A cozy, slice of life fantasy. Somewhat like the Recluse series, this novel focuses on a magic engineer whose only supernatural gift is the ability to see flaws in structures. The novel has more high fantasy elements towards the end, but overall the mundane nature of the story is a pleasant change of pace. ( )

Abi is the daughter of Herald spymaster Mags and his wife Amily who is the King's Own Herald. She has grown up with the children of the king and queen. She has been trained by her father to be dangerous, to be another layer of protection for the royal children. She has also been trained to be observant. She sometimes wonders if that will be enough for her to be a help to her father and her kingdom since she seems to lack any magical gift.

One day, while on an errand with her best friend Princess Kat, Abi gets a bad feeling about a bridge they have to cross. She knows that the bridge is in immediate danger of collapse. She and Kat manage to save all the people on the bridge before it does collapse. Now, she has a unique Gift to learn to use: she can feel the stress in non-living things.

Abi is sent to be trained as an Artificer which causes all sorts of resentment from some of the other students who feel that she took the place of a more worthy candidate just because of who her parents are. Especially resentful is Dudley Remp, a first class bully who feels entitled to whatever he wants because his father is rich. When he attempts to assault her after class with the help of a couple of his sycophants, she breaks his finger. When his father comes to demand that she be beaten and expelled because she hurt his son, her father casts a Truth Spell which quickly shows what happened and leads to his being expelled instead. However, she has made an enemy who isn't just going to go away.

At the end of her training, Abi has to come up with a Master Work to prove her accomplishments and she chooses to rebuild the bridge that had collapsed some years earlier. To do so, she needs to reinvent a technique for supporting bridges that she learned from a ruin in the city. Before her bridge is finished, though, she is asked to accompany a small group of Masters as they travel to a land bordering Valdemar that is thinking about becoming part of Valdemar.

This journey gives Abi a chance to explore more of Valdemar and learn more about things that Master Artificers do. She is traveling with three other Masters, a Herald who is one of her father's agents, and three mercenaries who have been hired to guide them. Things go well at the beginning but quickly go downhill when they come to a town that had a previous visit from "Valdemaran Artificers" who caused a part of the city wall to collapse. They learn that the group has Mages and they believe that they are Karsites who want to ruin any relationship with Valdemar and who can control demons.

They need to find a way to restore Valdemar's reputation and get rid of the Karsite spies. The story was exciting. I liked the Abi grew and changed through the story and identified a path for her life that will make her happy and fulfilled. This was truly a coming of age story. ( )

I like the books Mercedes Lackey writes, she is good at creating a believable world and people to populate it. While her writing is not the strongest I do find it engaging ang and enjoyable. I like a series I can live inside of and her books are ones that have characters I feel invested in and a world I believe could exist. ( )

A good addition to this fine series. Abi has a special gift, and she is not even a herald. Training with the Artificers enhances her gift; that of identifying stresses in structures providing new challenges for the daughter of Valdemar's spymasters. ( )

The latest follows another one of Mags kids that turns out to have a unique talent for finding stresses in buildings. She joins the Artificer students and has a run in with a rich kid and that kid gets kicked out of the school. The only reason this comes into play later on there are more run ins with the family to get revenge on her for having the boy kicked out under truth spell. There is a small mystery at the end of the book but the overall story feels more geared to a YA audience instead of an adult one.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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