The plot takes that sense of closeness and uses it to ramp up the tension. Most of the action is confined to the inn’s grounds as the arbitration progresses, with key insights offered by Caldenia (she’s so interesting!). In the end, she really has no choice there are not enough (or any, really) guests banging on her door. With the money a successful arbitration could bring, Dina will be able to survive for months and do some remodelling as well. Gertrude Hunt renews itself and grows by utilising some of the magic of its guests. It’s extremely dangerous for Dina to host the arbitration but it’s also very lucrative – both financially and magically. The combatants are the Holy Cosmic Anocracy (vampires), the Merchants of Nexus (led by Nuan Cee (a bipedal fox-like creature) and the Otrakars (aka the Hope-Crushing Horde) – the “scourge of the galaxy” who are genetically engineered humans. He asks Dina to host peace talks at Gertrude Hunt (her inn) to try and end a war which has raged for 10 years on the planet Nexus. Sweep in Peace introduces some new characters, most notably George Camarine, an arbitrator whose job is to settle intergalactic disputes. (I gather that there is romantic progress in future books but it would be a stretch to think of the series as romance.)

The Innkeeper Chronicles are fantasy books though, not romance, so I didn’t expect that the relationship would be a major focus. Sean, while present in critical ways in this story, is not strongly featured and for the most part, the romance doesn’t really advance here.

In book 1 we got the beginnings of a romance between Dina and Sean Evans, a wolf shifter and former military man, who work together to stop an assassin. There’s a lot of worldbuilding in book 1 which is only briefly recapped in Sweep in Peace.

While I think it’s possible that someone could start the series here, I think the book works much better with the background of the previous book, Clean Sweep. Sweep in Peace is the second book in the Innkeeper Chronicles which tell the story of the adventures of Dina Demille, an “innkeeper” in a universe where inns are kind-of magic B&Bs which host all manner of creatures and beings from across the universe. Narrated by Nora Achrati & a full cast* – see below

Clean sweep series ilona andrews