He Drank, and Saw the Spider

This is clearly an adventure book; the protagonist a sword-for-hire whose gradual growth over the series is a lot of fun to read. He of course has the requisite mysterious past -and this book begins to delve into it. Something I love about Bledsoe as an author, however, is that each of the Eddie LaCrosse books are perfectly adequate as stand-alone. This book, in fact, was the first one I read! And I went out immediately to track down the others, but never felt that I missed out by reading them 'out of order'. It contains some violence, some adult language, and grapples with moral nuances, but does so without preaching. My very favorite part of the book is Eddie's voice. His phrasing is so colorful and vivid, and best of all it doesn't utilize worn-out metaphors to do so; there's an originality that makes me laugh out loud when I expected to be biting my lip in tension. It's utterly refreshing.