that he was kind enough to ask DAW Books, his publisher to send me an ARC.

I started reading in fantasy, only later branching into science-fiction, mystery, nonfiction, and true crime. Marshall Ryan Maresca’s Maradaine Constabulary series manages to combine all of these genres. This is the third book in the series and the ninth of the Maradaine world. Yeah, you read that right, Maradaine World. Maresca’s Maradaine is a loom upon which he interweaves the four different stories (Thorn, Constabulary, Elite & Streets) into a comprehensive tapestry. You can read just one series, and get the basic story just fine, but if you expand into the greater world, you can see the whole of the panorama.

A Parliament of Bodies is a wild ride. It has only been a few months since the events in An Import of Intrigues, and Inspector Welling is under Investigation as to his continued fitness to serve as a member of the Constabulary. There is a fiendish serial killer who has kidnapped dozens of people and strapped them into clockwork death machines (think the Saw movies). Inspectors Welling and Rainey are joined by Dayne Heldrin and Jerinne Fendall of the Taurian Order to stop the man Dayne is convinced is the killer.

Some books are comfortable to read, they cradle your mind as you wander their pages. Others are a veritable battle, where like Bastian Balthazar Bux in the NeverEnding Story; you are drawn in and are as much a part of the story’s energy as the characters are. You can guess which A Parliament of Bodies is. After the first hundred pages I had to break out the 2 lb bag of jelly beans my mom gave me for Easter. It was either jelly beans or cannibalism as I chewed my fingernails to nubs.

This book had me laughing, crying, cursing out loud, when I wasn’t gasping  and spluttering in inarticulate wonder. There are side adventures, and new revelations on past events that build both the world and make the cast more “real”. A Parliament of Bodies has  so much of an edge-of-your-seat quality that by the end you are both winded and desperately craving the next book!

• Title: A Parliament of Bodies
• Author: Marshall Ryan Maresca
• Series: Maradaine Constabulary
• Publisher: DAW Books
• Released: March 26, 2019
• Language: English
• Pages: 389

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