I read What Darkness Brings on my recent vacation, and (as I expected) I loved it!
I adore this series - it's like the dark/murderous side of Georgette Heyer's Regency London. Sebastian St. Cyr is such a great, tortured hero, and his complicated love life makes the series irresistible.
In book eight, What Darkness Brings, a notorious loan shark / jeweler named Daniel Eisler has been found murdered. Eisler was widely disliked (in fact no one is surprised that he was murdered); but what is surprising is that Russell Yates (the husband of Sebastian's former mistress Kat Boleyn) has been arrested for the crime. For Kat's sake, Sebastian gets involved in the investigation, because he's convinced that Yates is innocent and doesn't want him to hang for a crime he didn't do.
Meanwhile, Sebastian's wife of six weeks, Hero Jarvis, is up to her do-gooding ways, interviewing crossing sweeps about their egregious working conditions. But then a strange man starts following Hero while she's interviewing street urchins, and his threats make it clear that there's a bigger conspiracy behind Eisler's death. As Sebastian keeps investigating, he discovers that a large blue diamond (formerly owned by the Hope family) was rumored to be in Eisler's possession at the time of his death. With such a jewel missing, the stakes are raised infinitely, and Sebastian and Hero must work together to find the killer(s) before the killer(s) find them.
I think What Darkness Brings is a better mystery than When Maidens Mourn was. Sadly it doesn't have any shocking personal revelations about Sebastian's personal life, the way the last few books have; but it does nicely recap all the crazy stuff that's gone on, so I think it's actually a pretty good starting point if you've never read any of the series.
Now that I think about it; this series is kind of like the Regency book version of the tv show Alias
. Murder! Spies! Long-lost siblings! Shocking familial revelations! No wonder I love it so much...Rating: 4 out of 5
Should I recommend this to my grandma? Sure! As long as she can handle the complicated love triangle stuff. (Love quadrilateral? What do you call it when there are more than 3 people?) And Sebastian does kill a couple of the baddies...
And now, one of you can win a copy of What Darkness Brings for yourself! The giveaway will be live at 12am 5/30/13, and will run for a week! See the details below.
UPDATE 6/6: And the winner is entry #45, Danielle Schneider! Congrats Danielle, I'll be contacting you soon!
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This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I'm linking up with the Armchair BEA giveaways - you should check it out, there are tons!
