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    A Scandal in Battersea
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    A Scandal in Battersea
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    A Scandal in Battersea
    Ebook393 pages7 hours

    A Scandal in Battersea

    By Mercedes Lackey

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Christmas is a very special time of year. It is special for Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White and their ward Suki, who are determined to celebrate it properly. Their friends, Doctor John Watson, and his wife Mary, both Elemental Masters, alsofind great delight in the season. It is special to others… for very different reasons.

    For Christmas Eve is also hallowed to dark forces, powers older than mankind. Women disappear in the dark of night, and reappear no longer sane. When Nan, Sarah and the Watsons are called on to examine these victims, they discover that it was no ordinary horror of the streets that drove them mad. It will take the combined forces of Magic, Psychic Powers, and the world’s greatest detective to stop the darkness before it can conquer all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTitan Books
    Release dateOct 17, 2017
    ISBN9781785653537
    Unavailable
    A Scandal in Battersea
    Author

    Mercedes Lackey

    Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music. Also known as Misty Lackey.

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    Reviews for A Scandal in Battersea

    3.5/5

    45 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A quite decent Elemental Masters book - like many recent ones, though, it's about mixing forms of magic more than about the Elementals themselves. Puck and a couple Hobs are the most visible Elementals...and they're not the usual sorts of creatures. The enemy is one whoopie warlock - a dabbler in magic who wants power and is willing to sacrifice - others, of course, not himself - to get it; and what he manages to call up. It's a very nasty situation - less nasty for the readers than for Nan and Sarah and the rest, because we know what's going on. They're groping in the dark, and that always makes things worse. It is Nan, and Sarah, and Sherlock, and Watson and his wife, and Sahib and M'sahib, and Alderscroft...and eventually, Mycroft, a good many of the White Lodge, and a royal battalion trained and experienced in dealing with...weird stuff. Plus Puck and who/what he can call up. There's actually rather little to the story; it's gradually growing creepiness, and (from the point of view of the characters) a deep mystery. From the point of view of the readers, it's a series of very dark events, but there's no mystery, and even the horror...isn't very horrific. Nasty, yes, but there's no point at which the good guys truly feel helpless, or at least not for long. Not bad, not a favorite in the series.
    • 4/5
      This novel started slowly, with far too many allusions to prior books. The author seems to have lost her knack for bringing a new reader into her universe; instead, this appears to have been written for those already familiar with the series. There were far too many allusions to past events, and I felt like i was expected to care about the characters already, as if this book's chapter 1 was chapter 10 of some larger book.She's also using the literary technique of giving some chapters from the viewpoint of the heroes, and others from the villains, or at least their agents. So the only mystery was how the author would weave all the strands together. And a wee little bit about exactly what the major non-human villain was actually going to do. That said, by the end I was riveted, and sorry to put it down. Perhaps I just like battle scenes, especially when narrated from the viewpoint of a female warrior. I'm rating it 4 only because of the second half. The first half rated maybe 3. For those not familiar with the series, it's set in the Victorian era, with various types of magicians and psychics as heroes, facing all kinds of evils. In this case, a completely amoral young magician attempts to serve his own advantage by allying with a creature from another dimension, bent on conquering our world. And our heroes predictably solve the mystery and slay the monster, while the magician comes to a bad end.
    • 5/5
      Oh my! The Elemental Series, London at Christmastime, Sherlock Holmes, and a frisson of horror -- how could I not like this one? Sherlock isn't as much front and center in this book, but he floats on the edges. The elemental magic isn't as much an element as is the horror. Fortunately for me, the horror is in the lines of Lovecraft with a touch more occult, so it isn't overwhelming. Do be aware that the bad guy is really creepy and nasty with typical dark magic overtones of involving sacrificing virgins. I read this through quickly and was very happy. I'll gladly buy the next book in the series. If you enjoy Victorian era alternate fantasy history, you would probably enjoy the series.
    • 2/5
      This was a fast read for me, due in part to the fact that it was such a predictable novel I found myself skimming bits of it. I find that really sad, because I used to love this series and now it's all cookie-cutter perfect. Spoiler-not-spoiler alert: the good guys win, the bad guys get what's coming to them, and no one is even majorly hurt. I have lost interest in this series, and no longer care what happens in them, because I am convinced that nothing even remotely bad can happen to the main characters. (For the record, that wasn't always the case. In the first few books of this series, there was a definite threat that something bad would happen. Even though these are fairy tale re-tellings, I believed that they were in danger. And sometimes they had to sacrifice something in order to get their Happily Ever After.)

