Wait, that's the end?

I'm partial to steampunk, sorcery and Sherlock, so this is very much in my wheelhouse. I found it to be a mostly satisfactory end to the series (as apparently it is). It's a decent story, if a little heavily foreshadowed for my taste. Usually I find the highlight of Saintcrow's work to be that she takes a story in unexpected directions, and I had this one nailed around the 1/3 mark. But still fun, and I enjoy Emma, Archibald and Mikal enough to follow them around to see what they'll do. But. It's the Ripper. Making him the product of malign sorcery is a lot less frightening than his being just a man.

My main issue is with the narrator. I found her distractingly unappealing, and more than a little unsuited to voicing a majority of the characters. If she only voiced Emma, she brings a youthful quality to a young-seeming sorceress that would probably got her through. Unfortunately, elderly queens, prostitutes, witches, demons and any sort of man at all seem to be outside her range. But if you want to "read" this book while your eyes are busy with other things, she's better than the text-to-speech feature on a Kindle. Barely.

Overall, I'd say this feels much more like the book that you have to get through to get to the grand finale. And it's just a finale. Gah. This sounds much more negative than it should. It's a solid 4 stars.

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Love this series

I absolutely adore this series, but I am dying to find out Mikal's secret. I can't take much more suspense.

Maybe not the end

With this story, Lilith Saintcrow brings the Bannon and Clare trilogy to an end. It's a complex and compelling story that shows a wonderful ability to create a consistent and believable world in which sorcery and logic both operate under rules that provide a creative tension throughout.

I have seen some complain that this is the end of Bannon and Clare, but would disagree. At the end of this story you have two well-developed characters going their own ways, Each represents one half of the dichotomy present in the universe and each is potentially immortal due to their carrying a philosopher's stone. I can foresee many stories in the future featuring each of these characters as a sole protagonist. If she ever opens the universe to additional submissions for anthology projects I would love to write some stories about Clare in different times and outside of the bounds of Brittania.

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