I love mysteries set in other genres so I was prepped to enjoy this book. Briefly, an airship is forced to land during a storm in a dwarf town during a solstice festival. The dwarfs are more accommodating than usual because of the festival and allow most of the passengers to take refuge at the inn. Some passengers and a skeleton crew remain on board. The elf ambassador and his assistant are suspicious of the naga noblewoman and her handmaid. Their respective kingdoms are at war. Also in first class are a disliked, annoying dwarf merchant and a human upper-class twit described as a pixie lover. In second class is an ambitious dwarf senator and a suspicious human merchant/smuggler. The crew consists of a gnome captain and engineer, a dwarf head guard, a human guard and a newly hired elf guard. There will also appear a small dragon, a fairy and a swarm of pixies.

The captan’s summary is a concise overview of a very eventful night. “So, to summarize it all up. We had one murder, two assassination attempts, three crewmen attacked, two cases of smuggled dangerous creatures, one theft from a guest, three people breaking into the grand suite, two people stealing from the engine room, and one campaign to start a war.”

Though it was a tad slow getting started, it became an engaging mystery. The final confrontation is an astonishingly complex melee that ends with a confession and a very satisfactory ending. Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley for this advance copy.

A delightful light mash-up! If you play Dungeons and Dragons or Baldur's Gate, you'll probably like this classic locked room (err, airship) mystery. Thyria is fun as the stereotypical "person thrown in over her head" and the mystery is pleasantly twisty in a timeless Agatha Christie manner.

The only problem I had with this book is that it dives in a little _too_ quickly. I knew the main character was human sized but it was 10% into the book before I realized she _was_ human, which turned out to be a pretty important piece of information. I got the point, but a little quick introduction to the world would have helped a lot.

(Side note: I would have put this review on goodreads, but I'm honestly not sure how one can buy it so for now, this is only on netgalley.)

This was a rough start for me and I almost didn't finish. However, I love classic-style mysteries and enjoyed the writing once the story started moving. I definitely felt Agatha Christie vibes in this fantasy setting who-dunnit, even down to the last chapter with Poirot's parade of survivors. I was a little confused about the main character and still feel like there should've been more details about her and stronger world building toward the beginning. I don't like feeling confused as a reader, especially when it's about the world in which the story is set. Kyree was my favorite character and I would've loved more. All that said, I am interested in reading the next story.

** Why is this not on goodreads or Amazon?

Thank you for the opportunity to read this story.
#MurderontheAirship #NetGalley

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.

1 inconvenient corpse + 20 magical weirdos + 0 chill = amazing

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 something suspicious, 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.

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 so big and chaotic that I had to pause and 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.

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.

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.