#CBR11 Book 73: "The Goblin Emperor" by Katherine Addison

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 3.5 star

Official description:
The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.

Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend . . . and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne–or his life.

I'm not sure it would come as a surprise to anyone reading my reviews that I am an introvert, and even before I had a child, who now requires me to spend a lot of time at home, I would tend to prefer curling up on the sofa, either binge watching something or reading. While I work as a teacher (which works fine, because I know and am comfortable with my colleagues, and I am in control of the interactions in my classroom), I also suffer from social anxiety and find going out and meeting new people faintly terrifying. Frankly, going out and spending close friends requires a lot of mental preparation, trying to interact with strangers can be quite the ordeal for me.

Nevertheless, most of my real life friends are either very busy raising their own little humans, so we don't get to hang out much, or they live far away in other countries, sometimes on other continents, and that can lead to me feeling lonely on occasion. So my father in law, who is also an introvert with even worse social anxiety than me, set me a challenge and gave me "homework" the last time he and my mother in law visited us. I was to socialise with someone I hadn't really spent much time with before, and I needed to go out and join something new, without the support of my husband or an existing friend.

Step one, I managed by going to dinner with my new work team, where most of my colleagues are either new to the school entirely or ones I've never worked closely with before. It was lovely, even though I was nervous before going. My second, and scarier step, was joining something new. The fantasy/sci-fi/comics/nerd stuff shop in Oslo has a monthly book club, which has been running for years now. I've followed their Facebook page on and off, occasionally considering joining, but have always found excuses as to why I couldn't do it. Now, needing to find a new thing that didn't terrify me too much, I determined to finally go to a meeting. After all, hanging out with nerds who like books, even if all of them are strangers, couldn't be too horrible, right? The book of the month for September was this one, The Goblin Emperor, which had been on my TBR list for years. It was pretty much a sign from the universe.

Of course, by the time the book club met, I had, thank to a series of complicating factors in my life, only read the first twenty percent of the book or so. I forced myself to go anyway, and had a great time, discovering that I wasn't even the only new person there and that the veteran members were really happy about new recruits. Everyone was very welcoming and according to them, this was the first book in as long as anyone could remember they actually spent the whole hour discussing, without fairly rapidly digressing into other nerd topics, like comics, TV shows and movies.

Now, having sat in on a discussion of the book before I was even halfway through it, probably didn't exactly help motivate me to then pick the book back up and keep reading. I already knew the major beats of the plot and as several people in the book group pointed out, there's a lot of complicated court stuff going on, with the reader not really getting all the information they might want, since we only get the point of view of Maia, our young and deeply inexperienced protagonist, who has lived most of his life exiled to a small rural estate, only accompanied by an alcoholic, abusive, bullying cousin. Neither Maia, nor anyone else, ever expected him to become emperor, and he is wholly unprepared and has never received any of the training or education required. In one way, it's a good way of explaining to the reader, we know as little as Maia. But it is also inappropriate for him to have in depth conversations with his new servants, bodyguards and subjects, we are restricted in our knowledge about everyone else in the plot.

There is also a huge cast of characters in the book, who are difficult to tell apart because they are frequently referred to by different nicknames or titles in different scenes, making it really confusing and sometimes frustrating to keep track. There is a comprehensive guide to characters and a pronunciation guide at the start of the book, but as everyone is listed by full name, not necessarily title or nickname, it's not as helpful as it could have been.

I had a lot going on both at work and at home while reading this book, and a rather slow and intricate description of court life, spanning hundreds of pages with long stretches of not much happening (except descriptions of ceremonial garb, jewelry, courtly etiquette etc) failed to hold my attention. Seriously, every so often, there will be something very exciting happening, like a kidnapping, or an attempted coup, or an assassination attempt, but for the majority of this book, this is an exploration of a young man trying to learn to be a good ruler, in a very complicated and tradition bound society.

I suspect that if I read this at another time, my rating of it would be higher. Maybe I'll give it a re-read in a while to see. The principal characters were all very enjoyable and the world building is fascinating, so I'll be very excited to see what Katherine Addison does next.

Judging a book by its cover: I really like this cover, where the elaborate palace is also the crown on the goblin's head (possibly hinting at just how heavy the weight of responsibilities is for our young and inexperienced new ruler). The airship to the right hints at the sort of steampunky elements of the story. I think this whole design works.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 117: "Winterblaze" by Kristen Callihan

Page count: 436 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Throughout her marriage, Poppy Lane has been lying to her beloved husband. Until very recently, he believed her to be the owner of a bookstore, when in fact she wasn't just a member of, but the head of, a secret paranormal organisation known as the Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals. Poppy's entire life is working to ensure the existence of various supernatural beings remains unknown to mere mortals, and she had just been sworn into the Society on the day when she first met Winston Lane and quickly fell for him, even knowing he was a normal mortal man and could never be told the truth about her, her family or the underworld she protects.

After Winston Lane, a dedicated London police detective, discovered the existence of the supernatural after he was brutally savaged and left for dead by a werewolf, he also realised that his wife had been lying to him all these years and he refused to speak to her during his recovery. Now they've been estranged for months, but Poppy is sent a warning that an ancient demon, who she had dealings with in the past, has resurfaced and intends to get his revenge on her by targeting her husband. Whether Winston wants to speak to her or not, Poppy is not about to see him become prey for a demon and he'll just have to put up with her presence in the name of protection. Of course, while Winston has come to realise that his wife isn't the sedate bookshop proprietress he believed her to be, he's also not about to let her risk her life to protect him, especially when it turns out that the demon may be targeting him not just because of an ancient enmity with Poppy, but because of events in his own past that he's been made to forget.

While I really enjoy Kristen Callihan's contemporary New Adult novels, her paranormal historical books are a lot more hit and miss for me. I read the second book in the series, Moonglow, last summer and have only a vague recollection of what transpired in the book, except it involved werewolves, some sort of power struggle, and Poppy's middle sister discovering her own elemental powers. I have absolutely no memory of Winston (obviously a supporting character in that book) being attacked or discovering his wife's deception and choosing to leave her. You're given all the background you need in this book anyway.

Some of this book is told in flashback, with chapters outlining how Winston and Poppy first met, how he tried to woo her and was initially rejected (not because Poppy didn't love him, but because she was reluctant to tie herself to a man she'd have to lie to every day of their life together) and once his forgotten connection to the demon is revealed, how he made an ill-considered bargain to attain his heart's desire. The rest is a desperate race to outwit the demon, while the estranged couple have to work through their differences, or they'll pay a terrible price.

This book is fairly highly rated on Goodreads, but I never really cared for Poppy or Winston, nor any of the supporting characters (two of whom are clearly being set up as protagonists in the next book). Hence whether they outwitted an evil demon and emerged victorious, saving their marriage at the same time, or whether they all perished was all of a muchness to me. This is now the third in the Darkest London series I've read (it fit into my A to Z Reading Challenge) and I think I need to acknowledge that while Ms Callihan's contemporaries (at least the ones involving athletes, not so much the ones about rock stars) are great, her historical fantasy ones just aren't for me. The world building is really interesting, but I can't seem to care about any of the characters.

Judging a book by its cover: Well, it's quite obviously a romance cover, with at least the lady in a partial state of undress and the couple locked in a passionate embrace (or possibly grappling aggressively, it's a bit hard to tell). While they've given the man blond hair and the lady long red tresses, the cover models don't fit with my mental image of Winston and Poppy at all. Nice touch with the ice surrounding the lady's flowing skirts, though, since Poppy has elemental powers over water and ice.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 9: "Of Dreams and Rust" by Sarah Fine

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Spoiler warning! This is book two in a duology and it will be absolutely impossible for me to review this book without giving away some spoilers for book one, Of Metal and Wishes. Neither book stands well on its own, and they are clearly meant to be read as a whole. If you like going into books completely unspoiled, skip this review until you've finished book one.

