Review based on an ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Years ago, Esther and her Hex (a team of six, each with unique roles necessary for avoiding death by flora, fauna, or weather while traveling the Beyond) rescued a child from inter-planar slavers. Kai grew to be a part of Esther’s family, eventually marrying her son, Daniel. Now a dragon lord has kidnapped Daniel and is demanding that Esther give him Kai in exchange for her son’s safe return. She’ll have to reassemble her Hex and face a myriad of dangers in order to keep her family safe and untangle the consequences of the past.

I loved The Keeper’s Six. Though the premise is familiar (baddie kidnaps the hero’s child, blackmails hero, rescue mission ensues), Elliott takes a fresh approach to both the characters and plot. Instead of a white male Keanu Reeves/Liam Neeson/Harrison Ford/Mel Gibson type (I may be fudging a bit to include John Wick, but otherwise I think I’ve seen them all in this movie), Esther is a Jewish grandmother dealing with knee pain. Instead of a blood-soaked rampage or the PG-13 equivalent, she and her Hex set out to discover why the dragon lord is targeting her family and get him to free Daniel through information gathering and contractual wrangling.

That’s not to say that there’s no excitement – the environment of the Beyond is incredibly hostile, as well as some of its inhabitants – but Esther regularly tries to find the option that is best in both the short- and long-term. I highlighted several phrases and passages that showed this. In one, Esther is thinking of the act of sabotage that took down the organization who had enslaved Kai. She knows the sabotage caused the deaths of both innocent and guilty sapients, but also that without her actions the evil system would have continued, and wonders whether she did the right thing (for me personally, and I think for Esther, the answer has to do with goals – are innocents being hurt as unavoidable collateral in confronting evil, or is the goal to get innocents hurt/killed to accelerate “the revolution,” an actual position I’ve seen wannabe revolutionaries take). At another point someone tells her that “sometimes altruism was just selfishness,” that being on the right side of history can be used to justify what you wanted to do anyways regardless of who it hurts. Esther’s refusal to let herself off the hook or to take the easy/immediately-gratifying path is an admirable example for people in our world who are trying to make things better.

Two other things that sparked joy for me: first, this book has lots of queer representation (both sexuality and gender) including multiple non-binary characters who use neopronouns and who are non-binary in different ways from each other; and second, there is a subplot running through the novel about the staff maintaining a dragon’s horde deciding to unionize. It’s a small touch, but absolutely delightful.

As far as I know, Keeper’s Six is a standalone book, but I’m crossing my fingers that Elliott will return to this world someday. In the meantime, you should definitely check it out!

The Keeper’s Six‘s expected publication date is January 17, 2023. You can find a local bookstore to pre-order the print version at IndieBound, or an ebook at Kobo (or presumably most other ebook distributors).