The third book in Bec McMaster’s London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy series, You Only Love Twice boasts an engrossing, intricately-woven and high-stakes suspense plot woven through a steamy second-chance romance and I was glued to it from pretty much start to finish. We’ve reached the middle of a five-book series, and the author provides…
If you read only one YA novel this year, make it Dread Nation. Part Zombie Land, part Django Unchained, channeling a bit of The Hunger Games and also something wholly original, this is a tale of what happens when the undead rise while America’s race war rages. The Civil War is over. But not because…
Do you like historical romance with a bit of suspense and a lot of steam (wink!)? Are you looking for something a bit different from your usual historical fare? Haven’t read Bec McMaster? Well, my friends, you’re in for a treat – and a prolonged binge. Ms. McMaster is best known for her two excellent…
Kiss of Steel is Bec McMaster’s début novel and the first in her London Steampunk series. Rather like Kristen Callihan’s Darkest London novels, the books in this series are set in a recognisable Victorian London, which enables the author to get right into the story without the need for extensive description, as the locations and…
Paranormal plus historical. Yeah, I wasn’t sure what to think either, but I couldn’t resist the lure. Isabel Cooper creates a historical world based in fantasy with the elements of a more contemporary paranormal and kept me entertained for over 300 pages with it. It’s the fourteenth century, and Sophia Metzger seeks a dragon. Well,…
I’ll start this review by saying that while The Mech Who Loved Me could be read as a standalone novel, it probably won’t make much sense to you unless you have read at least some of Bec McMaster’s London Steampunk books. In that series, the author introduces and develops her alternative vision of Victorian London…
When it comes right down to it, sequels are hit or miss. When the author does a fantastic job of setting up an alternate history in book one, as Beth Cato does in Breath of Earth, it’s a really hard act to follow. In the end, Call of Fire is a good follow up, but…
Spectred Isle – a title playing on words from Shakespeare’s Richard II – is the first book in a new series based around the natural magic of the English Green Man myth and it’s written by K.J. Charles. Do I need to say more? Okay, that was a rhetorical question. In short, it’s a fantastic…
Crown of Stars is the second installment in Sophie Jaff’s Nightsong trilogy. I started reading it without prior knowledge of the series – and discovered that was a very bad idea because I didn’t understand the story at all. So I picked up the previous book, Love Is Red, read it, and then returned to…
This book is a magnificent read and homage to the tradition of Victorian paranormal stories, and their ilk. I wish I could just let my review be those words, but if I did, I’d probably be drummed out of the ‘Reviewers Union’ ;) The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal is almost the ‘queering’ of Holmes…