It's been a year since the dramatic events that brought down the entire slaughterhouse where Wen and her father worked. Bo, formerly the Ghost of Gochan One, has now made his home underneath the machine factory of Gochan Two, where he also steals parts for his various inventions. Wen frequently spends much of her early mornings with him, tending to his scars and keeping him company. She's worried about this new obsession of making himself a mechanical suit, encasing even his healthy body parts in metal armour. She's also can't put Melik out of her mind. She knows he and his brother returned to their own people. There is a Noor rebellion raging, they're no longer content to be oppressed by the Itanyan empire. The factory where Wen works has just received a new, massive order for new war machines, and she realises they are to be used to crush the Noor once and for all.

Leaving behind her father and everything she's ever known, Wen sneaks out of the factory compound and boards a train toward the border region where the battles have been raging. She needs to try to find Melik and warn him about the upcoming escalation from the Itanyai. Safely away from her former home, she discovers that with the exception of one carriage of civilians, the whole train is full of soldiers disguised as factory workers. The counter-attack on the Noor is clearly happening even sooner than she expected.

When Wen and Melik are finally reunited, there isn't much resemblance to the thoughtful and courteous young man Wen befriended and started falling for a year ago. Guerilla warfare has changed Melik and he appears cold, callous and ruthless now. Cursing her naivety and foolish infatuation, Wen questions the wisdom of her actions, especially after she finds herself a captive of the Noor who believe her to be an Itanyai spy. They want to take her to their commander, to be questioned, possibly tortured and killed. Was Wen entirely wrong about Melik? Has war so changed him that he will choose his loyalty to the Noor rebellion over his feelings for Wen?

While the first book was a slightly flawed, but nonetheless interesting retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, complete with love triangle and Steampunk elements. In the second part, things get a lot more serious, and few of the things that bothered me about the first book are troubling here. Bo, Wen and Melik's characters and personalities are developed very well over the course of the book and the romance that is in its early tentative stages in the first book has more of a chance to blossom here, despite the dramatic situation the characters find themselves in.

Even after Wen discovers that even a war-hardened Melik hasn't completely lost his humanity and compassion, and that he has in fact been thinking of her just as much as she's thought of him, the road of their love doesn't run entirely smooth. Their two peoples have vastly different cultural norms and traditions. The Itanayi are a very reserved and private people, taught that emotional outbursts of any kind are vulgar and inappropriate. They value decorum, and their society is heavily patriarchal. Expressing their emotions in actions or words is difficult for them. The Noor, on the other hand, are very tactile and openly emotional. They are very openly affectionate, and do not hesitate to show anger or grief. They happily express how they feel, and allow their women a much more equal position in their society. So even if there wasn't a war raging around them, with the powerful war machines of the Itanyan empire about to arrive to crush the Noor villages once and for all (no matter what the collateral damage to poorer, rural Itanyai residents in the area), Wen and Melik would have to work to sort out their true feelings for each other.

While Of Metal and Wishes had a lot of unfortunate rape culture and frankly a surprisingly large cast of dislikable supporting characters, the emotional resonance of this book would not be as great if I hadn't read that one first. Wen becomes a proper heroine in her own right, rather than mostly a damsel in distress. Melik is fighting for the liberty and future of his own people, while struggling not to give into the temptation of mindless violence against those who have oppressed them for so long. The odds are certainly not in the Noor's favour, and the costs of the near-impossible victory are likely to be very high indeed.

I liked the unusual location of this fantasy duology, but can absolutely understand while a lot of other reviewers have wished that the Asian influences were more pronounced and obvious. As it is, it all becomes a bit tokenistic. While the beginning had it's problems, the duology as a whole is a very satisfying and emotional read. I was absolutely teary-eyed for parts of Of Dreams and Rust.

Judging a book by its cover: It looks like they've changed cover models from Of Metal and Wishes, but I can't imagine from the cover image that this isn't supposed to be Wen. She wears the distinctive red outfit with the wide sash at a particularly significant scene in the book, but I wish they'd arranged the cover model's hair to fit the scene as well. Also, the robes are supposed to be quite a bit too big for Wen, but I guess they didn't want things to look slouchy on the cover of the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR9 Book 8: "Of Metal and Wishes" by Sarah Fine

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Wen, a young woman, whose family were clearly of a higher social status before her mother got sick and died, now works as a doctor's apprentice for her father. Wen and her father are Itanyai. They both live in a large factory complex, Gochan One, treating to the workers of a large slaughterhouse. In the same larger compound, there is a factory producing textiles and one making advanced war machines, to further the military might of their country. Most of the workers at the factory know that the bosses charge them heavily for uniforms, lodgings and clothes, but they have no choice but to keep working, if they want to make money.

No one's as heavily indentured as the new seasonal workers, who are Noor. While the Itanyai are clearly described as more traditionally Asian, with almond skin, dark hair and eyes, the Noor seemed a lot more Caucasian, probably more Slavic of origin. The Noor are believed to be a savage and brutish people, who have tried to rebell against their Ita overlords, and been subdued every time. Many of the regular workers are unhappy about the arrival of the Noor, believing they will bring bad luck to the slaughterhouse.

One of the beliefs among the workers is that there is a ghost haunting the premises. Someone has carved out an altar, where superstitious workers leave their most treasured possessions to wish for favours. Wen scoffs at this, and goaded by some of the other women, challenges the ghost to prove his existence. Shortly after one of the Noor workers, who had humiliated Wen in the cafeteria by tripping her and trying to look up her skirt, is badly injured on the factory floor. Wen is terrified that she indirectly caused the injury and wows to befriend and help the Noor boy. She sells some of her beautifully embroidered dresses to pay for his care, and later risks her own health to help her father nurse the Noor workers through a flu epidemic, which seems to hit the foreign workers harder than the natives. She grows especially close with Melik, who's one of only two Noor workers who speak her language and the de facto leader of the foreign work crew.

Having had terrible proof that the Ghost does in fact exist, Wen can't help but be curious and starts to investigate. She discovers that a young Itanyai worker died on the factory floor several years before, and that her father was the one to pronounce him dead. She starts to suspect that her father knows more than he's letting on, and as she continues to snoop, discovers that the Ghost seems very interested in her as well. Once she discovers the truth of his identity, she needs to acknowledge that he seems to have a peculiar attachment to her, and is willing to do pretty much anything to protect her, whether she wants him to or not.

This book is like an alternate universe retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, set in a sort of Steampunk version of Asia. It's an interesting book, and I liked the twists on a familiar story, as well as the explorations of prejudice, imperialism, misogyny and racism, but the world-building is distinctly vague and some of the characterisations leave a lot to be desired. Wen is clearly quite stubborn and an open-minded and good person. She seems to be a very dutiful daughter, but possibly due to the subservient position of women in Itanyai society, she's quite passive. She and her father seem to be the only ones who don't pretty much demonise the Noor and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

There's not just rampant sexism everywhere in this story, pretty much every guy who isn't Wen's father, Melik or the Ghost seems to see it as their natural right to ogle, grope and generally sexually harass Wen. Her boss is clearly a sexual predator, with a history of abusing women, but also other guys seem to see any woman who doesn't conform to the strict purity standards of the society as completely fair game. It's also implied that Wen is bringing this unwanted attention on herself, because she tends to wear the beautifully fitted and embroidered dresses her mother made her, rather than the shapeless brown sacks that the other women at the Gochan One complex wear. This is problematic, and made for an uncomfortable read.

The Ghost is clearly more than a bit unhinged, and has an unhealthy obsession towards Wen, willing to seriously injure or even arrange deadly accidents towards anyone who he feels mistreats her. I was both fascinated and extremely creeped out by the various defensive measures he's set up in the cellars of the slaughterhouse to keep his lair secret. Melik is almost unbelievably sensitive and chivalrous compared to all the other dudes in the story (Wen's dad excepted, he's great, if underused). He never pressures Wen about anything she isn't ready for, which may explain why she appears to fall for him so incredibly quickly.

