Review: The Spiritglass Charade

This book is the sequel to The Clockwork Scarab (check out my review of it HERE), so if you haven't read that book, you might want to check it out first, unless you don't care about spoilers.

As this is a sequel, it kind of necessitates spoilers for the first book.

The Spiritglass Charade starts up where the other book left off pretty much. The villain who was killing the girls, known as the Ankh, is supposed to be dead, but even after more than a month has passed, Mina isn't so sure of that. Before she can ponder that thought too much, though, she and Evaline are summoned before Princess Alix, who not only wants to thank them for their service before in foiling the plans of the Ankh, but also has a new request of them.

It seems a dear friend of the Princess, Willa Ashton, convinced her missing brother is still alive, has starting seeing mediums in order to contact her dead mother and discover her brother's whereabouts. Worried that it's a ploy to either strip Willa of her fortune, or drive her insane, Princess Alix asks the girls to investigate.

As they prepare to visit Willa and attend one of the seances, Mina is confident that she can point out exactly what tricks the charlatan is using. After attending, though, Evaline is not so sure that there isn't something more than tricks going on, especially when she learns that the vampires have returned.

And of course, they still have Dylan Eckhert to help find his way back to his time period, not to mention Pix and Inspector Grayling to contend with...

This was an amazing read, and an excellent sequel to the first book. I really enjoyed the character development. With the vampires and spiritualism, the book did take a creepier turn than The Clockwork Scarab.

Again, my biggest problem with the book was the amount of swearing in it (not a ton, but as I've mentioned before, I'm not a fan). There was also a creepy incident with the object called a spiritglass which I'm not sure was necessary.

I do recommend it, though, if you like historical steampunk type books (and of course, if you loved The Clockwork Scarab, you don't need me to tell you to go check it out).

I got it out of the library, but if you already know you want to own the book, you can find The Spiritglass Charade* on Amazon in print, audiobook, or Kindle format.


 *This is an associate link, meaning if you purchase through it I get a referral fee but it costs the same as if you had just gone and ordered it through Amazon.