In the second book in the London Steampunk series, Lena Todd has left the rookeries of Whitechapel to carefully maneuver through the glamorous yet backstabbing world of the Echelon—the London aristocracy of blood-drinking blue bloods—and she’s constantly living in fear. She needs to make an advantageous match as a blood thrall to live a comfortable life in high society, but she just can’t go through with it. With her illusions finally shattered, she starts working for the underground humanist movement that seeks to elevate the status of humans in the city.
Will Carver is known and feared as the Beast. He’s the only free verwulfen (werewolf) in all of England and Scotland, but there’s a price on his head. When he’s asked by the Council of Dukes to help negotiate a peace treaty with the verwulfen from the Scandinavian Empire, he agrees if only the persecution of verwulfen in England would be outlawed. On the same night, he learns about Lena’s violent, unwanted suitor. They’re thrown together by circumstance. Lena teaches Will how to properly move throughout society, he protects her from those wishing her harm, and their attraction finally burns out of control.
I didn’t like Lena at first. She would flirt and play games with Will, not realizing how much her teasing actually hurt and upset him. I found it strange she even returned to the Echelon, knowing how horrible and cruel most of those people were, and that her life would most likely be in danger. She also kept a lot of secrets, which landed her in trouble. Once she finally wised up and trusted Will with her problems, I started to like her much better.
Will is a wonderfully tormented character. Plus, he’s a virgin! He hates being a verwulfen, but he also embraces the strength, power, and reputation that come from it, so he just feels torn up inside.
Three years have passed since book one. Blade, Honoria, Leo, and other great secondary characters return, and awesome new characters are introduced, like Mercury.
Though I enjoyed the story for the most part, the pacing was a little slow in the beginning but finally picked up. The descriptions are detailed and concise, not overblown and lengthy. I’m looking forward to reading more books in the series.
3 Stars

Disclaimer – I borrowed this ebook from the library. I am not paid or compensated in any way, shape, or form for this honest review. I will not change or alter this review for any reason unless at my discretion.
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*Almost* made it on the angst shelf. I loved Will and Lena! I ma just burning through this series. Love it. (3.5 stars) ( )

In previous books of the series, we met Jack Talent and Mary Chase. We knew Jack Talent hated Mary Chase for some reason but we also could see there was a mutual attraction so I wasn’t surprised that this book was about the both of them.

Out of all of these books, this was my least favorite but I still enjoyed it immensely if that makes any sense. Kristen Callahan writes so well that it would be hard not to enjoy her books. I can’t even put my finger on the exact reason why I thought this book was less interesting than the rest. I just found myself a little bored at times and looking to see how far I had to go until the end of the book. I think it dragged on a bit in parts like maybe it could have been edited down to just include parts vital to the story. Other than that, I love this series and all of the secondary characters who could become main characters in subsequent books in the series.

Jack Talent was tortured by raptor and sanguis demons in the last book. While he was being tortured, a demon pretended to be him so nobody suspected he was missing except for Mary Chase because Jack’s replacement was being too nice to her. She is the one who found him crucified to a wall. Even though she saved him, Jack still treated Mary poorly.

In this book, Jack Talent is killing the raptor and sanguis demons who took part in his torture and leaving them with in Trafalgar Square with a cross branded into their flesh. He’s been dubbed the Bishop of Charing Cross because of the cross brand and witnesses seeing someone fleeing the scene of the crime in robes similar to those worn by clergy. Of course, humans believe the demons are just regular men and don’t understand what is happening and why someone is killing these men but the supernatural world knows exactly what and who they are.

Jack works for the SOS, Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals and is the investigator for this case until Mary Chase gets a tip from a source that Jack Talent is the murderer so she asks his superiors to become his partner on the case which they agree to seeing as he hasn’t made much progress on his own. Jack is not pleased at all with this development.

To complicate things, someone else is copycatting his murders but killing shifters instead of demons. There are very few shifters in London and Jack is one of them. Someone knows Jack is the killer and is taunting him.

Someone is also trying to recreate GIMs or Ghosts in the Machine, a supernatural being made by someone named Adam. When a human dies and agrees to become a GIM, their heart is replaced by a machine similar to a clock. They have the ability to leave their bodies like ghosts and spy on people. Mary Chase is a GIM but someone is creating monsters instead of GIMs. He is using them to do his bidding and uses them to go after Mary Chase and Jack Talent. They are robotic men made of metal melded with humans but the human is rotting because the experiment failed. When Mary and Jack defeat these GIMs called Crawlers, they take them to the SOS lab so their genius inventor Holly Ev

The copycat murderer, Amaros, is disguising himself as Jack Talent while he does despicable things so that people accuse Jack of the crimes. Amaros is a fallen angel who has turned evil. He is cursed and is rotting away for killing another fallen angel which is against their laws.. He disguises himself as Jack and in front of witnesses he kidnaps Holly Evernight so that she can help him perfect his GIMs.

The story gets rather complicated and more interesting as it goes along. Mary and Jack are attracted to each other but each are hiding secrets. Jack knows that if Mary ever finds out a certain secret about him that she will never forgive him.

It was a good story and the author gave some more insight into secondary characters like Jack’s acquaintance, Will Thorne, who I couldn’t figure out if he was friend of foe but seemed more of a friend even though Jack was rude to him…but Jack is rude to most people. Will gets kidnapped by Amaros also and is held down and Amaros rips out his heart and implants the new heart that Holly Evernight was forced to create into his chest. Poor Holly had to watch the whole thing.
I am pretty sure the next book will be about Will and Holly but it could be about Lucien or Adam as well. I’m going to download the book now to see who it is about.

www.paranormalromanceslut.com
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I like werewolves and had been interested in this hero, but I found the heroine's journey and intrigue less appealing. And the plot machinations seemed more obvious. I just didn't feel as invested. Not too bad though, I'll continue with the series. ( )

It's interesting that I can't get through this even though I loved the first book in the series. To be fair, I'm starting to see that there were issues in that one too... It's this whole "you're the only one who makes me lust this way" thing. The whole one-and-only concept. I'm so over it. The historical inaccuracies don't bother me that much, because after all it's steampunk, so it's an alternative world anyway, so as long as it makes sense in the world, it's fine. But I don't know... this just doesn't really interest me enough to keep reading. ( )