Book Review - God Save the Queen

God Save the Queen

by Kate Locke

Rating ****(4 stars)

Here is my first confession. I LOVE paranormal/urban fantasy. It is my guilty pleasure - and I will be reviewing a ton of it. However, I do try to diversify my reading so that I do not completely rot my brain out.

My second confession is that I thought this book was going to be horrible. I picked it up as a Kindle freebie and have put of reading it for months. I mean the cover is not all that appealing, and the concept of London as a setting for a vampire novel was, well, weird. I finally picked it up because it is was a reading pick on a Goodreads group I belong to. I figured if it was nominated and won then a lot of people needed motivation to start this book. . . or it was good. Either way I used it as a sign and began to read. 

I was right in the aspect that this book is weird, but not that it was horrible. If an author can pull of a unique plot twist in the mist of a genre that is as over done as urban fantasy, it is a major feat. Why is it unique? First it is the only UF/paranormal series that I have read that is set in England. The concept of the evolution of paranormal creatures is also highly unique. There are three paranormal creatures - vampires which have evolved from England aristocrats, werewolves that have evolved from Scottish aristocrats, and Goblins which are a mix of the two creatures - crossbreeding at its worse. American got a brief shrugged of mention - and I am not sure that the rest of the world actually exists in this realm. 

The main character is half a vampire and half a human. She is the daughter of a Duke and a member of the royal guard. She can totally kick butt from the beginning of the story - I love when the heroine does not start out whinny. There is a romance in the novel, but it is not the main focus, and although they do get hot and heavy - it is not graphic. 

With self publishing and the huge demand for UF it is so easy to find authors who cannot actually write. Kate Locke can write. Her story gripped me from the beginning. Her characters drew me in. To my astonishment I do not remember even once thinking that she wrote an awkward sentence. There was only two minor spots in the story where I think there was a small plot hole - I can not really say where without giving away to much.

The next two books in her series are already on my to read list!