
Picking up right from where the last book left off, this volume sees the Athena Club rush back to England to try and find and rescue one of their own and in the process they uncover a larger plot that threatens the throne itself.
While I had some problems with the previous book in the series, this more than made up for them. It’s tight, tense and terrific. The interruptions from the other Athena Club members into Catherine’s writing process are much less irritating than the previous volume (although there are some adverts for previous books, Mary clamps down on that) and they’re now something I looked forward to rather than sometimes groaned at.
I love all the members of the club, they’re great characters (I think Diana has become my favourite), and although we got to spend more time with Alice this time round, the newest member, Lucinda gets little to do, which is a shame. It would have been nice to spend longer in the head of someone who’s just starting out on her journey as a vampire and is still trying to figure it out.
I’ve read a number of books recently where the villain’s motivation is plain racism. I find that particularly difficult to read, but it’s important – Moriarty’s way of thinking in this book is gaining far too much ground in the real world, and anything that can remind people that it’s not a sensible and acceptable way of thinking is to the good. I was very glad to see the Golden Dawn (urgh) get their comeuppance here.
After cutting someone’s head off with a knife, Diana calmly goes back to eating jam roly-polys, apparently without a care in the world. But killing someone isn’t something that can be shrugged off that easily, especially in such a grisly fashion. I would have liked to have seen more fallout from that. Yes, she’s Edward Hyde’s daughter, but I’d still have liked to have seen how she felt after doing the deed. Or at least the reaction to the other Club members when they learned what she’d done.
I’d drop half a star for the grumble in the spoiler, but still round it up, ending the trilogy on a high note.