Full of vampires, werewolves and steampunk in an alternate Victorian England, Bec McMaster’s My Lady Quicksilver serves up another of her dark, fast-paced, exciting adventure romances wrapped around a wrenching emotional tale of two wounded people.
In a world where the Blueblood vampires rule and everyone else submits, the revolutionary leader Mercury fights for the Humans.
Blueblood Sir Jasper Lynch, head of the dreaded police force, the Nighthawks, must find Mercury within three weeks--or die. Mercury wants to find her missing brother. Lynch might have the information, so she answers his advertisement for a secretary. Lynch doesn’t know his secretary is Mercury. Mercury doesn’t know what Lynch will do for those he cares about. What they both find is something neither of them expected or wanted--love.
I liked this book immensely, and I’m not a big fan of paranormal, steampunk, alternative worlds, tortured heroes/heroines, dark romance or any of the tropes here except the history and adventure. But Ms. McMaster has spun all these shopworn elements into something new, appealing and gripping.
Instead of having her heroes’ paranormal abilities confer all kinds of advantages (boring!), their powers are more curse than blessing. Lynch, for all his vampire strengths, is an outcast from the ruling elite.
I especially dislike tortured heroes. Most are whiners who expect the heroine to baby them, and like a fool, she does. Not here. Although Lynch is tortured (and he has reason), he doesn’t wallow in his misery, but makes something of himself. Mercury, too, has suffered at the hands of the Bluebloods and done things she isn’t proud of, but that doesn’t stop her from carrying on the work of her dead husband, the previous leader of the Humanists.
I love the non-traditional Mercury, my favorite type of heroine. Women who take on a man’s world and win are the heroines I love, and there are way too few of them in romance. Go, Mercury!
My Lady Quicksilver also has plenty of the action and adventure I like, with Mercury doing her share. And at the core is an emotional story of two damaged people finding each other in the midst of chaos.
This book works on many levels, from romance, to action-adventure, to emotion. If you like romances with more than just the romance, try My Lady Quicksilver.
Although you can read this book by itself, My Lady Quicksilver is third in the series after Kiss of Steel and Heart of Iron. But if you like this one, you’ll like the others. And if you’re like me, you hate to come in on the middle.
Thank you all,
Linda
ARC provided by Sourcebooks
No comments:
Post a Comment