Veronica and Newbury find themselves on a case of "cloning" that could destroy the queen. However, personal matters including the safety of Veronica's sister, Amelia, and Maurice's opium use often create additional complications. ( )

Somehow Michael Bay got hold of the manuscript, but it's still a nice uncomplicated steampunk novel. ( )

I am late to the party on George Mann (this being book 3 & me having not yet read books 1 or 2), but I intend to make up for lost time. DAMN but that was fun (with steampunk, even!)!

Check out these elements: Victorian England with steam-driven carriages & airships, seedy opium dens, secret agents, secret societies, reckless thieves, duplicate people, steam-driven shoulder cannons, clairvoyance, the occult, and, at the center of the web, Queen Victoria herself, literally heartless, with only clever machinary and a mysterious fluid keeping her alive.

I will acquaint myself with the other books with all speed. ( )

I have not yet read book #2 in this series, so I don't know how much better I might have liked #3 if I had. It's a ripping yarn, to be sure, and I was very happy that Veronica displayed her courage, prowess, determination, and loyalty. However... what I want from Sir Maurice is intelligence, and he seemed a bit slow on the uptake in this one. ( )

As I said, I'm a sucker for pretty cover art, and the book before this in the series (The Osiris Ritual) finished on such a cliff-hanger that I had to have this next one.

The problem is, the cliff-hanger is only resolved about 3/4 of the way through the book and given how big of a problem the thing was (sorry for lack of clarity, I'm trying not to spoil), it was very emotionally unsatisfying.

The other problem is that the time-line of Newbury & Hobbes mysteries now seems very squashed, because I'd assumed that, by the start of the third book, they'd been a team for ~18 months, but apparently it's not quite a year and that seems to be a lot to pack in. What happens in this book explains why book 2's main villain was such a let down after a book and a half of build up, because the author appears to have decided to turn spoiler into the main villain of the series.

I will read the rest of the books, but not with the same sense of "must read, must read". ( )