The God's Eye Lancaster's Luck Book #3
Steampunk, Science Fiction, Historical Romance
Decent Fellows Press
Audio June 9, 2023
Audio , Kindle
337 pages or 11 hrs audio
Amazon
Book three in the Lancaster's Luck M/M steampunk trilogy.
Rafe Lancaster is reluctantly settling into his role as the first heir of House Stravaigor. Trapped by his father’s illness and his new responsibilities, Rafe can’t go with lover Ned Winter to Aegypt for the 1902-'03 archaeological digging season. Rafe’s unease at being left behind intensifies when Ned’s fascination with the strange Antikythera mechanism and its intriguing link to the Aegyptian god Thoth has Ned heading south to the remote, unexplored highlands of Abyssinia and the course of the Blue Nile. Searching for Thoth’s deadly secrets, Ned is out of contact and far from help. When he doesn’t return at Christmas as he promised, everything points to trouble. Rafe is left with a stark choice–abandon his dying father or risk never seeing Ned again.
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Having read and enjoyed the three “Lancaster’s Luck” books by Anna Butler, I was really surprised by how entirely different the audio experience is in the hands of a gifted narrator like Gary Furlong.
The final adventure of Rafe Lancaster and Ned Winter takes these two young men back to Egypt, with a surprising and entirely fantastic twist. The major shifts in the story-line comes from the physical failure of Rafe’s father—a man he only recently learned was his father—and his growing friendship for his half-sister, Nell Lancaster. Acknowledged as the First Heir of House Stravaigor, suddenly Rafe’s life of independence, lived at his own pleasure without too much public scrutiny, is over. Even as he begins to warm to the ruthless Princeps Stravaigor, Rafe has to face the uncomfortable truth that one of his prime tasks now is to produce a male heir.
This issue of succession becomes an important sidebar to the entire book, along with Rafe’s sudden high visibility within the odd world of the Houses of the Imperium Britannicum. Not that Rafe’s relationship with Ned and his family—the House Gallowglass—is unimportant. Ned is beyond the succession problem, having been married and widowed, the loving father of two young boys. Rafe’s refusal to follow Ned’s footsteps says a lot about his character. This is not a world (any more than the historical England it reflects) in which marrying for purely political purposes would be seen as wrong; but Rafe won’t do that, to himself or to the man he loves.
As always, Anna Butler’s judicious use of actual history mixed into her Steampunk fantasy is delicious. The overheated world of Egyptological archaeology—the competition among world powers for the right to excavate Egypt’s millennia of hidden treasure—is not exaggerated, and Butler brings in the geopolitical friction of the time to build an exciting narrative. By doing this she also references political realities that would have long term implications in actual world history.
But kudos have to go, again, to Gary Furlong, whose deft and remarkably expansive characterizations bring the words to life. He has to create many voices in the course of this book, and does so with apparent ease. Furlong’s vocal skill mixes well with Butler’s words to create a cinematic experience as one listens. All in all, a fully satisfying experience.