Review: Rip and Esme
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 23, 2013
This is the 2nd entry in Bec McMaster’s London Steampunk series. It is actually two works in one – Tarnished Knight, a novella, and Lena’s Decision, a short-story prequel to the next novel in the series, Heart of Iron.The novella starts 6 months after the end of Kiss of Steel. It is particularly concerned with the relationship between Esme and Rip, two secondary but important characters in Kiss of Steel. Because they had been thoroughly introduced in that previous work, the author needed only a small amount of space in which to elaborate on their backstory. Hence, novella format was perfect for the task.The dialog was crisp, clear and to the point. Because it’s a novella, the author didn’t waste space or task the reader’s patience by repeating conversations and facts over and over as characters interacted later with others. For example, after a particular set of scenes between Esme and Rip, the author writes these words:“What haven’t you been telling Blade? He’s desperate to know what’s going on.”Esme accepted the glass with a sigh of resignation. “Promise you won’t tell him?”Honoria’s smile widened. “Only if you reveal everything.”So Esme did.The short story was approximately 40 pages and takes place about a year and a half after the conclusion of the novella. It elaborates on the conflict between Will Carver and Lena Todd, again two secondary but important characters from the first novel.With this short story, the author has a major character inadvertently reveal to Lena a devastating secret that has been kept from her by her family and Will and thus whets the appetite for a major novel. However, short as it is and even with its purpose as a set-up, the author does not let it end in a frustrating cliffhanger. It ends with the promise of an action-filled new tale that will move our characters into the politics and conspiracies of the Echelon.The author did a fine job in both the novella and the short story of continuing to flesh out the characters to whom we were introduced in the first novel. Even the internal monologue portions of the chapters are consistently written in the same dialect of the Victorian era as is used by the characters in their spoken parts.One negative did surface, however. The editor(s) did not catch the consistent misuse of the possessive case (apostrophe s) when the plural case (just s) was the needed item.