I really wish that there had been a bit more complexity and nuance to the supporting cast in this book. Everyone working at the factory hate the Noor and while Wen have a few women who initially seem to be friendly towards her, they are quick to judge her and abandon her when things start getting complicated. It seems strange that no one apart from Wen and her father are even the slightest bit progressive and open-minded.

All in all, I liked the book, but didn't love it. It did interesting things with the source material and while neither of the main characters were all that complex, they are at least entertaining tropes to read about. For the faint of heart, there is some gore in this book, what with being set in a slaughterhouse and some really gruesome accidents/attacks take place later in the book. It's also important to note that while the general plot of the story is finished off, the book ends on a cliffhanger. This is part one of two, and would be very unsatisfying to read on its own.

Judging a book by its cover: I like the strange dream-like quality of this cover, with the model's features very hazy because of the thin sheeting she's looking through. The dress is reminiscent of several that Wen wears over the course of the book, and I also like how it reminds me of an old-fashioned nurse's outfit, since that is pretty much the role Wen plays in the book. It's a good, if not exactly striking cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 115: "The Invisible Library" by Genevieve Cogman

Page count: 352 pages
Audio book length: 10hrs 31 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

Irene is an agent of the Library, a place that exists outside normal space and time. In fact, as long as the agents and librarians that work for the Library are there, they do not age in the slightest. Only when they are out in the different worlds of the multiverse, do they visibly age, and how much depends how time passes in the various worlds they find themselves. As an agent of the Library, Irene is sent to retrieve books that are deemed of value, because they are represent something different from what already exists in the archives. Sometimes she has to disguise herself and go undercover for months, sometimes she can just stroll into a shop and buy a book. Having just completed a several month stint as a scullery maid at a posh boarding school, Irene is looking forward to some down-time. Instead, she is told she is to mentor a trainee library agent and that they are to start their new mission immediately.

Irene's new assistant, Kai, is very handsome and very tight-lipped about his background. The Library never recruits anyone with living family, unless they are the children of other Library agents (like Irene) and therefore understand the need for secrecy and the strange customs and traditions that surround the work. He seems eager and helpful enough, but it becomes clear to Irene that he's not entirely truthful about where he came from, and she wonders if the senior librarians know of his falsehoods.

Irene and Kai are sent to a world resembling a Steampunk Victorian England. It is a world heavily influenced by chaos magic (some worlds are heavy in magic, some are almost devoid of it. Some worlds are highly technologically advanced, some very primitive) and there are vampires, werewolves, sinister dark fae and mechanically enhanced alligators waiting to attack. Irene and Kai discover that the owner of the book they're after was a vampire, recently murdered rather spectacularly. A cat burglar with a glamorous reputation appears to be involved and the fae ambassador for Lichtenstein is very keen to get his hands on the book, as well. To complicate matters further, Irene receives word that Alberich, a centuries old Librarian gone rogue and evil, is also in this reality, wanting the book for unspecified reasons. Their mission, which was supposed to be a fairly innocuous training exercise is turning out to be very dangerous, and they'll be lucky if they even survive, let alone succeed in getting the book back to the Library.

The world-building in this story is intriguing. There's the Library, where they clearly have fairly advanced technology, existing in a place where time apparently stays still. No one ages while within its walls. The agents of the Library can travel in both space and time, visiting hundreds of alternate worlds, some very like our own, some very different. The agents are trained in the use of magic, and there is a secret magical language that can be used to manipulate the world around you, but only if you speak it with the right vocabulary and inflection. Who exactly runs the Library and how one ascends through the ranks to become Librarians or even Senior Librarians was only hinted at, but I hope it's revealed in later books.

The main characters, Irene and Kai, were fun to spend time with. All agents take their names from literary characters and Irene loves all kinds of detective fiction, so named herself after the famous Ms. Adler. Being sent to a world that so closely resembles the setting of her beloved Conan Doyle novels is thrilling to her, especially when they befriend a gentleman detective who certainly fits right into the genre Irene so enjoys. Having always been aware of the Library, she doesn't really question its organisation, and how it goes about recruiting people. She starts having questions once she gets to know Kai more closely, though, and wonders if it's right that only people wholly unconnected in the world get to be recruited.

While there is a more contemporary, modern setting to some bits of the book, most of this is set in a Steampunk, late Victorian setting, with dirigibles and the occasional mechanically enhanced menace. There are quite a lot of action sequences, with our protagonists finding themselves in peril of various kinds. One of Irene's rival agents from the Library pops up with her own agenda, and there is the looming threat of the sinister Alberich. As a first book in a series, it was a good introduction. I certainly want to read more.

What I'm not going to do is continue with the audio books. The audio book (which I got in a big Audible sale last year) is narrated by Susan Duerden, whose inflection is just so annoying. Her voice had a tendency to go up and down at the strangest time, and she frequently ended sentences on a high point, making it seem as if everything was a question. It was incredibly distracting, and meant that I spent much longer getting through the audio book than usual, because I actively avoided it for a time, just because the narrator's voice was so grating to me. Searching the Audible catalogue, I notice that she's the narrator for the sequel of this, as well as for a lot of other books in fantasy and romance. I'm going to have to pay attention when getting new audio books, because I'm not interested in having this narrator worsening any more listening experiences for me.

Judging a book by its cover: I quite like the cover design, with the green, slightly marbled background and the almost golden font and decorations of a lady and a gentleman silhouetted in period costume. Not entirely sure what the snakes at the top have been included for (there are no snakes in the story as far as I can remember), but they add a sense of danger, I guess. The cover designer could possibly have made more of an effort to try to convey more of the adventure and action aspects of the book - if you remove the rather cheesy taglines, there's nothing to suggest to a reader that this isn't just some sort of run of the mill historical novel.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR7 Book 155: "Girl Genius, vol 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank" by Phil & Kaja Foglio

Page count: 96 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Agatha Clay (although I'm going to assume that this is an assumed name, since she has another one in the TITLE of the book) is one of those diligent students, who no matter how much she wants to suceed just can't seem to. She's almost constantly late, she can't really seem to make her inventions work and she's a laughing stock at the Transylvania Polygnostic University. To make matters work, during a weird electrical incident in town, she's robbed and her precious locket, with the only pictures she has of her parents is stolen. A locket pretty much anyone in authority over her is appalled is missing.

When the clearly powerful Baron Wulfenbach arrives at the University to inspect their progress, it turns out the headmaster, Beetle, may have been conducting unlicenced experiments and there's somewhat of a change in power. Agatha is expelled from the university and explains everything about her bad day to her guardians, who announce that they need to pack everything and leave town as soon as possible when they hear the news that Wulfenbach is in town, and Agatha's lost her locket. Her uncle, who left to go adventuring and has been gone for eleven years was very clear on the fact that she should never take it off. Likely because it acts as some sort of dampener of Agatha's inherent "spark", which only the greatest of scientists seem to have. Wulfenbach's son and heir suspect she may be more than she appears.

Girl Genius is a Steampunk YA adventure series, that can be read online, but a few years back, I picked up the first volume mainly on the strong recommendation of Patrick Rothfuss. I then put it on my shelf and promptly forgot about it, but needed a twelfth comic to complete my last reading challenge this year, and it seemed like a good time to finally read it. It's difficult to ascertain much about the characters from the short volume I just read, but I'm sure it can't hurt for young women to have a scientifically minded young heroine to cheer for, even if she does seem to have been given clumsiness and tardiness as her chief characteristics so far. I'm not entirly sure yet whether Wulfenbach is an antagonist or potential ally and I suppose his son could be a love interest of some sort. At least he seems clever, which is a good quality to aim for in a partner.

