Finished Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin. This is the first book in her Raine Benares epic fantasy series. Note: In the interest of full disclosure, Lisa recently gave me a cover blurb for Spider’s Bite, the first book in my new Elemental Assassin series.

Raine is an elf and a sorceress who specializes in finding things that are lost for people. But she’s the one who finds herself in trouble when she comes into possession of a magical amulet which is the key to finding a very old, very powerful magical artifact. The amulet makes Raine more powerful herself, but there’s one small problem — everyone and his brother want to get their hands on it and the only way that Raine can get rid of the amulet is to die. Something that a particularly nasty goblin shaman who’s hunting Raine doesn’t have a big problem with …

I spotted a blog post on this series a while back and thought that it sounded cool. So I decided to check it out. I’m glad I did. What I liked most about the book was Raine. She’s a great character — smart and capable but someone who still knows her own limits and isn’t afraid to ask for help when she needs it. Also, it was refreshing to see a first-person, kick-butt, female heroine in an epic fantasy, instead of your usual farmboy-with-a-great-destiny type of character.

I also liked the fact that Shearin did some different things with her fantasy world, like make her goblins sexy instead of the slobbering green monsters that they’re usually portrayed as. And she did a lot with her magic/world building without going on about it for pages and pages. (As a side note, that’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine. As much as I like epic fantasy, I think a lot of books in the genre could use some trimming when it comes to their world building, especially people like Robert Jordan).

Overall, if you’re looking for a new fantasy series to try, especially one with a female lead character, check this one out. Thumbs up.

Up next: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Books in my TBR pile: About 14.