God Save the Queen by Kate Locke

Wow - best laid plans and all that! I discovered that Kate Locke is also Kady Cross and planned to post reviews on both God Save the Queen and The Girl in the Steel Corset back to back. Sadly I still haven't gotten around to Girl in the Steel Corset. And since God Save the Queen has been staring me in the face as a to-be-blogged book for MONTHS, I'm just gonna go ahead and get this post up already :)

Kate Locke gets big props from me for this first in her Immortal Empire trilogy! Set in a somewhat skewed present-day England where Queen Victoria (a vampire) still reigns, the series introduces a world where vamps, weres, and goblins exist as a result of the Black Plague. Xandra Vardan, a halvie (born of a human mother and vampire father) is part of an elite force that protects the aristocrats. When her sister goes missing, Xandra becomes embroiled in a conspiracy like no other!

For anyone craving something new and unique in the urban fantasy realm, God Save the Queen is for you! I adored everything about this book: the premise, the world, and the characters -- oh, my! (I'll tone down my exclamation points now.)

Xandra was pretty fantastic, I have to say. The big reveal was a bit expected, but only because it had to be what it was. I'm not going to say any more about it, but I'll bet most of you will figure it out. 

Book two, The Queen is Dead, will be out in February and is tops on my list of anticipated 2013 reads thanks to God Save the Queen. And one of these days I'll get around to the Kady Cross steampunk series as well.