Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon
Royal Artifactual Guild #1
Romantic Fantasy
October 15, 2024- Berkley
ARC

Review by Angela

When Lady Aspeth Honori, the bookish daughter of a Holder, discovers her father has gambled away all of the family’s artifacts she makes the decision to travel to Royal Artifactual Guild and enroll to become an artificer. The only problem is that the Guild doesn’t accept women into the program without a chaperone and Aspeth only has her maid as company.

Hawk, a Taurian and member of the Guild, must get a group of 5 recruits through training or else his mentor Magpie might lose her position, and he won’t have the funds to pay off what he owes. To complicate everything the Conquest Moon is soon to be upon him and his urge to rut will be uncontrollable. Enter in Aspeth, and a motley crew of misfits who want to join the Guild. In desperation he accepts an offer from Aspeth–he’ll marry her and become her chaperone which will enable her to become a recruit, and she’ll help him out during the Conquest Moon.

I never know what to expect when I open a Ruby Dixon romance, but I’m always pleasantly surprised. I haven’t read that many minotaur romances, and I’m not sure I’m going to start adding them to my TBR, but I should have known this author would make it work. This is a complex world with quite a bit of depth. I will admit that it started out slow for me, as I was taking in all the worldbuilding, even though I adored Aspeth almost immediately. She’s a thirty-year-old sheltered daughter of a Holder, who doesn’t have much physical strength, but once she finds out that her lands and people are being threatened by her father’s wastrel tendencies, she comes up with a solution.

The marriage of convenience aspect of the romance was believable, as well as the chemistry between the main characters. Being a Ruby Dixon book, there are quite a few sexy scenes. All open door and super steamy.

I think the thing that grabbed my attention the most was the lore of the underground city full of magical artifacts that are gathered by going into tunnels and digging. And while I do think the overall page count could have been cut down a bit, I did really enjoy seeing the recruits finally head down the tunnels to train. Each of the side characters are endearing and I hope there are plans for Ms. Dixon to spend more time in this world telling their stories.

By the way, make sure you read the author’s note at the end. I think you’ll find the way this story came about fascinating.

Final grade- B