As the first volume barely starts the story, with some of the plot and action being quite confusing, it wasn't exactly the best reading experience I've had this year, but the comic has potential and I like that I can make up my mind about whether I like more or not by reading it for free online, and then buy the volumes afterwards if I decide I want to support the authors. At least I got another book knocked off my already scarily big TBR shelf.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 113: "Kiss of Steel" by Bec McMaster

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 4 stars

In an alternate history Victorian London with Steampunk gadgets, werewolves, a ruling nobility known as the Echelon, where the men are all enhanced with vampire blood, Miss Honoria Todd (who certainly doesn't in any way dress or appear anything like the burlesque streetwalker on the cover of the book) has been forced to move to the Rookeries of Whitechapel after the death of her father. She is working as an elocution coach under an assumed name to support her younger sister (who also takes in mending) and ailing brother, and they are all hiding from the rich, powerful and very dangerous former protector of her father's, who wants Honoria for a number of nefarious purposes. They are barely making ends meet, and when Honoria's brother takes a turn for the worse and Honoria loses her job, she has no choice but to turn to Blade, the master of the Rookeries, for help.

Normally only the members of the Echelon and their chosen servants are allowed the blue blood that gives enhanced abilities, speed, strength and an extended lifespan, but Blade survived the experiments of a nobleman and escaped into the Rookeries, where he and his men rule with an iron fist, challenging the authority of the ruling lords. He desperately wants revenge on the corrupt duke ruined his life and when he discovers that Honoria and her siblings are hiding from the same man, he extends his protection to the little Todd family. Doesn't hurt that he's instantly drawn to the prim, yet fiery Honoria, determined to make her his.

It shouldn't surprise me that books with absolutely prepostrous covers in the paranormal fantasy/romance genre can contain entertaining and well-written stories. I've seen Bec McMaster's book mentioned on a number of "If you like books by X, you'll probably enjoy..." lists, but always avoided it because of the horrible cover. In October, it was the alt book in Vaginal Fantasy Hangout and I decided to finally give it a chance. I'm glad that I did. The world building is clever and I like both the alternate history Steampunk twist and the variation on vampires and werewolves here. Apparently all the men of Echelon, the ruling families of England, are given the blood of vampires when they turn sixteen, to give them enhanced abilities and skills. They have thralls - servants, retainers, even highly cherished mistresses that they drink blood from (and who frequently get a sexual thrill from donating the blood) and are carefully monitored at all times to make sure they don't turn all the way into out of control crazed vampires.

Honoria's father was a doctor and a scientist, apparently working on a cure for the vampirism, but died before he had a chance to perfect it. The duke who was his patron wasn't above medical experiments, which early on resulted in Blade getting turned and in his initial blood craze killing his own sister. So he's pretty motivated for revenge. Honoria and her siblings were also given the "vaccine", but her brother seems to have reacted badly to it, and is slowly turning into a vampire, something Honoria is trying desperately to prevent. She is terrified of Blade, but even more scared of the duke hunting them and realises that she had to get help somewhere, even if it means surrendering as a blood thrall to the master of the Rookeries.

The characters are all interesting, and it's quite clear that McMaster is setting up a number of story lines for later books. I liked both Honoria and Blade and their romance builds gradually, even though they're attracted to one another from the start. I also liked Blade's werewolf lieutenant (who is the hero of the second book) and some of the more sympathetic Echelon lords portrayed in the book. I was especially taken with the one ruling lady who was turned by her father in general violation of the wishes of polite society, and some poking about online reveals that she's the heroine of the fifth and final book in the series. Having now tried the books, I will most likely read the full set and I really must try to remember that a dreadful paranormal romance cover doesn't always reflect the quality of the contents inside.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 111: "Wicked as They Come" by Delilah S. Dawson

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Nurse Letitia "Tish" Everett has only really started recovering from her very controlling, emotionally and physically abusive fiancee Jeff, when she's drawn to a tarnished antique locket at an estate sale and actually ends up shocking herself by stealing it. After managing to force it open, she is splashed by luminous crimson liquid. Inside the locket, there is a portrait of a darkly handsome man she think of as a "naughty Mr. Darcy" and a foreign inscription of some kind. Falling asleep with the locket on, she wakes up, stark naked on what appears to be a stone altar in the the middle of the woods. The handsome man from the locket is there waiting for her, and though she insists she must be having a very lucid dream, he explains that she's in a different world now.

The stranger introduces himself as Criminy Stain, a Bludman from the world of Sang. The inhabitants of Sang are either Pinkies, or humans, like Tish, or Bludmen, like Criminy. The Bludmen drink blood, like the vampires of Tish's world, but aren't even vaguely hampered by sunlight, garlic, stakes, crucifixes or suchlike. As Tish listens to Criminy's explanations, she also discovers another important difference between her world and Sang. All the animals in the wild have sharp pointy teeth, all the better to devour you with. The bunnies may look fluffy, but they want to suck her blood and eat her flesh. Criminy claims to have magically obtained the locket, which he sent out into the world to find his one true love. As Tish, or Letitia as he insists on calling her, found it and opened it, she must be his intended. He wants her to stay in Sang with him, running his carnival of freaks and outcasts. Tish is less than impressed. Even if her strange experience turns out not to be a dream, she has an ailing grandmother to care for at home, as well as a number of patients who rely on her. She's not in the market for a boyfriend, even one as charming and handsome as the mysterious Mr. Stain.

Nonetheless, Criminy takes her back to his caravan, after she's narrowly escaped being bitten by several fierce Bludbunnies on the way. Once there, she's quite taken with the fancy corseted outfit she's given and they discover that she's a "glancer", someone who gets visions when she touches the bare flesh of another person. Because she saves the life of the costumer (who is also Criminy's accountant) with her vision, it's clear that her abilities are the real deal, and Criminy sets her up as the caravan's new fortune teller. Tish discovers that when she goes to sleep in Sang, wearing her locket she wakes back up in her own world. When she goes back to sleep in her own bed, having cared for her grandmother and other patients, she's back in Sang.

Then the locket gets stolen, and Tish is stuck in Sang. She's frantic with worry and since she suspects who stole it and what he wants to do with it, it's imperative that she and Criminy get it back. Criminy is determined that Tish decide to stay with him of her own free will, so they set off on a dangerous quest that will force them to tame Bludhorses, battle ghosts, steal a submarine and outsmart a power-hungry, Bludman-hating city official bent on world domination.

Wicked as They Come is the first book in Delilah S. Dawson's series of what she herself labels as whimsy dark Steampunk. It's the main pick for October 2014 in Vaginal Fantasy (a name I agree with my husband is awful) and Felicia Day described this month's theme as monster mash-up, with books that have a little bit of everything in them. This has a protagonist shifted from one world to another, magic, clockwork animals, Victoriana, vampires who aren't really vampires, a travelling caravan, a dashing hero who runs the caravan and even juggles. There are ghosts, mermaids, evil villains and racism. Being mostly terrified of the Bludmen, the Pinkies have forced them into servitude and isolated themselves into fortified cities. There are very few safe animals left, since the Bludanimals prey on them. It's like the author took a little bit of everything she liked and threw it together, the only thing missing is the kitchen sink.

Strangely, it works. I liked that Tish, while very attracted to Criminy, doesn't just fall into his arms. She's still recovering from some pretty serious abuse in her last relationship and unlike some stories I can think of, her emotional wounds aren't magically made better as soon as she meets a new hot guy. It's also not as if she's in Sang of her own free will, and she's certainly not falling for Criminy's "you're my fated mate because you found the locket" spiel. She likes the novelty of the experience and especially the chance to reinvent herself in fancy Victorian outfits, and she's not averse to flirting a bit with Criminy, but she wants to be wooed properly and is in no hurry to settle down. For one thing, she loves her grandmother and is not going to abandon her to go off to live in an alternate reality.

