This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Erica. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Paranormal Romance category.

Here is Erica's review:

I loooove the London Steampunk series by Bec McMaster. Okay, to be completely honest, until incredibly recently, I had only “read” the first two books, Kiss of Steel and Heart of Iron, as audiobooks. Now, due to some weird quirk of my nature, if I start a series in a particular format, I like to stick to that format for the rest of the series. So, since I had started in audiobooks, I was going to wait until the rest of the series was released as audiobooks. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Then the RITA Reader Review Challenge was announced and I saw that Forged by Desire was on the list, and I desperately wanted to review it, so I broke down and bought My Lady Quicksilver (book 3), “The Curious Case of the Clockwork Menace” (a novella, what I call Garrett and Perry part 1), and of course Forged by Desire.

And then, because my love for this world knows no bounds, I decided to go ahead and start this series before the other books I had signed up to review. So I ploughed through My Lady Quicksilver, and Garrett and Perry part 1, and then I started Forged by Desire because I was SO EXCITED.

And I got about 70% of the way through it and set it down.

For, like, a month.

Then I realized that my review was going to be due soon, and I had no idea what the story was about. I mean, I knew it was about Garrett and Perry, but the plot I remembered most was from the novella.

And so I started over and read both “The Case of the Clockwork Menace” and Forged by Desire again.

Now, let me back up a minute and say quickly, that I think you could technically read Forged by Desire as a stand-alone. Technically. But you’re going to miss a lot. A lot. McMaster is excellent at world-building, but there’s a certain amount of “here’s the quick backstory, and now we’re back to the current story” in the later books. So if you haven’t read the other books in the series you won’t know what all of this is leading to, and this book ends with… not a cliffhanger, exactly, but McMaster has been slowly and steadily been building this arc, and at the end of Forged by Desire, everything is coming to a head. Plus, Garrett and Perry part 1 (“The Curious Case of the Clockwork Menace”) is…. It’s really helpful to understanding some of what’s going on. As is My Lady Quicksilver, now that I think about it. And while there are brief explanations of some of what happened earlier, you’ll miss a lot if you don’t read the earlier books. (And, for the record, I am not a huge “read everything in order or read an entire series” type of chick. I’m very much, “oh this one sounds good, screw the rest of the series.”)

So, now that I have all of that out of the way, Forged by Desire.

So, the London Steampunk world is one in which where London is ruled by the Echelon infected with the “craving virus” which turns them into blue bloods (they only get sustenance from blood, and their blood turns blue, and they’re faster, stronger, etc – basically they’re what we would call vampires), and when the levels of the virus get too high then the blue bloods become vampires – insane creatures with zero humanity and even less control over their bloodlust. So, when CV levels are closely monitored and blue bloods with too-high CV levels are executed before they can turn into a vampire and destroy the city. In the Echelon, the craving virus is considered a gift to the higher classes, but there are a few who get infected who are not noble men, and some of them join the Nighthawks, which function like a police force. Humans have little to no rights in this world.

Okay, got it?

Forged by Desire starts a few weeks after the end of My Lady Quicksilver, and Garrett is now the acting Master of the Nighthawks. His CV levels are dangerously high after a bad accident in the previous book, and there’s this insane sexual tension between him and his former partner and bestie Perry. They had an incident at the opera in My Lady Quicksilver, and it completely changed their relationship and both Perry and Garrett are struggling with how to move forward.

Perry is one of two female blue bloods, and no one knows anything about her before she showed up at the Nighthawks nine years ago.

The Nighthawks begin to investigate the horrific deaths of a couple of young debutantes, and Perry and Garrett are forced to start dealing with their changing relationship as they work together, and Perry’s past literally comes back to haunt her.

Okay. This is not a bad book. But Perry and Garrett keep waffling between going for each other and deciding not to because they both want to protect each other, and…. I dunno, I was frustrated with them. I never felt like I really learned what actually happened at the opera. I saw Garrett’s nightmares about the opera, but I don’t know if they just flirted or if they started making out or what the heck actually happened between them. And since it is referred to all the damn time, it’s slightly annoying that I don’t actually know. And the damn waffling! UGH. The waffling. And the bad guy was so obvious as to be eye-roll-inducing. But the mystery was never point of the story, so I guess I should give that up. But there were definitely moments where I was yelling at Perry just to tell Garrett what was going on. JUST TELL HIM, DAMN IT. But because I loved Perry and Garrett from their novella, I stuck with it even when I was screaming at them. Well, the second time. The first time, I admit, I did give up on them.

But the end… Good grief, you guys, the end almost totally made up for it. The end was so fantastic. Although one bad guy was dispatched so quickly that it was almost anti-climactic. But the rest of it was SO PERFECT. I want to gush about it so damn much, but I won’t because it would be mad spoilery. And then the resolution of Perry and Garrett’s relationship was lovely. And then, like I said earlier, everything comes to a head at the end of the book, and it’s getting pretty intense in the London Steampunk world. And while it’s not precisely a cliffhanger, I really feel the need to read the next book immediately.

So… A grade? Hmmmm… World building: A, Characters (in just this book): C, Ending: A+. So, averaging everything together – let’s go with a B.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hide from the world and read Of Silk and Steam right this minute.