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Murder on the Airship
An emergency landing, quarreling elven and naga nobility, meddlesome dwarven officials, renegade pixies, dubious mercenaries, and a dragon who cheats at cards.
Bad enough without a murder.
Thyria had signed on to protect passengers, not investigate them. But she takes over morning watch aboard the Silver Kestrel, the finest airship aloft, to find a first-class passenger stabbed to death in his own stateroom.
Now she must investigate – tactfully, whatever that means – a burgeoning diplomatic incident, navigating the towering egos of influential passengers who each have something to hide.
Because if she doesn’t find her quarry within the day, this will be the Kestrel’s final flight.
Bad enough without a murder.
Thyria had signed on to protect passengers, not investigate them. But she takes over morning watch aboard the Silver Kestrel, the finest airship aloft, to find a first-class passenger stabbed to death in his own stateroom.
Now she must investigate – tactfully, whatever that means – a burgeoning diplomatic incident, navigating the towering egos of influential passengers who each have something to hide.
Because if she doesn’t find her quarry within the day, this will be the Kestrel’s final flight.
- GenresMystery
319 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 7, 2026
1 person is currently reading
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 14, 2026
An airship full of passengers with nowhere to escape, and someone decides that murder is a great in-flight activity. Unfortunately for absolutely everyone, the person stuck dealing with all this is Thyria, a guard who signed up for “watch the hallway and don’t die,” not “mediate a growing list of people who may or may not be homicidal.”
Every passenger feels like they’re hiding something. The ship's packed with fantasy species, egos, secrets, snooty nobles, and the general sense that if one more thing goes wrong the entire trip will descend into magical anarchy. Which, to be fair, it sort of does.
The mystery itself kept me guessing because every time I thought I had a theory, another character would say or do something suspicious or just exist suspiciously. At some point I was side-eyeing basically everyone on that airship, including people who were probably just waiting for all this stupidity to blow over so they could get back to their snacks.
I love Thyria. She's all of us. She’s competent but also exhausted by the nonsense happening around her. She's so done with everything and everyone. Watching her try to keep things under control while surrounded by chaos merchants nearly broke me.
Sometimes the cast felt a bit too big and chaotic so I had to pause and try to remember who exactly was threatening who and why. But that kind of added to the whole experience, because, really, being confused af feels appropriate when you’re trapped on a flying crime scene with a bunch of weirdos.
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC
Every passenger feels like they’re hiding something. The ship's packed with fantasy species, egos, secrets, snooty nobles, and the general sense that if one more thing goes wrong the entire trip will descend into magical anarchy. Which, to be fair, it sort of does.
The mystery itself kept me guessing because every time I thought I had a theory, another character would say or do something suspicious or just exist suspiciously. At some point I was side-eyeing basically everyone on that airship, including people who were probably just waiting for all this stupidity to blow over so they could get back to their snacks.
I love Thyria. She's all of us. She’s competent but also exhausted by the nonsense happening around her. She's so done with everything and everyone. Watching her try to keep things under control while surrounded by chaos merchants nearly broke me.
Sometimes the cast felt a bit too big and chaotic so I had to pause and try to remember who exactly was threatening who and why. But that kind of added to the whole experience, because, really, being confused af feels appropriate when you’re trapped on a flying crime scene with a bunch of weirdos.
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC
March 17, 2026
What would you get if Terry Pratchett's Discworld visited Agatha Christie's Murder on the Nile? Probably something along the lines of Victoria Bergman's Murder on the Airship.
When guard Thyria finds one of the annoying first-class passengers stabbed to death on the airship Silver Kestrel, it isn't a great start to her day. The good news is that there are a limited number of suspects, since most of the passengers were in town partying for the solstice. The rest of the news is all bad. All the guests have reasons to want him dead; the airship has been sabotaged; the elves and naga are about five minutes from war and everyone is taking sides on the ship; there's at least two assassination attempts on top of the murder; a smuggled dragon; and let's not even mention the pixies. The guard who should be in charge is in sickbay with a bad case of being poisoned and it's up to Thyria to figure out what happened—preferably before the local dwarves get involved. But when everyone has a reason to want soomeone dead, how do you find the actual killer?
Thyria is a fun character. She's not a detective. She's the guard who gets to threaten smugglers and toss drunks off her ship while her boss handles things like "diplomacy" and "politeness". So she's completely out of her element being asked to deal with important ambasadors and first-class passengers. Give her a good bar fight any day! She's quite sure at first she can't handle the assignment. But the captain is busy and she's the only one left to handle it, so she has to grit her teeth and figure it out.
There's a delightful sense of humor to Bergman's writing. Thyria approaches the murder (and the world) with a no-nonsense, we're-all-in-this-together-so-why-waste-my-time feeling. The various high-handed sensibilities of the senators, ambasadors, and self-described important people she has to deal with don't get anywhere with her. But they try. While she may not be able to threaten them the way she can incompentent mercenaries and moronic magic students, she learns the power of a fake smile and a little blackmail.
While things got a little overly complicated in ways they might not have needed to, and tangled with a few extra subplots, Murder on the Airship was a delightful cozy fantasy mystery that should make readers of both genres happy and looking for more by Victoria Bergman. I will certainly be hoping for more flights by the Silver Kestrel.
