This novella is set in an alt America that lost the Revolutionary War and uses magic and steam tech. Kit doesn't believe in magic since it never seems to work around her. This puts her at odds with almost the rest of the world. As she is investigating a case of magical harassment she crosses paths with a childhood friend that works for the police and a deathmage that is very interested in her. The world building is very interesting to me and the introduction of the friends that help her out is very neat but the potential good guy/ bad boy romance triangle doesn't appeal to me that much. I'll read the next one because I want more of the setting and plot.


Digital copy to review provided by the publisher through Edelweiss ( )

Before I start talking about the book, I need to make a confession: I have mixed feelings about Lynn Viehl. I tried her Darkyn series when I was taking my urban fantasy baby steps and found it to be okay but not nearly as thrilling as other series in the genre. As a result, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about Her Ladyship’s Curse. I thought the premise of this story was intriguing but I wasn’t certain if Viehl’s writing would work better for me in a different genre. Thankfully, I did enjoy Her Ladyship’s Curse, though it’s not without flaws.

The good: great characters. Kit is a heroine you can immediately root for. She’s an independent orphan who disenchants magic for a living in a society that doesn’t approve of women working and that believes in magic. She’s got a brave heart and a strong mind, two traits I love in a protagonist. Kit’s also stubborn, kind, and skeptical, which made her really come alive for me. She’s got a rather interesting group of friends, including a fancy designer, a madam, and a disgraced inventor, and I want to know more about all of them.

There’s also Dredmore, a deathmage who has a keen interest in Kit. Kit is rather reluctantly attracted to him even though she thinks he’s a total fraud. To me, he came off as a high-handed jerk, though he does become more human as the story progresses. I’m waiting to see what happens in Part 2 before I decide how I feel about him.

The problematic: The worldbuilding lacked clarity. Viehl throws her readers into the world and the introduction was a bit too abrupt for me. I love being immersed in a story’s setting but I felt a bit lost with this one. It was more like drowning, which wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t have a clear sense of the history, it took a little while to realize that Toriana is the US and that Rumsen is probably somewhere near Seattle, and I generally felt quite confused about the setting for the first half of the story. I was pretty comfortable with the alternate history and the jargon by the time I hit the end of Her Ladyship’s Curse but it took far too long for me not to feel overwhelmed.

I also felt like the story ended quite abruptly. I know that this is Part 1 but I really wanted more story, to see if what would happen and to learn more about Toriana and her inhabitants. I’m interested to see the end of Kit’s story (or at least this story arc) so I hope Part 2 delivers a satisfying conclusion. Her Ladyship’s Curse is something of a tease in a lot of ways and I need some closure.

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A very interesting book about a female sleuth who dislikes her gender. Kit is an orphan who runs a detective agency. She is absolutely anti-magic, regardless of the supernatural events that happen around her. The story is about her getting involved with a not-so-pleasant case (which, by the way, isn't solved by the end of the book) and her courter, a deathmage.

The author is very descriptive (a bit too wordy at times), but it didn't take me long to pick up where the story is taking place. It does feel incomplete, but I am contemplating if I should buy the next part of the book. My only other complaint was that I didn't notice the glossary until I finished reading the story. It would have been better for there to be some kind of notice in the very beginning about it. ( )

Great writer. The characters are colorful and likable. The story keeps you reading and the end lands you on the computer buying the next one. Totally enjoyed this book. ( )

This is the first book of a duology but, if you ask me, I'd say this is actually one-half of a book.
There's a huge difference between being one-half of a duology and one-half of a book.

I liked the story and the characters well enough, hence the 3-stars rating. But there were too many useless parts (like lengthy descriptions of places and things, backgrounds of secondary characters) that felt like being put there just to bloat the book's words count. If you cut those parts out, you get the length of the average novella.
But it's not only about the length.

It won't be a spoiler if I say that the mystery doesn't even get "properly" solved in the end (yet another reason why this felt incomplete). And the love interest makes just a fleeting appearance throughout the whole book when… BAM! In the end, sudden fireworks.
Not surprisingly, the book ends on a cliff.

Bottom line: a nice almost-book, but ten kinds of awkward.
It's going to be sold for just $2.99 and the publication of the sequel will be just two months apart, so hopefully it's not going to be as awkward as I believe: you just have to wait until the entire "trilogy" is out and then get the whole book :) ( )