Shami Stovall‘s first Half-Life Empire novel has quite an interesting and well-developed setting… so it’s rather unfortunate that the protagonist gets victimized so often. Apart from the very first theft she’s constantly getting captured or fully reliant on someone else to save her (sometimes in a less than believable manner). While the third book’s description hints that she eventually develops power of her own, I’m not thrilled by the idea of wading through two books worth of ‘damsel in distress’ to get there.
The Litches Get Stitches books, by HJ Tolson, tell the story of a gardening and crafts-loving witch who gets in touch with her inner axe-murderer after unexpectedly transforming into a lich. The contrast between her homemaking interests and (occasionally self-destructive) impulsive bloodlust works rather well and the stakes rise from defending a house in the first book, all the way to planning to oppose a god in the fourth. I’m interested to see if it escalates further or actually concludes the story with deicide.