200 Pages | Forever | Historical Paranormal |Darkest London #1 | 2012
She’s a woman with a secret, he’s a masked man with a curse. However, the mysterious Lord Benjamin Archer appears to be hiding more than just his face when a trail of dead bodies start piling up and all signs point to him as the murder.
I picked up this book because I read a review that mentioned this was a romance with a strong a plot, which is my jam in romance.
Firelight is a mush of genres having to be both a historical, a romance, and a paranormal at the same time, but I never feel fully immersed in the world because it felt like we were experiencing each genre separately.
There is a slow (almost imperceptible) reveal of the paranormal aspects so the first half of the novel read more like a straightforward historical, and the dramatic moments involving Archer and Miranda read as romance, which at times was over the top, and when the paranormal element comes into play it takes over everything. There was at times too much going on and not enough story for every element.
This is Callihan’s debut novel and I like a lot of her concepts and how she works mythology, lore, and magic into her dark version of Victorian London. Callihan is a visual writer and she does some fun wordplay that ever so slightly hints at the otherworldliness of her characters.
Speaking of characters Callihan has a tough female character who can hold her own and a brooding secretive hero with a dark past. I don’t think it’s spoilery to say she swaps some traditional gender roles at the end and the heroine saves the hero. Like he is legit passed out during the climax.
The other reason I picked up this book is because I was enjoying Moira Quirk’s narration of The Raven Prince and since I had some technical issues with the file, I went in search of what else she did. Quirk is a master of accents and she melts into the narrative with a seamless non-obtrusive narration
I’m open for reading book 2
Fun Fact
I never watched it but for you GUTS fans, Moira Quirk was the “Mo” of Mike & Mo, the host of Nickelodeon’s Guts. Also, this audio won a 2013 AudioFile Earphones Award. Well deserved