One of the series I love this year due to awesome worldbuilding and interesting characters.
In a version of Steampunk London, there exists two Londons: London Above and London Below. London Above is where royalties and rich people live in the fresh air while London Below is where the poor, the sick , and the criminals live in the midst of fog.
Cherry St. Croix is an heiress with a tarnished (see what I did there?) family reputation. She's impatient with the London society but she follows all the silly rules due to her chaperon Fanny, and the servants that is dependent on her for work and shelter.
But in the cover of night, Cherry sneaks down to London below as a Collector, a bounty hunter. She dies her hair black and assorts with the dredge of society. She befriends gangs, prostitutes and criminals. She used to be one of them, you see? Growing up in an orphanage where the children are dosed with drugs to keep them quiet, Cherry has become dependent on opium, so she used her bounty booty to buy extra laudanum, and go hunt bad guys for the thrills.
Cherry takes on bounties from the Midnight Menagerie, a pleasure garden/circus in London Below that caters to the whims of everyone in London for the exchange of coin. Strangely, while every bit of London Below is smothered in fog, the Midnight Menagerie is clear of all fog which add to the whispers of witchcraft and magic.
Anyway, this is how it works, she brings her bounty to Hawke, the dangerous and shiveringly handsome Ringmaster and gets paid while trading insults. It is said that the Night Veil controls the Midnight Menagerie, think of them as a mystical Chinese triad. And if one doesn't pay their debts, you get your picture and information on the bounty board and people like Cherry will hunt your ass down.
Known to Hawke as Miss Black, she usually has free rein of the Midnight Menagerie, as she is known to the occupants from the prostitutes to the whips ( the officers, so to speak), but tonight is different. From Hawke cheating her out of her bounty, to him forbidding her to enter the garden.
Stubborn, reckless, and a non-believer of that crappy thing called magic, Cherry gets into all sorts of trouble, from facing ruin in the eyes of London Above's society, hunting down killers, fighting possessions from spirits who wants her body, dealing with her increasing addiction, and getting into debts from the Night Veil.
It is not a pretty story, I hope there will be a happy ending.
The characters are interesting with their many facets. I respect Cherry's determination and I understand why she needs her laudanum, but the increasing amount she's taken and then graduating to opium kind of makes me want to smack her. And then her dismissive behavior towards magic and how self-absorb she is of Hawke's efforts to save her from herself and the Night Veil makes me want to smack her some more. One would say it is the drugs, but still.
No one is quite evil (except for the Night Veil and even then not really), no one is quite good (our heroine is a drug-addict for God's sake) and the society both above and below demands their pound of flesh from you.
As the books progressed, relationships wither and prosper, bonds are forged and torn apart, presumptions blown away, integrity dwindles, love lost and (hopefully) found again, honor shattered and glued back together again.
The chemistry between Hawke and Cherry is AMAZING. You can practically feel it sizzle between them and Hawke is such an interesting character. You don't know whether he is good or bad, but you can tell that he tries to spare Cherry from the clutches of the Night Veil, but Cherry is frustratingly dense, making his efforts in protecting her null and void.
Anyhow, I gave these books a proper 4.5/5 stars.
I LOVED IT and I will reread it again and again.
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