Til Death Do Us Bard by Rose Black
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Age Group: Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Bisexual Authors, Disabled and Neurodivergent Authors, Non-Binary Authors, Bisexual Characters, Gay Characters, Mental Health Representation, Magic Users, Outlaw Characters, Royalty Characters, Treasure Hunters, Villain Characters, Mythological Creatures, Mental Health, Action, Adventure, Cosy Fantasy, Romantasy, Necromancy, Camaraderie, Found Family
My Rating:
Published on: 21st November 2023
Pages: 352
Disability Representation: Mental Health
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
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Marriage isn't always sunshine and unicorns . . . sometimes it's monsters and necromancy.

It's been almost a year since Logan 'The Bear' Theaker hung up his axe and settled down with his sunshiny bard husband, Pie. But when Pie disappears, Logan is forced back into a world he thought he'd left behind.

Logan quickly discovers that Pie has been blackmailed into stealing a powerful artifact capable of creating an undead army. With the help of an old adversary and a ghost from his past, Logan sets out to rescue his husband.

But the further the quest takes him, the more secrets Logan uncovers. He'll need all his strength to rescue his husband - but can he save their marriage?

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Til Death Do Us Bard by Rose Black is a cosy romantasy featuring warrior Logan ‘The Bear’ Theaker and his husband Pie, a bard. A year ago, Logan gave up his life on the road to settle down with Pie in their cottage with their goats and pig. He has everything he ever wanted, and he couldn’t be happier,r until a trip away leads to Pie’s disappearance.

Desperate to find out whether his husband is alive, he finds a necromancer to contact the spirit realm. Logan gets more than he bargains for; the necromancer is a wily old woman he has a past with, and the spirit she summons is his ex-wife, who is not happy with him! The good news is that Pie is alive, but Logan has no idea where he is or what has happened to his husband.

With the necromancer, the countess, and his ex-wife, Ophelia, Logan embarks on the most important adventure of his life to bring his husband back home. What he doesn’t expect is to find out that his husband has kept secrets hidden from him, secrets that have led to Pie getting kidnapped. Someone powerful wants Pie to find an artefact, one that has the power to raise an undead army.

The entire kingdom will be at risk if such an artefact falls into the wrong hands, and soon Logan’s mission to find his husband becomes a whole lot more complicated.

I enjoyed Til Death Do Us Bard, and it’s a fun read with some great comedic moments. Black excels at witty banter and delivers some brilliant one-liners. There are some serious moments alongside the lighthearted ones, with Black tackling topics of grief and trauma with care. 

This is an easy and enjoyable read; however, if you’re expecting an epic fantasy adventure, then you’ll be disappointed. There are noticeable overtones of tabletop role-playing (TTRPG), some of which play to the strengths of the novel, whereas at other times it does the opposite. The overall plot of the novel is not particularly strong and quite predictable. Til Death Do Us is definitely worth checking out, but its strengths are not in the main plot, in my personal opinion.

They lie in the character creation and the relationships between those characters as they develop on the page. My personal favourite was the countess, who was an absolute hoot. While other characters were interesting and amusing, it was the countess who sold the show for me. Logan and Pie’s story was great, but I would have been quite happy to have a whole book about the countess instead. 

I was a tad disappointed by Til Death Do Us Bard, but overall I enjoyed it and got some good laughs from it. I definitely appreciated Black’s dark humour, such as the names of Logan and Pie’s animals. Plus any books with necromancers are always a plus with me!

About Rose Black

Rose Black is a combination of anxiety and dyslexia in a hoodie, bi, a professional computer wrangler, and mother to the world’s wiggliest child. She’s lucky enough to live in the historic city of Bath and is capable of eating her weight in sushi. She is open to blurbs currently.

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Thank you for reading my review for Til Death Do Us Bard by Rose Black! It is due out on November 21st 2023, and is available to preorder from any of the links in this review.

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