Liviania’s review of The Kraken King Part I: The Kraken King and the Scribbling Spinster (The Iron Seas, Book 4) by Meljean Brook
Steampunk Romance published by InterMix 15 Apr 14
One of the latest trends for romance novels is the serial novel. I’m not quite sure how I feel about serial novels, honestly. I’m the type of reader who frequently waits for an entire series to come out before I read it, much less the entire novel. I’m also not sold on the price, most of the time. Yes, $1.99 is a great price point. But with eight parts, that’s $16 – more than the previous three Iron Seas novels cost in trade paperback. Certainly more than they cost now in mass market. It seems like it would be more economical to wait for the whole novel, in addition to getting to devour it all at once instead of in chunks of less than fifty pages. But skipping The Kraken King entirely? That’s not an option for me, and I doubt it’s an option for anyone reading The Iron Seas series.
The Kraken King starts off with a bang in “The Kraken King and the Scribbling Spinster.” Geraldine is traveling by airship with an excessively chatty friend, when the airship is attacked and destroyed. Geraldine and her friend Helene survive through the efforts of Geraldine’s incognito bodyguards and the Kraken King, Ariq. Of course, Geraldine is actually Zenobia Fox, the popular author and sister of Archimedes (the hero of Heart of Steel). She set on out the trip to have an adventure of her own, but being stranded in a notorious smuggling village isn’t quite what she imagined.
There’s an instant attraction between Zenobia and Ariq, but it’s complicated by several factors. There’s the fact that Zenobia is traveling under an assumed identity and can’t reveal her true one due to her traveling companion and the fact that Ariq is likely enemies with her brother. Since they are in a foreign country, Ariq is usually speaking with his people in their own language. Zenobia has to rely on translated eavesdropping, which gives her even less of the whole picture than eavesdropping. There are clearly a lot of trust issues to overcome in the next seven parts.
“The Kraken King and the Scribbling Spinster” also promises a lot of action. The attack on the airship is clearly part of a larger plan, and what that plan is needs to be deduced before it is fully enacted. The mid-air battle is quite thrilling, and Meljean Brook describes the action both clearly and cinematically. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the story to see how the action unfolds, in addition to how the romance progresses.
All eight parts of The Kraken King are available now, separately.
Grade: B+
Summary:
A former smuggler and thief, Ariq—better known as the Kraken King—doesn’t know what to make of the clever, mysterious woman he rescues from an airship besieged by marauders. Unsure if she’s a spy or a pawn in someone else’s game, Ariq isn’t about to let her out of his sight until he finds out…After escaping her fourth kidnapping attempt in a year, Zenobia Fox has learned to vigilantly guard her identity. While her brother Archimedes is notorious for his exploits, Zenobia has had no adventures to call her own—besides the stories she writes.
But when she jumps at the chance to escape to the wilds of Australia and acquire research for her next story, Zenobia quickly discovers that the voyage will be far more adventurous than any fiction she could put to paper…
Read an excerpt here.
Other books in this series:
