Book Review: The Bargainer Series

Over the past couple weeks I read The Bargainer series by Laura Thalassa. The series consists of 3 main novels and 1 novella: Rhapsodic, A Strange Hymn, Dark Harmony, and The Emperor of Evening Stars (the novella). The novella comes between books 2 and 3.

The novel follows Calypso, “Callie”, Lillis who is a siren. When she was a teenager she did something that required the help of The Bargainer. The Bargainer is a known fae amongst the supernatural community as this dark being who can get you anything you want/do anything for you, but you’ll owe him a favor in return. His name is “The Bargainer” after all.

After helping Callie out, The Bargainer – Desmond Flynn – sends her to a school for the supernatural and while there she keeps calling on him for “favors” but really she just wanted his company as she had no friends. Each time he does something for her he adds a black bead to a bracelet on her wrist eventually leaving her with rows and rows of hundreds of black beads up her arm. A close friendship develops and Callie begins to have feelings for Des and then suddenly he leaves her and doesn’t return. For over 7 years.

Now Des is back and needs Callie’s help because something is taking his male soldiers and putting his female soldiers into a death-like sleep. Oh yeah, The Bargainer also happens to be the Night King.

You know I had to wear my black beaded bracelet for these photos!

I’ve heard some people say that this series started as fan fic for A Court of Thorns and Roses and I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I could see how it could be true. Des is the King of the Night Kingdom (Rhysand is the High Lord of the Night Court), there’s talk about “under the mountain”, Des can speak to shadows and they are spies for him (Azriel is a shadowsinger), etc.

But The Bargainer series is still its own and has an entertaining story. Readers get to watch the love story between Callie and Des unfold and their investigation into who is targeting all these fae and how to stop him/her.

I enjoyed the series. The author has another series called The Four Horsemen series that I want to check out sometime this year.

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