Narrated by Sienna Frances
The books that comprise Bec McMaster’s London Steampunk and Blue Blood Conspiracy series are, to my mind, the best books to have appeared in the genre in recent years. The world-building is meticulous, the characters are all complex and well-rounded, the plotting is tight and the romances are wonderfully steamy, with lots of delicious sexual tension along the way. Her heroes are sex-on-a-stick and her heroines are kickass women who never need to remind readers how unconventional or badass they are; the author shows us everything we need to know. I’ve read all the books (bar one) in the series, and thoroughly enjoyed them all; I’d rate the series as a whole as a keeper, and haven’t awarded any of the books anything lower than a B+. In audio, however? Well, that’s a different story. The two series have different narrators; Alison Larkin narrates the London Steampunk series, and Sienna Frances – who is new-to-me – the Blue Blood Conspiracy books including You Only Love Twice, and while both are accomplished and talented performers, neither is particularly well-suited to the material or able to elevate the stories into must-listens or listen-instead-of-read books. Personally, I think a series like this – where there are more male characters than female ones – needs a male narrator. YMMV of course – Em gave high praise to Ms. Frances’ performance in her review of Mission Improper, but Ms. Frances didn’t work as well for me.
While each book in the series boasts a self-contained plot and an HEA for the central couple, there’s an overarching storyline running through the entire series which makes it advisable to have read the previous books – AND it means there will be spoilers in this review.
The overarching story of the Blue Blood Conspiracy series concerns the search by the Company of Rogues – headed by the Duke of Malloryn – for whoever is behind the scheme to destabilise the still-fragile new order that has followed the overthrow – three years before – of the cruel and despotic Echelon. And now, a new danger has come to light – a mysterious killer known as the Chameleon is rumoured to have been tasked with killing the Queen, and Malloryn is determined to stop them at all costs. His right-hand in the CoR, spy and assassin Gemma Townsend, accompanies Malloryn to view the body of the Chameleon’s latest victim. Except… the dead man is the very one they’d suspected of being the Chameleon. It’s this extremely puzzling development that leads to the disturbing discovery that London faces an even greater threat than Malloryn had originally imagined – and that an old adversary believed long dead is alive and kicking and out to cause chaos and anarchy… and won’t rest until Malloryn is destroyed in both body and spirit.
Five years earlier, while on a mission to the Blood Court of Russia, Gemma met and fell in love with Dmitri Zhukov – who was technically her enemy, as he was promoting the treaty between the Blood Court and the Echelon Gemma and Malloryn were there to undermine. Gemma and Dmitri fell in love against their better judgements – but on a fateful night, Gemma was shot by her lover and left for dead, saved only by Malloryn’s quick thinking and action. She thought Dmitri died in St. Petersburg – until a recent attempt on her life (in The Mech Who Loved Me) was thwarted by someone she is almost convinced was him.
Believing Gemma had drugged him and then set his room on fire, Dmitri wanted nothing more than to forget her and the pain of her betrayal. Through a combination of technology and conditioning, Dmitri – now a powerful dhampir known as Obsidian – has been able to do just that, and has, over time, learned to hate her. But when his leader orders Gemma’s death, Obsidian finds there is something within him stopping him from killing her – or from allowing anyone else to do so. Instead of carrying out his orders, Obsidian kidnaps Gemma in order to keep her safe – knowing he’s likely signed his own death warrant, and not understanding why he cares; she used him and all he’s wanted for the last five years is revenge.
The second-chance romance between Obsidian and Gemma is sexy and filled with an intensity of emotion and attraction that haven’t abated in the five years since they fell in love. They’re both furious, each believing the other betrayed them in the worst possible way, but it gradually becomes clear that Obsidian’s memories have been altered, and the longer he spends around Gemma, the more he starts to question everything he’s been told and struggles to obey his conditioning. This gives Gemma hope that perhaps he can be persuaded to join the CoR in their fight against anarchy – and that maybe there’s a future for them after all.
Bec McMaster achieves the perfect balance between plot and romance in these books; there’s high-stakes action, plenty of steam and a fantastic twist I didn’t see coming – and she’s created wonderful friendships and camaraderie between the Rogues, all of whom appear throughout the series in ways that are integral to the storyline and are never just throwaway cameos. Gemma is a terrific heroine; deadly, quick-witted and fiercely loyal she’s someone you’d want on your side in a fight, no question. Obsidian is perhaps a little less clearly defined, but that makes sense, seeing that for much of the book he has very few memories or knowledge of himself.
As to the narration… Sienna Frances does a lot of things really well, but I found her voice very… monochromatic; it lacks depth and tonal variety. Her vocal acting, pacing and enunciation are good, as is her character differentiation; her characterisation of the female cast members is fine, but her male voices aren’t great and that posed a real problem. As I said at the beginning, Bec McMaster writes the most deliciously sexy heroes, but none of the main male characters here sounds anything of the sort, and that was incredibly disappointing. I remember the sexual chemistry between Gemma and Obsidian (and Malloryn and Adele in their couple of scenes) just oozing off the page when I read the book, but here it’s pretty non-existent.
I didn’t understand why Obsidian – who hails from Russia – sounds like he comes from my neck-of-the-woods (London/Essex), even though there’s specific reference in the text to Gemma having liked his Russian accent. And I really didn’t like Ms. Frances’ portrayal of Malloryn, who is probably my favourite hero out of all of them in this series; he’s ruthless and deadly and sexy AF, but she gives him this horribly nasal tone that would be more suited to a villain (and is indeed used to portray one of the bad guys, who sounds identical to Malloryn, but who fortunately doesn’t share any scenes with him). The best of her male portrayals is Charlie Todd (whose book is up next) – and I’m glad I hadn’t opted to review the previous book (The Mech Who Loved Me) because the Scottish accent Ms. Frances gives Kinkaid made me wince, and I’d probably have ripped out my earbuds and stomped on them if I’d had to listen to it for an entire book.
By far the biggest problem I had was with the narrative portions of the story, where Ms. Frances displays a repetitive intonation I quickly found grating and a tendency to clip words at the ends of sentences that was equally irritating. As we all know, liking – or not – a narration is a very subjective thing and what works for one person may not work for others. This is one of those times my ears tell me that this narrator is talented and that there are good things about her work here, but when it comes down to it, I simply didn’t care for her voice, and her inability to voice the hero and other principal male roles effectively had a very detrimental effect on the performance as a whole.
When I read the book, I gave it an A-, but as I was writing this review, I struggled to recall details I’d recently listened to because the narration just didn’t engage me. You Only Love Twice is a terrific story, but the narration doesn’t do it justice; I’m going to give the same content grade as I gave the ebook, but my overall recommendation is – if you have yet to read any of this fantastic series, stick to print if you can.
Note: This book has a cliffhanger ending (although the romance does have an HEA)
Caz
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