The idea of the Bludmen was also a great one. A completely different species from humans, although also humanoid, the Bludmen (and animals) drink blood and eat flesh. They can be born or made, which is why animals for food have to be raised within city walls and carefully protected, so the Bludanimals don't get to them. There doesn't seem to be many cats or dogs, as the Bludrats or Bludbunnies have all gotten to them. When Tish is first bitten by a vicious little bunny, I kept thinking of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the "hideous creature with sharp. pointy. teeth!" In the part of Sang where Criminy lives, the Bludmen are considered lower than Pinkies and are usually forced to work in the factories and do menial labor, while the Pinkies are the more prosperous. It is indicated that in other parts of Sang (where most of the countries have names that seem very reminiscent of the European countries of our/Tish's world), this is not always the case.

I didn't exactly like the way Criminy went about getting himself a girlfriend, as Tish is in effect kidnapped from her own world and ends up completely dependent on him in Sang. He also seemed to take his love for her as a given, even after they just met, but gets points for not really forcing himself on Tish and waiting for her to return his feelings. Even when it would be in his best interest NOT to help her, after all, if Tish doesn't have her locket, she's stuck in Sang for good, he agrees to go with her to retrieve it. He has a lot of fairy standard paranormal romance hero traits (extremely attractive, a bit domineering, your typical alpha), which considering this was Ms. Dawson's debut novel, isn't all that surprising. She still managed to create something quite different from a lot of other paranormal/Steampunk offerings out there. I like her world building, her characters and her intentions that the books be whimisical rather than grim and gritty all the time. I suspect this will not be the last of her books that I check out.

Crossposted on Cannonbal Read.

#CBR6 Book 105: "Etiquette & Espionage" by Gail Carriger

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Sophronia Temminnick is not all a proper young lady should be. She'd much rather be climbing trees, spying on conversations in the dumb-waiter and dismantle machinery than converse politely over tea. So her mother sends her off to boarding school, more specifically Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. Sophronia makes new friends on her way there. Miss Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott and her brother Pillover are both being sent away to school (Pillover is to go to a boy's academy, naturally) and discover that Sophronia has no idea what kind of school she's enrolling in.

The youngsters are attacked by sky pirates on their way to school and Sophronia's quick thinking to get them out of the dangerous situation makes her a possible new enemy. It turns out that the school is in fact a training academy in the covert arts and espionage and the young ladies must learn how to fight, sneak and even possibly assassinate, in addition to learning comportment and proper manners. Sophronia and her new friends (among them a Scottish noblewoman raised by werewolves and a cross-dressing urchin with a passion for inventions) do their best to foil Sophronia's nemesis, trying to recover a stolen prototype before it gets sold to enemies of the state.

I mostly very much enjoyed Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series and there is no denying that the woman has a very colourful and creative imagination. Her alternate Victorian England with vampires, werewolves, Steampunk and the like is a delight and while some of her quirks may get a bit exasperating, her books tend to be entertaining, if not always the heaviest in substance.

Etiquette & Espionage is the first book in her new series for Young Adult reader, and it's actually set quite some time before the Parasol Protectorate books. Readers of both series will be pleased to see younger versions of Lady Kingair and Genevieve Lefoux and I have no doubt that as the series continues, there will be more familiar faces.

Carriger is fond of a headstrong heroine (as well as truly outrageous names). I actually think Sophronia is a more likable heroine than Alexia (who could be a bit of a pill), but it's clear to see that Carriger's pattern of pragmatic and impetuous protagonist paired with a ditzy, somewhat silly best friend is re-used in this series. The third book in the Finishing School series is out at the beginning of November, and if I don't get round to catching up this year, I'm sure I will revisit Sophronia and her little friends sometime in the new year.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 66: "Skies of Gold" by Zoë Archer

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

Two Lonely Hearts…

Kalindi MacNeil survived the devastating enemy airship attack that obliterated Liverpool, but even her engineering skills can’t seem to repair her broken heart. Seeking to put her life back together, Kali retreats to a desolate, deserted island – only to discover that she’s not alone. Captain Fletcher Adams, an elite man/machine hybrid, a Man O’War, crashed his battle-damaged airship into this deserted island after Liverpool, never expecting to survive the wreck. But survive he did.

One Desire…

Believing he is nothing but a living weapon, Fletcher is wary of his new-found companion – a pretty, damaged, but determined young woman. Together they are stranded on the deserted island, and it is only a matter of time until desire gets the best of both of them. Soon Kali and Fletcher find they may just be what the other needed. But danger from beyond the island puts them to the test. Will it rip them apart or bond their hearts forever?

I liked Kali a lot. She’s clearly been through a horrible trauma, making her retreat to the remote island where generations of her family once used to live. Now no one has lived there for more than thirty years, leaving only a ruined cottage for shelter. Everyone she cared for in Liverpool died in the airship attack, she herself barely survived, trapped under ruins for days. She lost her leg, but has used her remarkable engineering skills to fashion herself a prosthetic. Not wanting to be a burden to her parents, who live in India, while she’s physically recovering further, she’s taken what she was able to salvage of her many clever prototypes to settle on a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides.

She discovers quickly that she’s not as alone as she planned. On her first night there, she hears a strange hum in the distance, and when she goes to investigate, she discovers that there is a man living on the north side of the island. He is huge, and his hair and beard suggests he’s been there for some time. They slowly get to know one another, and develop a friendship while walking and exploring the island, both discovering that complete solitude was perhaps not what they wanted.

Fletcher is a Man O’War, a Steampunk sort of cyborg, who I suspect I would have known more about if I’d read any of the previous books in the Ether Chronicles. As far as I could tell, the various powerful nations of the world have airship fleets, and the most promising captains/pilots, if they have a high enough vitality rating of some sort, can be converted into Man O’Wars, who thanks to the machine parts and wiring operated into their bodies actually work as a sort of battery for their airship. The operation also makes them huge, imposing and very powerful, think Captain America in The First Avenger.

Kali discovers that Fletcher captained one of the British airships that drove the enemies out of Liverpool, but that the ship sustained so much damage that he crashed it in as remote a spot as he could (but not before making sure that as many of the crew members as possible survived. Now he’s pretty sure everyone believes him to be dead, as no one from the Navy has come looking for him or the ship. The girl he once courted reacted with disgust and fear once he returned to her after his “conversion”. He doesn’t trust that anyone else can see him as anything but close to a monster now, and is also far too aware that if it was revealed that he was alive, they’d only want him to continue powering warships. He’s sick of being a human weapon, used only for destruction.

Kali makes him realize that his actions in Liverpool were unbelievably heroic; she actually saw his ship from where she was lying trapped under most of a ruined building. Slowly, as they become closer and the trust between them grows, they reveal their back stories to one another and fight their mutual attraction, not wanting to complicate their friendship. The romance in Skies of Gold takes time to develop, which is always the way I prefer it. While their attraction to one another is pretty instantaneous, it’s certainly not surprising from Fletcher’s side. He’s been alone on the island for three months and wasn’t expecting to run into a beautiful and exotic woman. He finds it difficult to believe that Kali could return the attraction because of the rejection he’s suffered in the past.

Much of the novel is just the two of them alone on the island, and while I thought that might get weird or boring, it didn’t. Unfortunately, then “the danger from beyond the island” shows up, and is a bit preposterous. The world-building crafted, with Ether-powered machinery, clearly some sort of complicated war going on and Man O’Wars as these government-sponsored cyborgs was interesting to me, but the villain who showed up in the final third of the book, and the break neck chase to stop him from carrying out his diabolical plan got a bit too silly for me. Having now read the blurbs of the previous books in the series, I can see that there are also call-backs to previous romantic couples from earlier books, which I’m sure is nice for long time readers. I liked this enough that I’m going to be checking out more of the Ether Chronicles, hoping that the others have more convincing antagonists and final acts.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 58: "The Kraken King, parts 5-8" by Meljean Brook

Total page count: 350 pages
Part Five: The Kraken King and the Iron Heart - 4.5 stars
Part Six: The Kraken King and the Crumbling Walls - 4 stars
Part Seven: The Kraken King and the Empress's Eyes - 4.5 stars
Part Eight: The Kraken King and the Greatest Adventure - 4 stars

Parts 1-4 reviewed here.

