Series Reader Review – The Blades of the Rose – Zoë Archer

 

Read time: 3 minutes

 

I write series, so of course, I read series. In fact, if an author hasn’t written a series, I don’t know much about them. I will read a stand-alone book, if it’s from an author I fell in love with while reading their series.

 I discovered Zoë’s name by doing a random author search for paranormal authors. The results were limited, but Zoë came up, so I wrote her name down and took it with me to 2^nd and Charles, the most wonderful book store ever. They had one book, the second one in the series and I grabbed it up. When I came home and unbagged all my lovely finds, I looked up the rest of the series and much to my surprise, not only was this a paranormal series, but it was a Historical Romance read, too. Hmmm. Okay. I’m not real keen on historical romance. I don’t really appreciate the dialogue, though I do appreciate what it takes to write something in a different moment in time. I lift my teacup to you, ladies.

The Blades of the Rose is four titles long – Warrior, Scoundrel, Rebel, and Stranger.

The premise: A clandestine group is all that stands between the Victorian world and those determined to use magic for evil. The Blades of the Rose have sworn to stop anyone who would steal and/or use magical objects for personal gain or to hurt someone.

Zoë is a phenomenal writer. She weaves stunning action, has quick moving plots that keep you completely engaged, and steamy sex scenes. Her language is a bit course and took me by surprise. She uses erotic language, but the sex isn’t frequent or descriptive enough to be considered erotica. Scoundrel pushed the boundaries, but as a reader of the first book, you knew the hero would be moderately sex-obsessed. The heroine was more than willing to go along for his ride, hehe.

Rebel was probably my favorite. The hero is a shifter, and the heroine a broken, sad widow. He had to work really hard to get her out of her shell and once he decided he loved her, he wouldn’t give up on her or their relationship. They had to protect each other at fabulous turns, making them both equally strong characters.

We meet a couple in Scoundrel that shows up again in Stranger and I would have loved to have had their story, too. But they were just a quick hey this happened side story. Stranger is a mixed-raced romance and she did a great job of it, especially since this would have been unheard of in the Victorian era. However, the group deals in magic, and part of the plot took place in a fantasy realm, so the people they socialize or deal with don’t care about those things, and it was brushed off as something the couple would handle if they needed to. Totally worked for me. I love how race had zero bearing on either protagonist and was only addressed because of the time period.

You can pick up this entire series for $2.99 I think, or somewhere around there, super cheap. Or you can pay $1.99 per title. Either way, worth every single penny. I would love to have all these in paperback, but I only have one that way, the rest are digital. It’s all good. I have them, and so far iBooks hasn’t taken any of my books away even when the publisher pulls them, so I won’t stress. Much. I will definitely be re-reading this series.