Ruby Dixon’s Bull Moon Rising is a departure from her outer space-set Ice Planet Barbarians series and thrusts the reader into a medieval fantasy world complete with mythical creatures and magic. It’s got the scorching heat one expects from this author’s books, but combined with some new, endearing characters, and intriguing worldbuilding, it’s a highly enjoyable romp.

In the land of Mithas, Lady Alspeth Honori, heir to the Honori Hold, fears for the future of her birthright. Her father is broke and it’s only a matter of time before other Holds find out and wage war. Her lifelong dream has been to join the Royal Artifactual Guild and train to become an arificer, seeking out magical artifacts underground. Finding such a thing would allow her to add it to the Hold’s wealth, saving her family and their honor. As such, she’s diligently studied Old Prell, the ancient magical society whose city collapsed and where artifacts are still being found. She sneaks out with her maid Gwenna and they travel to Vastwarren City, built on top of the ruins of Old Prell. To join the guild as a fledgling (from which one must graduate from training to become an artificer) and because she’s female, she’ll need a chaperone. It’s just her luck that one of the first beings she meets is a Taurian named Hawk.

Hawk is a minotaur (head, tail and hooves of a bull, body of a man). The Taurian people who live in Vastwarren city most often work for the artificers due to their strength and ability to dig out people who get lost or stuck in rockfalls in the tunnels of Old Prell. Hawk works for Magpie, the only female artificer and Alspeth’s idol. As a Taurian, the most important season is that of the Conquest Moon, which happens once every five years and lasts for a few days. When it does, the females go into heat and the males go into rut. That’s fine when one has a partner, but Hawk is not married and with the upcoming Conquest Moon just under a month away, he’s trying to come up with a plan. Once the moon is upon them, he’ll have no choice but to go to a brothel if he hasn’t an alternative in place.

When Alspeth proposes a marriage of convenience to Hawk, he reluctantly agrees. It’s an answer to both of their problems, including Hawk’s task of rounding up enough students to find a “Five” – a group of five students to train under Magpie and himself. But Alspeth is keeping the secret of her true identity from Hawk who thinks she’s just the daughter of a well-off merchant. When he finds out who he’s married, and what her motivation for becoming an artificer really is, will it ruin their relationship just as it’s barely begun?

Despite the physical similarities between the author’s sa-khui aliens and this book’s Taurians (horns and tails and generously endowed privates), this really is a wholly different place and time, and the worldbuilding reflects that. I really enjoyed the idea of a medieval-esque society doing archeological work to understand their ancestors. The magical artifacts range from the silly (a horn that produces onions, a mirror that always reflects the bearer with dark lustrous hair) to the practical (a coach that doesn’t require any horses to pull it) to the powerful (an artifact that can produce something out of thin air). The artifacts also need a power phrase to be used, or have only a certain number of charges, or can recharge in sunlight. There is a King who is all powerful, and his nobility live in Holds, and then there are the rest of the regular folk – humans, Taurians, and Slitherskins (a lizard like creature who carries its home on its back, like a turtle shell). Then, because the magical artifacts are only found in Old Prell, there is the guild responsible for the digging and the archivists who catalogue the finds and study the old culture. Magic practiced by the inhabitants themselves has been forbidden ever since a magic war three hundred years earlier, but magic performed through the use of the artifacts is acceptable as it is the artifact itself that contains the magic.

Alspeth ends up in a team with Gwenna, formerly her maid but now her equal as a student, Lark (Magpie’s niece), Mereden (a Priestess who ran away from a convent) and Kipp (a slitherskin). Their Five is the only student team with any women in it, and four women plus a slitherskin puts them at the bottom of the pecking order. To top it off, Magpie, Alspeth’s idol, is a drunk and mostly incapable of teaching them anything. So it falls to Hawk to train his bunch of misfits into a coherent team. They are all clearly in over their heads at the start, so watching them grow over the course of the book, developing friendships and loyalty to each other is heartening.

While their team is coalescing, Alspeth and Hawk are finding their marriage is growing on them. Each chapter begins with a time reference to the coming Conquest Moon (28 days to the Conquest Moon, and so on) and as the days get closer, Hawk gets friskier. Thus begins Alspeth’s sexual education as they prepare for the coming five-day sex frenzy. But they get emotionally involved too, which gets riskier as the days go on since Alspeth knows she is lying to Hawk about who she is, and she makes some decisions that will have serious consequences for everyone. There is plenty of action and drama to go with the sex and romance, and the ending works out quite nicely for all. Bull Moon Rising is book one in the Royal Artifactual Guild series, and I’m looking forward to more!