Zenobia and Ariq are over the initial awkward state getting to know one another and actually falling in love part of their relationship. That doesn't mean that their communication runs smoothly and that there are no more cultural and emotional misunderstandings in their future together. There is also very real danger to Ariq's friends and family if he and Zenobia can't convince the Empress of Nippon that the rebel attacks are a clever plot against her, from people she believes are loyal supporters. If they can't convince the Empress, then they'll have to take the dangers on themselves, but the dangers are great and there are numerous obstacles in their way.

In part five, Zenobia and Ariq are separated and we discover the lengths Ariq is willing to go to get back to the woman he's fallen for. Zenobia has clearly learned a lot during her adventures, and is no shrinking violet either. She's not going to sit around being used as a bargaining piece and doesn't hesitate to try to rescue herself. In part six, Zenobia finally reveals the truth about her double identity and literary career to her friend Helene, and she and Ariq wait for the Empress to grant them an audience. In part seven, it turns out that the Empress isn't above using torture to get to the bottom of the plots against her, and Zenobia discovers that she's not strong enough to watch the the man she's come to love being forced to suffer. They need to escape the Empress' forces, and get help from an unexpected quarter. In part eight, Ariq and Zenobia race back to Krakentown, hoping to beat the Empress' forces there. They need to use the fearsome weapon Ariq has been hiding to eliminate the threat to their loved ones, once and for all.

I managed to wait until the final part was released to read the last four, which meant that I didn't need to worry about pesky cliff hangers. In these four instalments, the story changes its focus from Zenobia and Ariq's blossoming romance to the solving of the central underlying conflict set up in the first half, with the mysterious attacks on flying ships by unknown assailants. Unable to persuade the Empress' captain of the guard of where the true danger lies, as she and others are chiefly interested in the powerful war machine only Ariq knows the location of, he and Zenobia have to rely on themselves, their friends and allies in defending Krakentown.

In my review of the first four parts, I emphasised how much I enjoyed the ethnic diversity of the characters in The Kraken King and the nuance in which they are portrayed. I should also point out that most of the significant characters in this story are women, to a degree unusual even in paranormal/urban fantasy, which tends to be chiefly written by women and most often features female protagonists. It's sad that I feel the need to point this out, but Meljean Brook shows how easy it could be for any number of writers to do the same thing. While her books are set in an alternate historical world, the degree of equality between the sexes seems unusual in the genre, and I applaud that, even as I hope that more fantasy (and normal contemporary writers) follow suit.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 55: "The Kraken King, parts 1-4" by Meljean Brook

Total page count: 335 pages

Part One: The Kraken King and the Scribbling Spinster - 4 stars
Part Two: The Kraken King and the Abominable Worm - 4 stars
Part Three: The Kraken King and the Fox's Den - 4.5 stars
Part Four: The Kraken King and the Inevitable Abduction - 4 stars

Because The Kraken King is being published in eight weekly instalments, I'm going to blog the first four as one book, and the final four as another, mainly because I don't want to wait until I've read all the parts to share my feels so far. So to anyone reading - be aware that there is more to come.

Zenobia Fox is used to a quiet life in Fladstand (on the north-East coast of what we'd know as the US). The only bursts of any kind of excitement are when she occasionally gets abducted and held for ransom, because her brother is a tremendously wealthy adventurer and explorer, married to a ruthless and fierce airship captain (see Heart of Steel). Zenobia is the woman who chronicles their adventures, in stories everyone believes to be fiction. Her childhood friend Helene, however, knows nothing of her secret life as an author, and believes her to be a widow very conscientious about her correspondence. She asks Geraldine (Zenobia's real name) to accompany her on a journey to Nippon (Japanese-controlled areas of what we'd know as Northern Australia.) and Zenobia eagerly accepts. It will give her a chance to see some of the parts of the world she's only ever read about in her brother's letters, and ideas for her new stories.

At first, everything seems to be going well, with Zenobia's mercenary bodyguards posing as her maid and late husband's valet. When the airship they are on is shot down by bandits, Zenobia gets to experience more adventure than she had hoped for. They are rescued by none other than the Kraken King, a legendary warrior who fought the Mongolian Horde, but now wishes to live peacefully as governor of his little settlement. He needs to figure out who is behind the bandit attacks in the area and stop them, because the Nipponese Empress and her forces will obliterate all threats first and ask questions later. He is intrigued by Zenobia and her fortitude. She needs to hide her true identity, and is, as always, worried that people will use her to get to her brother. Ariq, the Kraken King, believes she may be a spy or foreign agent, and is determined to figure out what she is hiding, while also trying to tempt her into his bed.

While both keep their cards close to their chest, unaware of how much their mutual secrecy is complicating matters between them, Ariq and Zenobia's attraction towards one another grows. Zenobia and Helene need to get to Nippon, for Helene to be reunited with her husband as quickly as possible (as the lady is expecting, and can't really pass it off as her husband's if she hasn't seen him in months). Zenobia just wants to write her stories and protect her brother, while Ariq needs to prove to himself that the fascinating woman he just met and is falling for isn't a dangerous spy who could bring down destruction on him and his town.

I love Meljean Brook's Iron Seas books. The world-building of her Steampunk alternate history world is fascinating. She has a very useful guide to her fictional world here, complete with world map. The previous books, The Iron Duke, Heart of Steel and Riveted have focused mostly on the European parts of this world, with the Mongolian Horde as the villains of the piece. Now she moves the action East, and shows us other exciting aspects of the world. Here Zenobia and Helene, as a white females are in a definite minority, and we see that not all the Horde are ruthless villains, and some of them were just as opposed to the world domination plans of their rulers as those who were occupied in Europe and Africa.

There is absolutely a romance at the centre of the story here, but because of the instalments, it builds slowly and there are all sorts of obstacles and misunderstandings that get in the way for the happy couple. Each instalment is about three to four chapters long, and frequently ends on a cliff-hanger. In the first part, Zenobia and Ariq meet and Zenobia's airship crashes. In the second, their party is attacked by a terrifying gigantic boiler worm on the way to a smuggler's settlement. In part three, Ariq tries to hunt down the bandit's in the various smuggler's settlements and discovers Zenobia's true identity when he rescues her from a kidnapping attempt, and in part four, he and Zenobia are in fact (as the title suggests) abducted, but not because someone wants to hold Zenobia for ransom. No, it's Ariq the abductors want. Zenobia is just taken for leverage.

I'm glad I waited until the four parts were out, so I could read it all in one go. Even so, it was very exciting to get an e-mail notification every Tuesday announcing that the next part was available for download. I can see why some fans were annoyed at Brook's decision to publish this way, but I very much enjoyed the serial format. My review of the second half of the story will follow soon.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 8: "The Clockwork Scarab" by Colleen Gleason

Page count: 356 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Miss Alvermina Holmes, daughter of Sir Mycroft and niece to the famous Sherlock, is summoned to the British Museum in the dark of night. Bored with her scientific experiments, and trying to get something to take her mind off the fact that her mother abandoned her and her father over a year ago, Mina decides to accept the invite.

When she arrives, she finds that another young woman has received the same summons. Miss Evaline Stoker, the younger sister of author and theatre manager Bram, has vampire hunting in her blood, and several illustrious ancestors who hunted the supernatural scourge during the Regency era. Unfortunately for Evaline, there are very few vampires left in England, and despite all her enhanced strength and speed and the training she does, she's never actually come across one yet. She's also deeply uncomfortable at the sight of blood, another drawback for any slayer of the undead.

