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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
2.5*
Bloody cliff hangers, I hate them with a burning rage hotter than the sun. This book finishes with two of them - the paranormal element with a deadly creature on the run and also the potential relationship between Alec and Lew.
Other than that, it's an intriguing story with its alternative reality London setting and the odd dislocation in time of one of the MCs in a post World War I setting.
I liked a lot of the narrative but there's an awful lot of setting up going on in this book and no real conclusions for anything which left me a little frustrated and sometimes the historic aspect of the story felt rushed or events just popped in to try highlight the "history".
One example being the Sidney Street Siege which oddly I know quite a bit about from my day job creating content for the new UK Police Memorial Trust's digital version.
I'm not sure why Sidney Street was picked as an event involving "creatures" given it was a straight-up anarchist revolutionary conflict between Latvian criminals and the Met Police which resulted in the deaths of three policemen, one gang member and a poor fireman who had the house collapse on him.
Hopefully book two will be out soon and we'll get some further movement on the main thrust of the otherworldly elements. There was a sneak peek at the end of this one and Fenn from The Gate makes another appearance.
#ARC kindly received from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.
Bloody cliff hangers, I hate them with a burning rage hotter than the sun. This book finishes with two of them - the paranormal element with a deadly creature on the run and also the potential relationship between Alec and Lew.
Other than that, it's an intriguing story with its alternative reality London setting and the odd dislocation in time of one of the MCs in a post World War I setting.
I liked a lot of the narrative but there's an awful lot of setting up going on in this book and no real conclusions for anything which left me a little frustrated and sometimes the historic aspect of the story felt rushed or events just popped in to try highlight the "history".
One example being the Sidney Street Siege which oddly I know quite a bit about from my day job creating content for the new UK Police Memorial Trust's digital version.
I'm not sure why Sidney Street was picked as an event involving "creatures" given it was a straight-up anarchist revolutionary conflict between Latvian criminals and the Met Police which resulted in the deaths of three policemen, one gang member and a poor fireman who had the house collapse on him.
Hopefully book two will be out soon and we'll get some further movement on the main thrust of the otherworldly elements. There was a sneak peek at the end of this one and Fenn from The Gate makes another appearance.
#ARC kindly received from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Violence
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
CW: violence, sexual and otherwise
Yikes. The pacing in this is GLACIAL and for such a short book, it was v v odd how much of it was spent in downtime or dead air. Also ... I’m super skeeved out by a book with a cop LI reinforcing the ACAB idea. Like ... I read a lot of cop LIs and I suspend my ACAB disbelief in order to do so but Alec is AWFUL. Constant displays of temper and physical violence and all very hand waved away as cuz he kinda has a thing for Lew??? Gross. There’s a scene where Lew shows up at the station and Alec—without saying a word—punches him in the face and beats him up, then puts him in a hold that nearly breaks his arm ... and 1) sexy that is NOT, 2) Lew is super mad in the moment but then after is like “nah it’s fine cuz I was in the wrong”, leading to 3) me as the reader being horrified and asking myself WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?????
Also—massive pet peeve—this is marketed as a slow burn romance but just because they like each other romantically (which is really hard to buy, see above) doesn’t make this a romance. The pace of the book is glacial but the romance itself is either non-existent (2/3 of the book the characters aren’t even interacting and first half you get almost NOTHING from one MC) or it’s wreathed in inexplicable violence that is not remotely attractive. They end on a note of “maybe we’ll work together to figure this out” which is kinda up in the air, considering the rest of the book.
Not to mention that the ending doesn’t actually resolve anything. It just sort of stops partway through a major plotline - like someone took a pair of scissors to a physical manuscript at an arbitrary point and called everything before the cut “book one.”
Yikes. The pacing in this is GLACIAL and for such a short book, it was v v odd how much of it was spent in downtime or dead air. Also ... I’m super skeeved out by a book with a cop LI reinforcing the ACAB idea. Like ... I read a lot of cop LIs and I suspend my ACAB disbelief in order to do so but Alec is AWFUL. Constant displays of temper and physical violence and all very hand waved away as cuz he kinda has a thing for Lew??? Gross. There’s a scene where Lew shows up at the station and Alec—without saying a word—punches him in the face and beats him up, then puts him in a hold that nearly breaks his arm ... and 1) sexy that is NOT, 2) Lew is super mad in the moment but then after is like “nah it’s fine cuz I was in the wrong”, leading to 3) me as the reader being horrified and asking myself WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?????
Also—massive pet peeve—this is marketed as a slow burn romance but just because they like each other romantically (which is really hard to buy, see above) doesn’t make this a romance. The pace of the book is glacial but the romance itself is either non-existent (2/3 of the book the characters aren’t even interacting and first half you get almost NOTHING from one MC) or it’s wreathed in inexplicable violence that is not remotely attractive. They end on a note of “maybe we’ll work together to figure this out” which is kinda up in the air, considering the rest of the book.
Not to mention that the ending doesn’t actually resolve anything. It just sort of stops partway through a major plotline - like someone took a pair of scissors to a physical manuscript at an arbitrary point and called everything before the cut “book one.”