Stop what you're doing, pick up this wonderful gothic, historical series, and let yourself get immersed in this wild, engrossing, and terrifying world.
I LOVED this series. It's gritty, dark, painful, romantic, awful, and contains -pleasantly - historical veracity in even the most minute details. The only qualm I have with these books is the overuse of exposition. The character interactions were so rich and well-done that I found myself wanting more and more, and being a little disappointed with the wall of descriptive text. However, it wasn't a deterrent to me. These books are smart, well-discovered, and actualized. Even the most inane of charters felt real to the story.
“No one will hurt you,” he said softly, menacingly. “Unless I will it.”
I love that these books explore morality in shades of gray and challenge the notions of who and what can indeed be considered 'good.' There are people who commit heinous crimes openly but only to those who are the insidious aberrations of society (rapists, kidnappers, molesters) and champion the weak or misfortunate. Juxtaposing that are those who represent the church and all that which is historically regarded as 'good'; those who -if most of the priests are concerned, would just as quickly take a bribe, exploit a young boy into becoming an unwilling catamite, torture an innocent to further their cause, and/or watch children die of hunger when an intervention was possible. This characterization is not an unfair one; this author is clearly interested in weaving and imbuing honest historical realities into the narrative, and as such, including a fair recounting of men's bastardization of God's will for their own attempts at manifesting and keeping power.
I've seen people castigate this series and categorize it as an affront to feminism, but I don't see how. This is indeed a dark story, but there is no eschewing of feminist goals for me. I've read sundry romance and fantasy books that literally reduce women to so lowly an object that they are rendered completely useless without autonomy or development and the story could just as easily move on without them, but don't see the comment sections full of derision.
In the end, I think the story really becomes strongest in the third and fourth books, but I loved this series so much. It scratched an itch I didn't know I had. It may not be a series for everyone, but this is a favorite of mine.
Series summary:
Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Earl of Enzie, has made a devil’s bargain: he’s going to sell Rowena, Isla’s beautiful and innocent younger sister, to a known murderer in exchange for forgiveness of his debts. Tristan Mountbatten, the infamous Duke of Darkling Reach, has a habit of marrying such women and then disposing of them…horribly. For this and other reasons, there are rumors. That he practices the dark arts; that he’s a necromancer; that he is, in fact a demon. And studying him, this notorious politician and realm builder across the table, Isla can believe it. Believe it all. Because she knows, even from that first introduction, that Tristan Mountbatten isn’t human. No one else seems to have noticed the obvious, but Isla has…and is terrified. For herself, but more so for the sister she loves. The sister who’s been more of a daughter, the sister for whom she’d sacrifice anything. So Isla makes a devil’s bargain of her own.