The two young ladies discover that their summoner is none other than Irene Adler, now employed as a curator at the Museum, when she's not trying to help the royal family sort out tricky situations. A couple young women have been found dead, apparent suicides, but Miss Adler suspects foul play. A clockwork scarab was found in the possession of both the women. A third young woman has disappeared, and Miss Adler has been tasked by Princess Alexandra to do everything in her power to ensure that the girl is found alive. Adler wants to recruit Mina and Evaline as her agents.

The two girls try to work together, although neither feel very amiable towards the other, and do their best to use their abilities to solve the mysteries. There are hints of romantic entanglements for the women, involving a mysterious underworld figure and a police inspector, not to mention the strange young man the three ladies find crouched over a dead body in the Museum.

Gleason has set her new young adult series in a Steampunk version of Victorian London. Electricity has been outlawed as far too dangerous for people to use, and all manner of handy mechanical devices, all steam-driven, are mentioned, adding depth and verisimilitude to the world building. The chapters are told either from Miss Holmes or Miss Stoker's points of view, and it allows us to get to know the two young ladies, and see their varying reactions to their mission.

Mina hates her full name, and who wouldn't? Alvermina is a dreadful name. She's practically orphaned, with her mother having absconded to parts unknown, and her father spending most of his time in his club. She shares similar traits to her brilliant male relatives, being socially awkward, yet extremely observant, with excellent deductive abilities. Over the course of the investigation, she starts to fear that her uncle Sherlock is right, and that she is too easily muddled by emotions and female intuition to be a truly great investigator. She's rational, practical, loves to plan ahead and is frequently clumsy, especially when attired in long skirts and cumbersome bustles.

Evaline despairs that she shares the family calling of her Gardella ancestors, yet is unable to actually hunt and slay the undead. She wanders the streets at night trying to fight evildoers, without too much success. She therefore jumps at the chance to assist Miss Adler in solving the mystery of the dead and missing girls. She lives with her older brother Bram and his wife, the two having more or less raised her. Very few people know of her secret calling, and while she enjoys her sister-in-law's matchmaking schemes, she's not really eager to get married, suspecting that a husband would be loathe to accept her unusual nocturnal activities. She's strong, fast, and physically agile. Frequently acting before she thinks things through, she frustrates Mina with her impetuousness. She's a lot more socially adept, and also physically more attractive than Miss Holmes, another bone of contention between the two.

Neither girl start out particularly fond of the other, but as they are forced to work together, and their case starts getting more and more dangerous, they start finding common ground and a reluctant friendship.

This is the second steampunk fantasy, featuring a female relative of Sherlock Holmes I've read in the past few months. Of the two, I think this one was by far the more enjoyable. The protagonists are both fun, and engaging, with flaws enough that I'm looking forward to seeing how they will develop and grow in future books. The setup is interesting, and most of the world building is cleverly done. I was a little bit apprehensive with all the gadgets being mentioned in the early chapters, but as the story progressed, it became a lot less bothersome. I especially loved the steam-cycle. I want me one of those! Inspector Ambrose was also pretty cool, and if he doesn't actually eventually end up with Mina, I will be very upset.

Things I didn't like as much - the reveal of who Dylan is and where he came from. I'm not entirely sure what he adds to the story at all, or why these elements are necessary for the plot. If he were to die mysteriously and never be mentioned again between this book and the next, I won't mind in the slightest. I hated Nix' accent, and don't understand why it needed to be quite so exaggerated. It's suggested more than once that the accent is an affectation anyway, so why in the world couldn't he just drop it, rather than becoming more incomprehensible the further the plot developed? Thirdly, I'm not entirely sure the book needed quite so many love interests. I get that our protagonists are two young women, and that it adds excitement when they each have a young man to pine over, but they really do seem to fall for these men very quickly. The ending was also a bit hurried, and not entirely as satisfactory as I would have liked.

None of these niggles are enough to not make me very eager indeed to read the sequel. I'm a huge fan of Gleason's Gardella Vampire Chronicles and if this series ends up being half as enjoyable, I'll be well pleased.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 127. "A Study in Silks" by Emma Jane Holloway

Page count: 560 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer! I was given an ARC of this book from Random House via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and impartial review. A Study in Silks is out now. The sequel comes out at the end of this month, and the concluding volume in the trilogy will be out in December.

Evelina Cooper is the niece of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Her mother ran off with a circus performer, and Evelina grew up in said circus. Her mother got sick and died, and eventually Evelina's grandmama Holmes tracked her down, fetched her home from the circus, did her best to gentrify Evelina, and sent her to a posh boarding school. There Evelina befriended Imogen Roth, daughter of Lord Bancroft, and although he doesn't really approve of his daughter's boon companion, the two girls are set to start their first Season together. Evelina just has to keep secret her interest in mechanics, as that's unladylike, and that she can do magic, as magic users are persecuted and arrested. Best case scenario after arrest is death, but they may also be sent to Her Majesty's laboratories, where very nefarious things might happen.

With me so far? Evelina is in love with Imogen's brother Tobias, Lord Bancroft's heir, but knows full well that he is far above her station. Also he's a total rake. Unexpectedly, her childhood sweetheart Nick shows up in her room. He still works at the circus, and has magic abilities of his own. Magic that when he and Evelina get close to each other spark so strongly that it would be impossible for them to ever hide it. Hence they are doomed as a couple too. A servant girl is murdered, and Evelina tries to investigate, hoping that the case might be solved before scandal befalls her friend's family. Lord Bancroft orders Tobias to seduce Evelina to keep her from investigating, but he refuses, because he genuinely likes her, and won't ruin her reputation.

This is not regular Victorian England, but a steam-punky version with unusual mechanical innovations, where the whole country is divided into regions controlled by the Steam Barons, who decide who's allowed steam, coal and gas and discourage any unauthorised mechanical development or independent inventions. Magic exists, but is feared and magic users are persecuted.

There is a lot of potential in this book. I'm just not sure that this book needed the protagonist to be Sherlock Holmes' niece. I get that he's the most famous Victorian detective, and currently extremely fashionable, with the films, directed by Guy Richie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, the excellent modern takes in BBC's Sherlock, and (in my opinion, the not as brilliant but still very enjoyable) American Elementary. It still feels to me that if you're going to all the trouble of creating an alternate Victorian England, with very interesting magics and Steampunk and the power struggle between lords of industry and the actual nobles, you don't really need ties to other fiction. Couldn't Evelina just have been the niece of some fictional great detective?

Still, as I said, there is a lot to like. In the beginning, I found the book a bit hard going, because there is a vast gallery of characters, and many of them get a point of view in the book. There is a whole load of info dumping, while very well done, to make us realise that this isn't just regular Victorian England, and there's the murder mystery, and another complicated scheme involving one of the steam barons, and a stolen Greek artifact and it all seemed a bit overwhelming at first.

Once I got about a third of the way in, and everything was set in motion, though, I really enjoyed the book. The world building is very creative, and excellently done. Holloway has clearly done her historical research very well, and her cast of characters, while sizable, is nuanced and interesting. There is a strong and genuine friendship between Evelina and Imogen, and while I am normally wary of love triangles, both Tobias and Nick are undoubtedly very attractive young men, and it's understandable why Evelina would be drawn to both of them, yet distressed because neither of them, due to societal expectations, and her own forbidden magical powers, are a realistic option for her. I'm very much looking forward to how the story plays out in the rest of the trilogy.

CBR4 Book 81: "Riveted" by Meljean Brook

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars
Date begun: September 5th, 2012
Date finished: September 6th, 2012

Annika has grown up in a small secluded village in Iceland, populated entirely by women, who have kept it well-hidden through stories of witches and trolls in the area. She's been travelling for four years, trying to find her sister, who took the blame for Annika's nearly revealing the location of the town to the outside world, had a massive row with the elders, and left.

David Kentewess is a vulcanologist desperate to find the village Annika is from, as his mother's dying words was that he bury an heirloom necklace by the sacred mountain close to where she was born. When he meets Annika, he recognises her accent, and tries desperately to share her secrets. While drawn to David, Annika can't reveal the secrets of her home and the women there, whether threatened or cajoled. And before long, both Annika and David have much more to worry about than their growing attraction to each other and whatever promises they made to their families.

