Sweep with Me

Sweep with Me is the fifth book in the Innkeeper Chronicles series. It's a novella rather than a full novel, a bit of a Christmas bonus story. Don't read this before One Fell Sweep; it will significantly spoil that book. I don't believe it spoils Sweep of the Blade, but it may in some way that I don't remember.

Dina and Sean are due to appear before the Assembly for evaluation of their actions as Innkeepers, a nerve-wracking event that could have unknown consequences for their inn. The good news is that this appointment is going to be postponed. The bad news is that the postponement is to allow them to handle a special guest. A Drífan is coming to stay in the Gertrude Hunt.

One of the drawbacks of this story is that it's never clear about what a Drífan is, only that they are extremely magical, the inns dislike them, and they're incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately for Dina, the Drífan is coming for Treaty Stay, which means she cannot turn them down. Treaty Stay is the anniversary of the Treaty of Earth, which established the inns and declared Earth's neutrality. During Treaty Stay, no guest can be turned away from an inn. And a Drífan was one of the signatories of the treaty.

Given some of the guests and problems that Dina has had, I'm a little dubious of this rule from a world-building perspective. It sounds like the kind of absolute rule that's tempting to invent during the first draft of a world background, but that falls apart when one starts thinking about how it might be abused. There's a reason why very few principles of law are absolute. But perhaps we only got the simplified version of the rules of Treaty Stay, and the actual rules have more nuance. In any event, it serves its role as story setup.

Sweep with Me is a bit of a throwback to the early books of the series. The challenge is to handle guests without endangering the inn or letting other people know what's going on. The primary plot involves the Drífan and an asshole businessman who is quite easy to hate. The secondary plots involve a colloquium of bickering, homicidal chickens, a carnivorous hunter who wants to learn how Dina and Sean resolved a war, and the attempts by Dina's chef to reproduce a fast-food hamburger for the Drífan.

I enjoyed the last subplot the best, even if it was a bit predictable. Orro's obsession with (and mistaken impressions about) an Earth cooking show are the sort of alien cultural conflict that makes this series fun, and Dina's willingness to take time away from various crises to find a way to restore his faith in his cooking is the type of action that gives this series its heart. Caldenia, Dina's resident murderous empress, also gets some enjoyable characterization. I'm not sure what I thought a manipulative alien dictator would amuse herself with on Earth, but I liked this answer.

The main plot was a bit less satisfying. I'm happy to read as many stories about Dina managing alien guests as Andrews wants to write, but I like them best when I learn a lot about a new alien culture. The Drífan feel more like a concept than a culture, and the story turns out to revolve around human rivalries far more than alien cultures. It's the world-building that sucks me into these sorts of series; my preference is to learn something grand about the rest of the universe that builds on the ideas already established in the series and deepens them, but that doesn't happen.

The edges of a decent portal fantasy are hiding underneath this plot, but it all happened in the past and we don't get any of the details. I liked the Drífan liege a great deal, but her background felt disappointingly generic and I don't think I learned anything more about the universe.

If you like the other Innkeeper Chronicles books, you'll probably like this, but it's a minor side story, not a continuation of the series arc. Don't expect too much from it, but it's a pleasant diversion to bide the time until the next full novel.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2020-02-23