The London Steampunk and The Blue Blood Conspiracy Series

This review is a rewriting and consolidation of my old reviews for the complete London Steampunk series and its spin-off series The Blue Blood Conspiracy. Having read several of these books before I had started making regular notes about the books I read, my old reviews are very sparse in details, sometimes struggling to reach 50 words. Combining, my old notes and the memory I have of the series with my more controlled method of rating would place it solidly in the 7/10 region being a mostly forgettable series with good entertainment value.

Despite telling one continuous overarching story through each series with The Blue Blood Conspiracy being a direct sequel, London Steampunk’s individual books each cover one full romance cycle from the introduction of two new love interests, the development of their relationship and their personal happy ending which. This is a challenge to do successfully 10 separate times as each new couple also means the necessity of being able to write 2 new compelling characters who are meant to be together. Overall, the author succeeds at this more than they fail; owing to the continuous nature of the story, several characters can be set up and introduced in an earlier book before it becoming their turn to fall in love with another character in a future book. This saves some introduction work in the book the relationships are meant to develop in and allows for additional storytelling. The exception here obviously being the first book which needs to do the heavy lifting in world-building and as such it tells one of the less convincing romances despite both Honoria and Blade being individually interesting characters. However, whilst the second book should have benefitted from a lot of the set up being already done, Will and Lena turn out to be less interesting characters and it is only in book 3 that everything starts clicking into place both for the author’s writing and my reading experience at the time.

A side-note is necessary here to discuss how my mindset was different when I originally read London Steampunk which heavily leans onto the sexual side of relationships, an aspect I find very little interest in nowadays (I suppose we all have a smut liking phase). Blue bloods’ sex drive is canonically very high, Will and Lena’s romance reaches a breaking point due to the nature of Will’s werewolf semen, and book 3 has a character use the blue blood libido against them using sexual tension as a distraction. I was originally very impressed by this last point, scoring book 3 a 10/10 for setting a new standard of how sex can be used to create an interesting story without simply being for the sake of eroticism. However, I’m unsure whether this would hold true were I to revisit this today as my view on the use of sex in books has significantly cooled down since.

Moving on to the fourth book, I start to notice a pattern in these series where the relative quality of the books follows a sine wave pattern. Where book 1 was good at setting up the world with a meh romance, book 2 was overall a step down, book 3 climbs back up the ladder and surpasses book 1, and book 4 goes back down especially in the relationship area by having it revolve around the lack of communication cliché. This also brings into question whether the 10 books and 10 romances were necessary when removing each lacklustre entry would bring the series down to a more digestible and tighter 6 book series.

The London Steampunk series closes out in a satisfying way and does not imply the necessity of its spin-off series and manages to spice up the rhythm of the romance dance by having the love interests be part of the blue blood aristocracy for a change instead of the usual lower class blue blood/human relationships shown repeatedly in the previous books. Taking a quick break to think this series through it exemplifies the comfy romance read as I cannot remember what the story was really about, it is entirely forgettable but I have a positive memory of it and I cannot remember a moment I was bored reading it. The overuse of sex could bump it down to a 6 or 6.5 by my modern tastes but qualitatively this is a solid 7.

The previously mentioned lack of necessity of a spin-off or sequel is felt in book 1 of The Blue Blood conspiracy where the romance is the star as the story set up ends up being less interesting and only starts picking up some steam in book 2. Unfortunately the second entry also reads a lot like a 50 shades of grey fan fiction with an unhealthy and creepy relationship. Amusingly, book 3 is once again the stand out in the series with a protagonist who struck a chord with me as I simply loved her fashionable victorian spy character with a convincing romance and good storytelling.

It is just as book 4 starts showing some signs of the series overstaying its welcome by telling an uninteresting teenage romance story that the series wraps up with its 5th and final entry. The last book’s biggest flaw is that its finale inolves a fight and the author clearly isn’t an action writer which makes the ending fall a bit flat.

The brevity with which I covered The Blue Blood Conspiracy here really goes to show how bland the story really is. The world through both series is an interesting one albeit an arguably very cliché one (London, steampunk, romance, vampires, sex would all be on a teenage girl’s reading bingo card), but it does not really tell an original story with it, mostly revolving around who gets to be the ruler of society. Nevertheless the romances are nice enough, and it all ends in a very feel good way. It’s a forgettable comfort read and there’s really nothing wrong with that.