Forged by Desire

London Steampunk Series #4

By: Bec McMaster

Narrated by: Alison Larkin

Ten years ago, Perry fled her thrall contract to find sanctuary among the Nighthawks. In that time, she's become a respected woman of the Guard, and she's wanted Garrett Reed for as long as she can remember. But when a new case takes a chillingly familiar turn, Perry finds herself once again in the path of a madman - only this time there's nowhere left to run. Out of their depth and racing against time, Perry and Garrett must learn to trust the desire sparking between them or risk losing themselves forever to the darkness stalking London's streets.

©2014 Bec McMaster (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"The heady romance and dark suspense keep the pages turning, and a cliffhanger finale sets the stage for book five." ( Publishers Weekly)

Series drives me crazy....

Honestly, why does every character in the series feel like they can solve every problem by hiding it from everyone.

All the couples lie to each other all the time. They hide EVERYTHING from each other. Every single relationship in the series is based on a series of increasingly ridiculous lies and false assumptions. Then at the end the truth always comes out and then magically everyone forgives each other and lives happily ever after...

I know it's a romance, but at least use a different trope to mix it up occasionally.

Potential gives way to formula lies

What a shame to see Perry, the only female Nighthawk, go from fierce to fragile. After a decade of fighting alongside Garrett, she nonetheless hides her past for nearly the whole book. Even when she suspects the folks from her past aren’t just resurfacing, but are behind horrific crimes and could endanger innocents, still she keeps the truth from her family of supernatural cops. Yeah, her friends from over the past decade are cops but instead of, I don’t know, trusting them to serve and protect, she repeatedly (a) freezes, (b) flees, (c) lies or (d) all of the above. Yep, it’s (d). The endless lies schtick is sadly the author’s go-to plot device, along with focusing more on the romance than the mystery procedural. It might be because I was so tired of the formula of lies and unnecessary drama, but I found the slow burn to the 2-3 naughty scenes to be super dull.

The mystery procedural was far more interesting, with human experiments and a sinister evil scientist. Alas, there’s only one cool chapter involving the discovery of the torture pad and the evil scientist barely gets more than a cameo. The other villain, per the usual formula, is a Blueblood of the Echelon, portrayed by the narrator with the formula nasal voice for every BigBad in each book.

Sigh, so much lost potential to have had Perry open up to her fellow Nighthawks at the beginning and have the entire team assemble to bring the game afoot. A minor consolation is the ending, finally promising to have the series’s couples come together to stand up to the Echelon … in the next book, which finishes the series with a bang.

Also, this book lays the ground work for the spin-off series, The Blue Blood Conspiracy, which picks up three years after book 5 in this series. Spin-off book 1 is Mission Improper, and features Byrnes, who was my favorite supporting character from this book.

Love the steampunk world that was built.

A good addition to the story. I think this book would have been just a tad bit better if it didn't focus so much on hiding ones secrets and focused on how to solve the problem. I was a slightly annoyed with how much Perry focused on her fear of telling Garrett her true feelings, but that was only a small part of the story. My favorite book is still Lynch and Rosa's story. I recommend reading series in order to get the full benefit of the books. I would like to see a book about Burns and the girl who has a clockwork heart (can't remember her name). Narrator is pretty good, although all of the echelon seems to have a smarmy voice, which was a bit annoying. I think she should have reserved that voice for only one character.