A Treacherous Curse

This is the third book in the Veronica Speedwell mysteries by Deanna Raybourn, due out January 16th, 2018 from Penguin/Random House - Berkley imprint.

This is a Victorian cozy mystery with modern characters, language and, mostly, sensibilities.  It goes quite well on a shelf with Amelia Peabody, Kathryn Ardleigh, Charlotte Pitt, and others in that vein.  I love that genre (Victorian cozy mysteries with plucky modern heroines?).  I don't think many would argue that a big pot of Earl Grey tea, a wet and wintry afternoon and a fully charged kindle loaded with modern Victorian mysteries is a guaranteed recipe for bliss.

Other reviewers have done a stellar job of summarizing the plot.  I'll just add that the pacing is well done and though the book is relatively long, at 352 pages, it doesn't drag.  The story is cleverly written and even though the dialogue is fairly snarky in places, I didn't feel tempted to roll my eyes much at all.

I like that Veronica is a lepidopterist and naturalist.  I also enjoyed the romantic tension between her and her colleague Stoker. Even though it seems inevitable that they will wind up together, I hope Ms. Raybourn delays the inevitable as long as possible.  The book is well written and the scene descriptions are wrought with care and technical expertise.

The cover art for this series is beautiful and intricate.  

Four stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

Creatures of Will and Temper

Creatures of Will & Temper is a fleshed out story covering the bare bones of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray.  The author, Molly Tanzer,  freely adds to and twists the Wilde icon into something that is different and original and wholly itself.

This book ticked a lot of boxes for me; among other things it has Victoriana, demons, an impressively built and well thought out magic system, dastardly antagonists, some mystery subplots and fencing! *swoon*.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to stand up and rewrite, however well intentioned, Wilde.  Wilde. Ms. Tanzer is very competent, the writing is very well done (and not overdone).  The plotting is tight and for an almost 400 page book, the story arc moves along at a brisk pace.  I didn't find the story dragging at all.  There were a few moments of internal eye rolling from me for the anachronistic dialogue and sarcastic sibling squabbling (say that five times fast :).  It's much more a function of it being a YA modern light romance urban fantasy and that I'm a grumpy old fart than sloppy writing however.  This is a surprisingly deftly written book.

Must read for fans of YA urban fantasy, especially Victoriana.  It's not extremely graphic except for one particular brutal passage, which does set up a plot element but felt out of proportion compared to the rest of the book.

Four stars, deftly written prose, fencing demonists, strong(ish) female protagonists.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

A Scandal in Battersea

This is the 12th book in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey from Berkley Publishing.

An ensemble cast including Nan and Sarah, their birds, assorted elementals, Sherlock Holmes, John and Mary Watson plus others from earlier books in the series do battle with, well, 'Cthulu lite' in an alternate-earth in Victorian London.

There are few iconic fictional characters with a more passionate following than Sherlock Holmes.  There are numerous serious groups who study the Holmes canon and meet to have dinner and debate the finer points of Conan Doyle's extant oeuvre.  For those folks, this book and the one previous (A Study in Sable, #11), would certainly bring on apoplexy.

While I love traditional Holmes and have read them many many times, that hasn't stopped me from enjoying the rich abundance of Holmes pastiches and modern narratives.  For those people who are a little stricter in their acceptance of ersatz Holmes, it can be said in defense of this installment that Holmes himself isn't really a central character, more of recurring cameo.  I didn't find his presence distracting at all.  I don't know that I would have rated him a cover appearance (though the cover art is beautiful), he doesn't appear all that much in the book.

My main problem with the book was that I found myself repeatedly jerked out of the story by the really over the top 'dialect' dialogue.  Much of the time I found myself almost having to translate phonetically to see what they were trying to say.  That was my biggest grumble with the book and it certainly wasn't insurmountable, just annoying.

This is a Mercedes Lackey book, the good characters are good, the villains are villainous and there isn't much any blending.

I found it comfortably readable, entertaining and distracting.  I loved the scene with the panto, and I love little Suki.

Four stars, it was exactly as expected, thank goodness.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.