My
Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Amazon
Rating: 4.60 / 5.00
Goodreads
Rating: 4.01 / 5.00
Honoria Todd does her best to provide for her
younger siblings, but it has not been easy since her father’s death. He was a
scientist working to find a cure for the virus that transforms normal people
into Blue Bloods, who gain longer life and greater strength but must regularly
drink human blood. When her father was murdered, Honoria found herself a wanted
woman desperately struggling to remain hidden whilst trying to earn enough
money to keep her family fed. In order to find affordable housing, they are
living in the Whitechapel area of London amongst the poorest and most dangerous
people in the city.
Blade is a rogue Blue Blood who has broken away
from The Echelon that runs the country to carve out his own small kingdom in
Whitechapel. There, his word is law and everyone takes great care to avoid his
notice. Unfortunately, his viral count is dangerously high and he is showing
the first signs of becoming a Fade, a crazed monster that will be hunted down
by the other Blue Bloods. Then he hears that a person of great interest is
hiding in his rookery and he decides to find out why she is so important.
This title is billed as a both Paranormal Romance
and Steampunk, leading me to believe that it might be similar to Gail
Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, which I have thoroughly enjoyed (Soulless,
Changeless
and Blameless).
However, it lacks the highly entertaining voice of Ms Carrier’s Alexia and
relied much more on standard Romance elements and explicit sex scenes. This
left both myself and the book group relatively entertained but not overly
impressed.
For once, the depiction of British culture was not
too bad, with some interesting ideas on display. The idea that the upper class
would actively seek infection with the vampire virus, in order to live longer,
seems perfectly reasonable to me. They exploit their position as the ruling
class by molding British society to service their need for blood. Taxes are
paid in blood donations, which I thought was an interestingly novel approach to
the usual problem of blood supply whilst highlighting the Blue Blood’s view of
normal human’s as somewhat similar to farm animals. However, the choice to give
Rebel a broad cockney accent was a particularly bad one, especially as the
author attempted to render his language phonetically. I can only imagine how
difficult this made his dialogue for a non-Brit attempting to read it as I
struggled to understand some sections. His accent was also very variable, so
that it ended up being something akin to the absolutely awful ‘mockney’ accent
that Dick Van Dyke offers in Mary Poppins, which is one of the worst attempts
at a British accent that I have ever heard. I found that this choice added a
barrier to the character and was totally unnecessary.
The world building was one area of the book that
caused some problems amongst the book group members. Many were not familiar
with Steampunk as a genre and so they were a little confused by some of the
elements. However, we all agreed that there was too much description and info
dumping, which slowed the story and yet did not describe the world adequately
to allow us to visualize it properly. This was a shame because there were many
interesting ideas, but it almost seemed like the author was too ambitious in
the number of unique elements that she wanted to introduce with this title. It
is the first in a series, so some of the detail and ideas could have been
postponed until a later volume.
Honoria herself was a fairly admirable heroine,
although the insta love and her irresistible animal attraction to Blade made
her seem a little to two dimensional and lacking in my eyes. Indeed their whole
relationship was far too idealized and moved too quickly for me to take it
seriously. I would have preferred a slower burn of sexual tension, possibly
lasting through several of the books in the series, but I am aware that Romance
titles have to fulfill their quota of sex scenes and stick to the expected
format. However, this awareness of genre expectations does not make me any
happier about the rather overabundant use of sex in this book. It is not that I
dislike reading sex scenes, merely that I expect them to have some relevance to
the storyline or character development. In this case they were not engaging and
made me want to skip past them, which is never a good sign.
As with Honoria, Blade was a little too
stereotypical for me. When it was disclosed that his appalling accent was an
assumed part of his disguise as a ‘tough man’ I think I nearly dislocated my
eyes by rolling them so hard. Again, I understand that Romance readers like a
good rogue who turns out to be a softy at heart, but I would have liked a
little more deviation from that trope. This cheapened some of the relationships
with his protected underlings because I never felt that he would live up to his
blood-curdling reputation. By removing that threat of real menace he was
severely reduced as an unexpected hero because it carried no surprise.
On the whole, this was a book that I was happy
enough to complete, because I wanted to see where it went, but I have no
interest in following the characters any further. They were far too shallow and
true to type to hold my interest for long.
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