      Also, the probably MOST ANNOYING THING EVER in this series (and most of Lackey's other work past a certain point) is the use of written accents so thick I have to translate them. I mean, really? Is this actually necessary? Part of Lackey's charm has always been her ability to draw the readers in and keep them wrapped up in the story. If we're stopping every few paragraphs to unravel a bit of dialogue, we ARE NO LONGER WRAPPED UP IN THE STORY. It was very jarring, and very annoying.

      In short, I enjoyed this book as a library skim-read, but will not be buying it. I will also be removing all the remaining books in this series from my TBR list, and will not be wasting my time on them. If I want to read a good story from this series, I'll stick with #0-3, with the occasional inclusion of 6 & 7.
    • 3/5
      Better than The Wizard of London, this is the closest to Lovecraftian fiction Lackey has written. It is an ensemble piece, with our protagonists living in a comfy fantasy Victorian bubble while the antagonist deals with the vicious underbelly. Among the good guys it pretty much lacks interactions beyond reassuring social niceties, though the bad guys assistant, Alf, has a certain charm as a character, but really is a case of 'assistant able to do what ever the plot requires' rather than a breathing individual.
    • 4/5
      The Elemental Masters join forces with Sherlock Holmes again, when an other-dimensional evil threatens Victorian London. Holmes fans will be disappointed that he has only a minor role, with no detection on-screen, although his contacts come in very handy for the denouement. The Watsons, being Mages themselves, play larger roles, as do Nan Killian and Sarah Lyon-White. The villain, however, has the largest part. Fortunately, it's an interesting one.Christmas is a time of wonder, but it is also a time of danger. When the dark of the moon coincides with Christmas Eve, the walls between the worlds grow thin. A rogue magician, who has found a certain mysterious book promising great power, calls on a being from another dimension. This being has certain...demands. Soon young women are going missing, then turning up as mindless automotons. And another young woman is having strange and terrifying dreams.Not the best in the series, but certainly worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Lots of interesting characters and a plethora of bad spirits and their ilk, the game was on. Certainly, a different world for Sherlock Holmes to be in. However, It never seemed to come together
    • 5/5
      I am a fan of Ms Lackey and was really happy to receive this book to review. Having read a lot of her books my expectation were quite high and I wasn't disappointed.
      A mix of alternate history, Victorian England where magic is real, fantasy and horror where literary characters like Sherlock Holmes cohexists with legendary one like Robin Goodfellow. On the background the lovercraftian Old Ones.
      The plot is definitely exciting, once I started I had to read it to the end.
      The book is well written, with interesting characters and enough horror side to keep going without causing to much anxiety (I am not a Lovercraft fan).
      I would recommend this book to any fantasy lover.
      Many thanks to Netgalley and Daw for giving me the chance to review this book.
    • 3/5
      This Elemental Masters book has Nan and Sarah in the lead with John and Mary Watson helping them. When John Watson asks them to check on a girl that may be having visions of a broken London they find out that she is seeing the future and they race to find who and what is trying to bring this about. Even though Sherlock is on the cover of the book he really isn’t in the book much. They never know who is working with the thing from the other world trying to get in but they do defeat the evil that is attacking with the help of Puck and the backup he brings.
      There are new characters introduced and I wouldn’t be surprised if the one bad guy that gets away shows up later down the road at some point.


      Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
    • 3/5
      The quality of the writing, plotting, etc is high, and I do love the combination of Nan, Sarah, their birds, the Watsons, and Sherlock Holmes. However, I don’t enjoy the worlds of Lovecraft, Cthulhu, and other eldritch things, so I’ve rated this lower than I otherwise would.