B+
Genre: Historical: European, Paranormal, Regency, Romance
The Curse of Lord Stanstead by Mia Marlowe is a delightful blend of romance and paranormal. It’s like a Regency X-Men with hints of Hellboy and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I know a lot of you just sat up real straight: catnip alert ahoy!
This is the first book in the MUSE series, MUSE standing for Metaphysical Union of Sensory Extraordinaires.
Sticking with my earlier analogy, the Professor X of this group would be the Duke of Camden. He’s the founder of MUSE and he possesses psychic abilities that are never fully revealed. He finds people in England who have supernatural talents, helps them harness and understand those talents, and offers them a place in his crime fighting super group. You see, there are supernatural baddies out there, and Camden has taken it upon himself to protect England and the crown from them.
When the book opens, Camden has discovered that debutante Cassandra Darkin has recently started manifesting abilities as a fire mage. Cassie doesn’t know that she can call forth and control fire, just that mysterious conflagrations keeping popping up around her. Camden sends Garret Sterling, Lord Stanstead, to locate Cassie and bring her into the fold.
Garret can “send” thoughts to people–basically implanting suggestions into their minds. To keep him from being a total Killgrave, Garret can’t actually make people do anything they aren’t inclined to do already. Garret also has a Tragic Past. When he has a nightmare about someone, that bad dream comes true for them. He dreamed his wife was ill, and she became sick and died shortly thereafter. He’s afraid to get close to anyone because he doesn’t want to dream about them.
Now, I take Cymbalta for my fibro, and one of the side effects is that it makes my dreams super weird and vivid. It’s a good thing I don’t have Garret’s superpower because my husband would wake up to find all his fingers replaced by spoons or something.
Anyway, as a fire mage, Cassie’s power is connected to her emotions and also her sexual appetite. Basically horny=flames. Being sexually satiated helps her control her powers. Garret, being a selfless man, volunteers to please her. Initially this means no recriprocation for him. Ha ha, Garret, no one cares about your stupid boner.
This part confused me a little because if all Cassie needed were orgasms, she could do that on her own. There is a reference made to self-satisfaction being less gratifying, but I don’t know, I can rock my own world. I guess that’s life in a world pre-Jimmy Jane.
The rest of the book is Garret and Cassie having hot sex, trying not to fall in love with each other (earlier reference to his Tragic Past) and chasing down a supernatural baddie only known as The ASP.
I loved that there was a lot of action in this book. The supernatural threats drive the plot forward, but also force Cassie and Garret together, so it helps the romance as well. Also having the paranormal element not be werewolves and vampires was a nice change of pace.
There is clear set up for future books, especially the Duke of Camden’s, but it wasn’t overwhelming. My only real gripe is that the end was pretty easy to see coming. I was a little baffled that it took the hero and heroine as long as it did to puzzle things out.
The Curse of Lord Stanstead is a good fit for readers who are burned out on straight Regency romances and need a dash of spice, or for paranormal readers who are sick of brooding vampires. If The Order of the Muse series follows the usual formula of the second book being stronger than the first, I will be very happy indeed. I already have The Madness of Lord Westfall downloaded on my ereader, ready to go.
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I’ve read all three books in the series. This one was my favorite.
I loved this review. You said it right when “Regency X-Men with hints of Hellboy and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” would be catnip! I’m already searching my library’s website for the series 😉
And also self-satisfaction not being enough? Pffft. I guess that’s life in a world not only pre-Jimmy Jane, but pre-romance novels or pre-HANDS (too much?).
Weird coincidence, I just finished the second book, The Madness of Lord Westfall (haven’t read the first one), and hated it. Almost nobody used their superpowers, the hero was boring as hell despite having an interesting backstory, the plot was slim, nothing happened for about 90% of the book, and then when stuff did finally happen everyone got a bad case of the TSTLs. I peaced-out of the series after that slog, but it’s interesting to hear other people’s almost-totally opposite opinions on the same series. I think I might be the outlier.
Pre-shower massager as well. How did people survive in the olden days?!?
I’m intrigued and going off to read reviews to decide (I’ve just had a string of “What am I reading?!?” bad-decision purchases, you know how it is.)
It’s really funny to me how romances, particularly sexy romances, skirt the issue of FEMALE MASTURBATION (dun dun dun). I noticed this in a book everyone but me liked (“Asking for It” by Lilah Pace) – the main characters spend a lot of time negotiating sexual play based on their rape fantasies. Pretty intense stuff. And yet, when there’s a scene where the hero asks the heroine if she has any sex toys around and then uses it on her, the book sidebars an explanation of how an ex bought it for her (no women ever buy such things for themselves, you understand) and it was a joke (of course) and she never used it (of cooooouuuuurse). I found it very odd, especially in a book that was otherwise about fairly advanced sexual ideas, that the book has to stop and insert an explanation that makes the heroine’s possession of a sex toy blameless.
I am stalled out in this one at about 30%. Nothing seems all that important or urgent to me plot-wise and the manifestation of the h’s powers was kind of limp and didn’t really seem anything more than an excuse to induce boning. I wish I loved it, because it sounded right up my alley. Ah well…maybe I’ll try finishing it next week.
You had me at Regency X-Men.
I saw this before, but didn’t realize it was Regency X-Men. On the to-read list it is!
What series/movie is the girl with powers gif from? My Googlefu sadly failed me.
I one-clicked this so hard, I’m surprised my amazon account didn’t start smoking. You had me at “Regency X-Men”, thus breaking my NYE Resolution of no more books til the TBR mountain becomes a hill…
@LK the gif is from Hellboy
Love this book. Stong heroine with awesome superpower. And She Goes First!
I’ve hit a bad PNR slump so I am combing through ALLLLLL the paranormal backlog reviews to find the goodies. Pages and pages later, I’VE HIT GOLD WHOOT!
I know this comment is four years late, but if you could do a rec league for historical paranormal romances, I would be so happy. I picked this book up from a books on sale post, and absolutely powered through it. I stayed up until four o’clock reading, and realizing I would not be able to finish and get any sleep, I stopped, slept for eight hours, and then finished the book as soon as I got up. I had no idea that historical paranormal romance would be such powerful cat nip. I probably should have though because I had a similar reaction to Outlander which has elements of historical fiction, romance, and paranormal fiction even if it doesn’t fit comfortably in any of these categories.