Leanna Renee Hieber

Strangely Beautiful — (2009-2012) Publisher: What fortune awaited sweet, timidPercy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered a portal to a new life, an education far from the convent — and an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death…

Forthcoming: Miss Violet and the Great War

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker

As The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker opens, six London youngsters are chosen for a special destiny. Plucked from their ordinary lives, they are brought together by a mysterious goddess. Their mission: to protect humanity from the forces of evil. The goddess promises the six that, in time, they will be joined by a seventh.

Nineteen years later, timid orphan Percy Parker arrives at the Athens Academy, where two of the six "chosen ones" have made their careers. Percy is brilliant with languages, abysmal at mathematics, haunted by strange dreams, and gifted with the ability to see ghosts. She settles uneasily into life at Athens Academy, and soon finds herself infatuated with Alexi Rychman, her mathematics instructor.

Much of The Strangely Beautiful Tale revolves around the developing relationship between Percy and Alexi; this is definitely “romantic fantasy.” They begin an unlikely friendship, with an undercurrent of forbidden attraction (though Percy is an adult, Alexi is her teacher). As he gets to know Percy, Alexi comes to believe that the shy young woman may be the fated seventh member of the group.

Meanwhile, another woman has appeared in London who appears to bear all the hallmarks of the goddess's prophecy. It's pretty clear, early in the story, which is the real seventh and which is the false one. Watching Alexi and his colleagues attempt to figure this out, then, is less like reading a mystery, more like reading a fairy tale, where the suspense comes from hoping against hope that the truth will out.

Then there's the Ripper, whose real-life murder spree is incorporated into the plot and given a supernatural explanation. Alexi and his friends must find the seventh member and stop the Ripper before things get even worse.

I had a lot of fun reading The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. Leanna Renee Hieber creates a sense of enchantment from the very beginning, and the novel caught me up in its spell during a week when my real life went completely haywire. It has the feel of a fairy tale, which is not an easy mood to sustain in a full-length novel. The Strangely Beautiful Tale is elegantly written and chock full of interesting characters and mythic themes. I especially loved watching the development of Percy from a meek mouse to a woman who knows what she's willing to fight for.

I was briefly bothered by Percy's mathematical bumbling, since I've spent much of my life bristling at "girls can't do math" stereotypes, but when I thought about it a little more, Percy's lack of math skills makes perfect sense for her times. Because of those same stereotypes, a woman in the Victorian era would not have received much math education before enrolling at an unconventional school like Athens.

The plot of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker is satisfactorily wrapped up at book's end, but there's plenty of room for future world-saving. Hieber has planned a series of four books. I'm definitely looking forward to them!

Recommended for fans of historical fantasies like Marie Brennan's Onyx Court series and romantic fantasies like Maria Snyder's Study series. —Kelly Lasiter

The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker

Percy Parker and Alexi Rychman have finally confessed their love for one another, and they and the Guard have scored a victory against the forces of evil. They scarcely have time to celebrate and regroup, though, before trouble finds them again.

Roughly the first third of The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker focuses mainly on Percy and Alexi’s relationship, as they announce their engagement and move quickly toward marriage. The news makes plenty of waves at Athens Academy and at the convent where Percy once lived. If you wanted more closure to the romantic plot at the end of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, you’ll find it here. Leanna Renee Hieber gives her hero and heroine a resolution fit for fairy tales. I can see now, too, why she waited until this book to tie that storyline up. If these chapters were tacked onto the end of the first book, they’d seem too long and anticlimactic. Placed at the beginning of the second book, they work perfectly. Readers get what they want, and Hieber gets the chance to juxtapose these scenes of fulfillment with hints of a threat on the horizon.

Around the one-third mark, the fantasy plot — previously in the background — takes center stage. Old enemies are rising again, and it becomes clear that Percy will have to venture into the spectral Whisper-world alone if she is to thwart the designs of Darkness, Hieber’s “Hades” figure. Yet she will not be without help. I think I teared up a bit when I realized what all those blue dots on the Guard’s map represented. Hieber skillfully describes both the gruesome landscapes of the underworld and the beauty of Good’s transcendent powers, and places them in a quickly moving plot that will keep readers frantically turning pages. And it’s wonderful to watch Percy’s continued growth. She’s gone from a timid convent girl to a brave woman who can stand up to Kings of the Underworld and snarky math professors alike, while still being recognizably the same character.

Like its predecessor, The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker comes to a satisfying close but leaves room for future stories starring these or different characters. Along the way, Hieber gives us plenty of her lovely, delicate prose, and a few moments that are riotously funny.

If anything, I wanted more! Specifically, I would have liked to see more development of one of the secondary romances, filling in the gap between the ending and the epilogue. Hieber has a forthcoming short story that will address this; the story is titled “A Christmas Carroll” and will appear in the anthology A Midwinter Fantasy, to be published by Dorchester in October 2010. —Kelly Lasiter

The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess

In The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker, we met Beatrice Smith, a member of the Guard that preceded Alexi Rychman’s circle. The Perilous Prophecy is a prequel, focusing on Beatrice’s time in the Guard and on the goddess Persephone as she makes preparations for the war against Darkness. While this book is set earlier than the two existing books, I recommend starting with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, because the Grand Work is explained there in more detail.

Beatrice is the daughter of a British archaeologist living in Cairo. As the story begins, she and five other young people in Cairo receive the call: they are to be the next Guard. At first it seems almost too easy. They settle smoothly into their new lives and couples begin to form. But then Persephone sends the group to England, and everything changes. Beatrice and her Guard are faced with the prospect of finding purpose in their lives when they thought they’d already found it.

Meanwhile, Persephone is weakening after centuries spent in the sinister Whisper-world, and Darkness is persecuting the spirits of the Guards that have come before. Persephone’s only hope of reuniting with her lover, Phoenix, is to take human form and become mortal. Here we get to see Persephone in her divine form and get to know her better than we did previously. Leanna Renee Hieber avoids the trap of making her too perfect and instead gives us a complex character. She can be capricious — in part because she’s losing it, and in part because a certain degree of flightiness is just part of her nature — and at times I was angry with her right along with Beatrice even as I had a great deal of sympathy for her.

Perilous Prophecy features a touching love story between Beatrice and her fellow Guard member, Ibrahim, two incredibly stubborn people from very different backgrounds. Running alongside that is the story of another relationship, a platonic one: that of Beatrice and Persephone. Stoic and reserved, Beatrice is the perfect foil for Persephone’s utter emotional openness, and Beatrice has just the right kind of personality to dispense “tough love” to a goddess!

Like the previous books, Perilous Prophecy is written in Hieber’s lovely, old-fashioned style. She evokes the literature of the period and also incorporates it into the story, particularly in one terrifically tense scene in which two characters use a passage from a novel to convey emotions they’re too shy to confess any other way. The mythology is compelling, the emotional journeys are moving, and the treatment of diverse religious backgrounds is beautifully done: all who work toward good are seen as having common cause, no matter the external differences.

The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess may well be my favorite of the Strangely Beautiful books so far. Certainly it had me reaching for the Kleenex! I only wish it had been longer. After the conclusion, Hieber includes a teaser for book four, Miss Violet and the Great War, which will tell the story of the daughter of Percy and Alexi. I can’t wait. —Kelly Lasiter