Review: ‘The Iron Wyrm Affair’ by Lilith Saintcrow

By Jessie Potts, USA TODAY

Genre: Fantasy, steampunk, paranormal

The Iron Wyrm Affair is one of the best steampunk books I’ve read in a long time. Steampunk is a ridiculously hard genre to write, because oftentimes authors will overuse words such as gears, clockwork, corsets, mechanical contraptions, etc. I felt that The Iron Wyrm Affair was this fantastical adventure book that happened to be set in an alternate history where steam and clockworks just happened to exist. Lilith Saintcrow has many books in many genres under her belt, but this was her first steampunk magic one, and in true Saintcrow fashion, there was adventure, miscalculations, romance on the side and quite a bit of action!

In the Bannon and Clare series, Emma Bannon is our heroine, and Archibald Clare is one of the heroes. What I found interesting is that Bannon and Clare become colleagues and then sort of friends, but there was no romance between the two. Bannon has a small thing going on with her Shield Mikal (I’ll explain Shield later), and Clare seems to just genuinely like her, at the end at least. OK, so let’s dive into the excellent plot and the crazy plot threads Saintcrow has tangled …

Emma Bannon is a Prime, the highest designation of sorcery. She is also of the Black side, not the White, nor Grey … which makes her interesting, unusual and extremely powerful. She is also loyal to Queen Victrix and, of course, the ancient spirit Britannia (who sort of possesses the queen from time to time). It’s a good thing that Emma is loyal because there is foul play afoot. Mentaths (think extreme geniuses who are able to deduce logically and spin equations in their heads) have turned up dead with certain body parts missing. The queen’s mother wants Queen Victrix under her control, and evil is on the horizon. Emma enlists the help of one of the last remaining Mentaths, Clare, to help solve the conspiracy.

Emma has a troubled past, and readers are given only morsels along the way. She used to have four shields, but they were killed by Mikal’s previous Prime. Shields are the physical protection to the Primes they serve. Mikal killed his own Prime to free Emma … which is unheard of and means that, although she owes Mikal, she also can’t trust him completely. Clare, on the other hand, has a problem around sorcery and mechanically altered things: They just aren’t logical, and logic is all that keeps Mentaths going.

There is an incredible amount of plot in the book. I simply can’t go over everything, though it’s all interconnected. The name of the book refers to dragons who are part-clockwork and part-magic. The Wyrms are dangerous and deadly, and if a Prime ever decides to work with one (though the Wyrms don’t usually take sides) it could be a fatal combination.

Bannon and Clare both are phenomenal characters, and I simply adored their interactions together. The only thing I wanted was more of Mikal. He is a secondary character who we only get to know through Emma’s and Clare’s eyes and interactions, yet I know he’s so, so much more. I hope the next book, The Red Plague Affair, will have Emma learning more about Mikal. If you enjoy action, steampunk, heat and a wee bit of spice, I highly recommend this book!

Jessie Potts, also known as Book Taster, adores books in all forms. She is a top 600 reviewer on Amazon and also does reviews for  Bitten By Books and  AllRomance.com.

You might also be interested in HEA’s  interview with Lilith Saintcrow and Jessie’s  review of The Hedgewitch Queen.

Article source: http://books.usatoday.com/happyeverafter/post/2012-08-28/the-iron-wyrm-affair-review-lilith-saintcrow/833557/1