I will say this for Meljean Brook, after The Iron Duke and Heart of Steel, I thought I knew a little bit of what to expect. I was wrong. Well, I expected clever writing and interesting world building, and multi-faceted characters who I'd enjoy reading about, and I got all that. But story wise, this was completely different from the other two Iron Seas novels, and the start of the novel gave me absolutely no hints of where the story was going to end up. Suffice to say, Annika and David are absolutely nothing like the protagonists of the previous two novels Brook has written in her alternate history, pseudo-Victorian Steampunk world.

Annika has been raised purely by women, in a community where women either go off to get pregnant (some stay with their baby daddies if they have sons), or bring home foundling girls from other places. Same sex relationships are very common, to the point where Annika clearly feels slightly sad that she hasn't seemed to find a romantic relationship with any of the girls she grew up with. Nick-named "Rabbit" growing up, she still finds the tremendous courage to go off into the wider world to find her sister, visiting a number of new places on the airship where she serves as an engineer, and David is both amused and baffled by her lack of self-insight when he sees her many acts of self-sacrifice and bravery throughout the story.

David lost an arm and both his legs, and sustained a fair amount of facial scarring, in a horrible accident as a child, and his mother died to save him. He now has a mechanical eye-piece over part of his face, and mechanical limbs to replace the ones he lost. Most people naturally have trouble seeing past his artificial additions, and women especially seem either repulsed by him or excessively pity him. So when Annika, unused to men in general, treats him with kindness and openness, he's drawn to her even before he recognises her accent to be the same as his mother's. In no way an alpha male, David is deeply reluctant to pursue Annika, because of his previous bad luck around women.

The development of their friendship and later romance is a wonderful, slow and gradual process (frankly, both characters were almost too convinced of the other's disinterest and so reluctant to approach the other that I wanted to reach into the book and shake them both). Yet I'd rather the character have time to get to know each other properly before they declare they madly love each other than fall into instant lust and/or love.

As I've come to expect in Brook's novels, the world building is excellent, and while the first third of the story is very slow and sets up Annika and David's relationship and gives us their back stories, once the plot takes a sharp turn, it's frankly action and adventure and unexpected plot twists until the end. As in the other two Iron Seas novels, there are several breath taking action sequences that kept me at the edge of my seat, and once the story got going, I really didn't want to put the book down. While Heart of Steel is still my absolute favourite, this is a decent second, and I can't wait to see what Meljean Brook is going to give us next.

CBR4 Book 71: "Timeless" by Gail Carriger

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: July 1st, 2012
Date finished: July 5th, 2012

This is the fifth (and as of yet final) novel in the Parasol Protectorate novels about Alexia Tarabotti, and as a result, this review will contain spoilers for previous books in the series, and the book will not be as satisfying to you if it's the first one you pick up. Go read Soulless instead.

Book summary from the publisher, because it's been two months since I read the book: Alexia Tarabotti, Lady Maccon, has settled into domestic bliss. Of course, being Alexia, such bliss involves integrating werewolves into London High society, living in a vampire's second best closet, and coping with a precocious toddler who is prone to turning supernatural willy-nilly. Even Ivy Tunstell's acting troupe's latest play, disastrous to say the least, cannot put a damper on Alexia's enjoyment of her new London lifestyle.

Until, that is, she receives a summons from Alexandria that cannot be ignored. With husband, child, and Tunstells in tow, Alexia boards a steamer to cross the Mediterranean. But Egypt may hold more mysteries than even the indomitable Lady Maccon can handle. What does the vampire Queen of the Alexandria Hive really want from her? Why is the God-Breaker Plague suddenly expanding?And how has Ivy Tunstell suddenly become the most popular actress in all the British Empire?

My enjoyment of the various books in this series has varied. I adored the first one, thought the second one was dull and the third one rather dreadful, but book four was an improvement, and as a final book in the series, this was a worthy ending to Alexia's story. By now, most of the characters are fully developed in Carriger's world, and interact in amusing and sometimes surprising ways. Alexia has mellowed a bit, and is less prickly than in some of the earlier instalments. It's fun to see the "show go on the road" so to speak, and while in previous books the cast have been travelling in Europe, this time they go all the way to Egypt, home of the first vampires.

While certain things were left unanswered, to a large part, Carriger finishes off the major story strands with this novel. It's fairly clear to the reader what will happen in future with Alexia, her beloved Lord Maccon, Lord Akeldama, Biffy and Professor Lyall (two of my favourite characters), Floote, Madame Lefoux and of course Ivy Tunstell and her acting troupe. Never exactly groundbreaking and profound literature, this book was an entertaining light-hearted romp, and possibly my second favourite in the series after Soulless. 

CBR3 Book 90: "Heart of Steel" by Meljean Brook

Publisher: Berkley Trade
Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: November 1st, 2011
Date finished:  November 2nd, 2011

This is the second book in Meljean Brook's Iron Seas series, and while it can be read as a stand alone, a lot of the world building is established in the first book, The Iron Duke, as well as the first encounter of the protagonists of this book, so it's definitely better if you read that one first. Also, while the covers for these books are beyond awful, I promise that they are actually REALLY REALLY good. It's why I buy them as e-books, so I can avoid embarrassment on public transport.

Yasmeen is the legendary mercenary captain of the airship Lady Corsair, and refuses to cede authority to any man. When adventurer and explorer Archimedes Fox tried to threaten her and take control of his airship, she threw him over the side, into waters teeming with zombies. Now she has to tell his sister, the woman who's made him famous writing about his adventures, that Fox is most likely dead. As Yasmeen also killed the woman's father, she is not really looking forward to the encounter.

I'm spoiling very little by revealing that of course Fox is only mostly dead. He survived the horde of zombies, and now needs to get the very valuable da Vinci sketch he left on the Lady Corsair from Yasmeen, so he can pay off an old acquaintance and hopefully no longer be trailed around the world by assassins. He doesn't mind at all that Yasmeen killed his father in the past, he's grateful, frankly, and now feels that she would be the perfect woman for him to fall in love with. Having had his emotions smothered and blunted under Horde control, he's now determined to live life to the fullest and feel every emotion at its strongest, and he believes loving Yasmeen and probably having his heart broken by her would be a glorious adventure. As they need to travel through Europe together, avenging the deaths of her airship crew and trying to reclaim his stolen sketch, while looking for treasures and running from zombies, falling in love with the temperamental mercenary shouldn't prove too difficult.

The Iron Duke first established the world of Brook's Iron Seas - a Victorian era where the Mongol hordes took over huge amounts the world with their advanced technology, enslaving people with the use of nanobots in their blood stream. The oceans are filled with giant armor plated megalodons and krakens,  much of Europe and parts of Africa are teeming with mindless zombies. Having been trained as a warrior, Yasmeen learned the hard way that most men could not be trusted, and felt threatened by her independence, self-sufficiency and strength. While her former lovers would desire her, they could not accept that she held the highest authority on board her own ship, and frequently tried to dominate her in front of her crew. Archimedes Fox is not such a man. He's attracted to Yasmeen because she is strong and capable and could quite possibly kill him if he so much as looked at her the wrong way. He's a thrill seeker and adventurer, and getting the dangerous and deadly Captain Corsair into bed would be his greatest achievement. He has no wish to outrank her on a ship, he just wants to be with her.

A lot less angsty and grim than the previous Iron Seas novel, Heart of Steel is an adventure romp. There are kidnappings, sneaky attempts at poisoning, witty banter, double crossings, explosions, bar fights, revenge quests, adventure, zombie attacks, huge amounts of sexual tension (the couple don't do anything but throw amazing quips at each other until the latter half of the book, they don't even kiss until the last quarter or so). I think I actually even preferred it to the Iron Duke, and can't wait until the next one comes out.