When guard Thyria finds one of the annoying first-class passengers stabbed to death on the airship Silver Kestrel, it isn't a great start to her day. The good news is that there are a limited number of suspects, since most of the passengers were in town partying for the solstice. The rest of the news is all bad. All the guests have reasons to want him dead; the airship has been sabotaged; the elves and naga are about five minutes from war and everyone is taking sides on the ship; there's at least two assassination attempts on top of the murder; a smuggled dragon; and let's not even mention the pixies. The guard who should be in charge is in sickbay with a bad case of being poisoned and it's up to Thyria to figure out what happened—preferably before the local dwarves get involved. But when everyone has a reason to want soomeone dead, how do you find the actual killer?
Thyria is a fun character. She's not a detective. She's the guard who gets to threaten smugglers and toss drunks off her ship while her boss handles things like "diplomacy" and "politeness". So she's completely out of her element being asked to deal with important ambasadors and first-class passengers. Give her a good bar fight any day! She's quite sure at first she can't handle the assignment. But the captain is busy and she's the only one left to handle it, so she has to grit her teeth and figure it out.
There's a delightful sense of humor to Bergman's writing. Thyria approaches the murder (and the world) with a no-nonsense, we're-all-in-this-together-so-why-waste-my-time feeling. The various high-handed sensibilities of the senators, ambasadors, and self-described important people she has to deal with don't get anywhere with her. But they try. While she may not be able to threaten them the way she can incompentent mercenaries and moronic magic students, she learns the power of a fake smile and a little blackmail.
While things got a little overly complicated in ways they might not have needed to, and tangled with a few extra subplots, Murder on the Airship was a delightful cozy fantasy mystery that should make readers of both genres happy and looking for more by Victoria Bergman. I will certainly be hoping for more flights by the Silver Kestrel.
March 19, 2026
I've been reading a lot of classic mystery books lately, largely because a lot of the new fantasy books coming out now are not to my taste. So I was pleased to find that this book combined the two: a mystery with a limited pool of suspects (but there are seven of them, so it takes some work), set in a fantasy world. I also enjoyed the fact that the detective wasn't a brilliant savant but an ordinary guard, thrust into the position of having to solve the crime because her boss has been (non-fatally) poisoned in the course of events, who takes a doggedly persistent approach to interviewing the suspects and figuring out what happened. It's much more Freeman Wills Crofts than Austin W. Freeman, in other words, and if you're also a fan of hundred-year-old mystery books you'll probably know what that means. Also, there's no romance, indeed no romantic or sexual relationships, whatsoever, and while I don't object to those, it is refreshing to have a book that just focuses on the mystery.
The course of events is complicated, meaning that it's far from clear for a long time who has committed what crime, and specifically who has committed the murder. It's well orchestrated and cleverly done, though, like the protagonist, I wondered how all these people hadn't stumbled across each other while nefariously wandering the ship late at night.
It's usually a pretty sound rule of thumb that if there's an airship in a book, there are also multiple vocabulary errors. I don't know why this is. Fortunately, in this book I only spotted one such error, a common one which I will mention to the publisher and which may well be gone by publication. (I had a pre-publication version via Netgalley for review.)
The editing is generally OK, though there are a few common issues - occasional missing past perfect tense, "may" in past tense narration where it should be "might" - and a slight oddity in the punctuation of some dialog. Again, I'll mention these to the publisher, and some of them may well be fixed by publication.
This is a sound piece of mystery writing, and an appealing fantasy world, two things I enjoy separately which it turns out I also enjoy together. I'll be looking out for more from this author.
The course of events is complicated, meaning that it's far from clear for a long time who has committed what crime, and specifically who has committed the murder. It's well orchestrated and cleverly done, though, like the protagonist, I wondered how all these people hadn't stumbled across each other while nefariously wandering the ship late at night.
It's usually a pretty sound rule of thumb that if there's an airship in a book, there are also multiple vocabulary errors. I don't know why this is. Fortunately, in this book I only spotted one such error, a common one which I will mention to the publisher and which may well be gone by publication. (I had a pre-publication version via Netgalley for review.)
The editing is generally OK, though there are a few common issues - occasional missing past perfect tense, "may" in past tense narration where it should be "might" - and a slight oddity in the punctuation of some dialog. Again, I'll mention these to the publisher, and some of them may well be fixed by publication.
This is a sound piece of mystery writing, and an appealing fantasy world, two things I enjoy separately which it turns out I also enjoy together. I'll be looking out for more from this author.
March 15, 2026
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the eARC.
This was a fun and engaging murder mystery with an interesting fantasy twist. The setup gave me strong classic mystery vibes similar to Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile, with a contained group of suspects and plenty of secrets to uncover.
The story keeps the tension going as the mystery unfolds, and the fantasy elements add a fresh layer to the traditional whodunit structure. It is always enjoyable to see familiar mystery tropes combined with something a little different.
While some character motivations could have been explored a bit more, the central mystery kept me invested and entertained throughout.
Overall, an enjoyable read for fans of classic style murder mysteries with a fantasy touch. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
This was a fun and engaging murder mystery with an interesting fantasy twist. The setup gave me strong classic mystery vibes similar to Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile, with a contained group of suspects and plenty of secrets to uncover.
The story keeps the tension going as the mystery unfolds, and the fantasy elements add a fresh layer to the traditional whodunit structure. It is always enjoyable to see familiar mystery tropes combined with something a little different.
While some character motivations could have been explored a bit more, the central mystery kept me invested and entertained throughout.
Overall, an enjoyable read for fans of classic style murder mysteries with a fantasy touch. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
March 11, 2026
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Victoria Bergman for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for Murder on the Airship coming out March 12, 2026. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.
This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I love cozy mysteries. I loved the airship setting. It was good. I would check out more books by this author.
This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I love cozy mysteries. I loved the airship setting. It was good. I would check out more books by this author.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews