Overview:
A diabolical traitor who's always out of reach...
England, 1814. Lady Arianna Hadley and her husband, the Earl of Saybrook, want nothing more than to savor a quiet life embellished by the occasional cup of the finest chocolate. However, when they receive orders to travel to Scotland and capture an elusive traitor, they feel their duty to the Crown must come first.
In a laboratory in Scotland, they discover the corpse of a chemistry professor—and cryptic papers hinting at a dangerous new discovery now in enemy hands. Racing against time, Arianna and Saybrook pursue their most cunning and dangerous adversary yet through a complex network of intrigue involving exotic chocolates, daredevil aviators, a missing inventor, and a secret recipe that must be recovered at any cost...
My Review:
This is the third (and hopefully) not last book in the Lady Arianna Regency Mystery series. It takes place immediately after the events in the previous book, The Cocoa Conspiracy and I enjoyed that. Typically, in the next book in a series, events will be months and sometimes years after the previous one and that leaves me feeling like I have missed something.
Arianna, Saybrook, and their most trusted friend Henning travel to Scotland to continue to pursue the traitor known only as Renard. Henning's nephew has been jailed and Saybrook has secured papers from Grentham for his release but he is murdered instead, sending Henning into a deep depression and a path for revenge.
In the midst of all this, Saybrook and Arianna still need his help with talking to a chemistry professor but he also ends up dead, forcing the pair to return to London where they come across an unusual group of aeronauts - pilots of hot air balloons.
Soon, the identity of Renard is revealed and it becomes a race - literally - to catch the fox before all is lost.
I love that this is a direct continuation of the Cocoa Conspiracy but it seemed a little disjointed. For example, there was something hinted at throughout the book that ended up meaning nothing (which I was glad about) but the ending, while exciting, left me with more questions than answers because it just didn't fit in with what had been heavily implied throughout the rest of the series. When books do that, it makes it seem like the author didn't really have a well thought out plan for the series or book and that they were just making it up on the fly which leaves the reader feeling somewhat betrayed.
I also wish that we could learn much more about the characters. At three books in, we should know much more about them than we do and while I think they are well fleshed out, there is still too much information missing.
That being said, I still loved this book. As with the other two, there are recipes at the start of each chapter and it is still on my list of things to do to put them all together in a binder of some sort. I also really enjoyed the addition of hot air balloons, as that is something unique that I haven't read about in other books other than steampunk. I love it when authors can throw in details like that which are unusual but still make sense.
I guess if the author wanted to end the series here she could, although it still leaves me with a lot of questions. I don't know if it was intended to be a trilogy but that is what is seems like. I checked Penrose's website, though, and she says that she will be announcing a new full-length Lady Arianna novel soon. I hope that is the case because I really want to see this series continue! She also released a novella called The Stolen Letters last fall. I would love to read it but it is on Kindle only, which I don't have. Hopefully it doesn't reveal any important information that would lead into the next book (assuming there is one).
I highly recommend this series, especially if you love chocolate like I do!
No comments:
Post a Comment