God Save the Queen

For me, the biggest honor I can give a book is giving it a place on my shelves. Not to knock ebooks..I have plenty of those and love being to take all the books with me when I head out. After having this series in its ebook counterpart, I'm so happy to finally have a hard copy. Why? Because I absolutely love this series/world. I love the steampunk elements. That's a genre I don't get enough of even though I do love it.

Xandra Varda is a member of the Royal Guard in a world full of humans, vampires, werewolves and goblins. Up until this point in her life everything was great. Not perfect..but great. Then something happens to her sister and everything goes tits up. She's about to find out what truths are lies. Even the ones about her. I like Xandra. I find her quite kick ass. (She fights in a corset!. It IS Victorian London after all). She had a touch for the melodramatic at times...which is a plus for me. “What have you brought us?” “Meat.” (Do let me know when you get to that part because I fooking LOVE it.)

I can't leave without talking about Vexation McLaughlin. Alpha werewolf extraordinaire. Does he have a big role in the book? No...but the book isn't about him. He can stand next to me and do nothing all bloody day. Is he delicious nonetheless? Yes ma'am. Is that all it takes for me? Apparently.

Queen Victoria is a vampire. Werewolves and vampires are the aristocrats. They are protected by the halvies. Goblins live below the streets and are to be feared. Alexandra is a halvie that hates humans and protects the elite. While looking for her sister, she finds out that halvies are being brutally experimented on. She has to uncover the truth about these experiments. She might find some truths about herself as well. I loved the alternate history of this book! The characters are great, and I really started to warm up to the goblins.

This was a fun romp of a book! While God Save the Queen is definitely an urban fantasy, any steampunk elements seem to be more incidental then anything else. That's not to say this is a bad thing and the alternate reality in which the story takes place does a fantastic job of explaining the technology and customs of the day, and why they work for the world it's placed in.

While I liked the main character, she's frankly overpowered. You never feel as if she's really in any danger. She's far to ‘kick-ass' for that, as she's fond of saying herself. She's well fleshed out though, and her attitudes and actions come off as believable and understandable. And despite her overpowered status, she's fun to read about, so it's easy to overlook.

There is a lot of cursing thrown nonchalantly into the book, and while this isn't something I minded at all (it's the kind of smarmy, smart aleck kind of speech that most twenty year olds have currently) people with overly tender ears probably won't like it. And while there is the occasional sex scene, they are never graphic or described with any kind of detail.

The story itself moves along quickly, and I never felt myself growing bored with it. Every chapter ends in a way that makes you want to keep reading, without feeling like they're all ending cheap cliff hangers. With an interesting cast of characters and intriguing events to keep the pace going, I enjoyed every minute I spent with this book. That being said, it's a fairly quick read, which definitely works in its favor!

Overall, the weird combination of a present day, yet Victorian twinged paranormal world with a splash of steampunk for spunk works well. While it's certainly not a perfect novel, and definitely not deep or thoughtful, it was fun- And sometimes that's all that counts! I'd definitely recommend this to any fan of urban fantasy with a bit of light steampunk, and I for one will be picking up the next in the series.