SIZZLING PARANORMAL STEAMPUNK
Kiss of Steel
London Steampunk Series
By Bec McMaster
Steampunk Paranormal Romance
Kickarse Female Lead
Honoria Todd has lived in blue blood servitude ever since her father started working as a researcher for one of the most powerful Barons in the city. The blue bloods are infected with a blood disease that gives them incredible strength and speed, certain powers and abilities that ensure they will always be the ruling class. With their metaljacket guards and their Nighthawk warriors, they essentially control the whole nation.
Her father was in the process of finding a cure or a vaccine for the virus that eventually turn the blue bloods into mindless vampires, when he is killed, leaving Honoria at the mercy of the Baron Vickers, who on many occasions, has taunted her with vial words and revolting solicitations. So she takes her father's research and her younger siblings and hides herself away in London's Whitechapel district, hoping against hope that they are never found.
She finds a job as an elocution tutor for one of the more well-to-do families and disguises her living situation, but returns to the slums each night hoping to avoid trouble at all cost. On her way home one night, the Whitechapel slum lord, Blade requests an audience with her, a request she can not take lightly, for he is also a blue blood and one who rules with an equal iron fist. In exchange for his protection in the slum, she will go to him three times a week to give him elocution lessons, a bargain that she is happy to make, until she loses her job and that bargain becomes a life line.
Then her past catches up with her and it takes everything she has, her whit and courage, her fighting spirit, to save those she love, and to avoid the evil that sent her into hiding in the first place.
Vampires in Victorian England with a load of adventure and a little mystery. It wasn't the best Steampunk paranormal I've read in a while. I think there was too much focus on the Honoria and Blade relationship and not enough on the mystery surrounding Whitechapel. I think that the author was more interested in writing a vampire erotica that fell flat more than anything.
4 stars out of 5 as it was well written, but I've no interest in reading more in the series.
