Steam & Sorcery

Steam & Sorcery (2011) Cindy Spencer Pape (Gaslight Chronicles)

Set in London in 1851

Sir Merrick Hadrian is a Knight of the Order of the Round Table–a secret organization going back to the days of King Arthur, tasked with keeping England safe from supernatural threats.

Miss Caroline Bristol has been working as a governess since her mother died and she was left on her own.

She had enough money saved to exist for a short time in genteel poverty, the same state she’d known since her grandfather’s death just before her sixteenth birthday.

But after yet another employer places unasked hands upon her, she is once again seeking another position.

Merrick had no plans for a family, but when he stumbles upon a group of magically inclined children (one of whom may be the illegitimate son of a knight) he feels obliged to take them in, and desperately needs a governess to help him tame these street children.

Perhaps he could move into his club until his aunt and the staff got the little buggers under control. That shouldn’t take longer than a year. Ten at the outside. He could live in rooms for that long, he was sure of it.

This series has a variety of supernatural beings, and I am always fascinating by the different takes authors take on supernatural beings.

Once they were destroyed, vampyres only decayed as much as their corpse would have if left to decompose naturally from the moment of death.

And I do adore the love that Ada Lovelace gets here.

While Countess Lovelace had originally used punch cards like those from jacquard looms to feed instructions into the machine, those had gone out of favor after only a few years, replaced by much smaller and easier to work with ticker-tape reels.

It’s a fun story, and I’m glad I finally remembered to go back and reread it.

Publisher : Carina Press
Rating: 7.5/10

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