.The Gilded Scarab: Lancaster's Luck, Book #1- Anna Butler The Gilded Scarab: Lancaster's Luck, Book #1- Anna Butler
LGBTQ Romance, Steampunk, Science Fiction
Decent Fellows Press
Oct 14, 2022
Audio
11 hours
Amazon
Book one in the Lancaster's Luck M/M steampunk trilogy.
When Captain Rafe Lancaster is invalided out of the Britannic Imperium's Aero Corps after crashing his aerofighter during the Second Boer War, his eyesight is damaged permanently, and his career as a fighter pilot is over. Returning to London in late November 1899, he's lost the skies he loved, has no place in a society ruled by an elite oligarchy of powerful Houses, and is hard up, homeless, and in desperate need of a new direction in life. Everything changes when he buys a coffeehouse near the Britannic Imperium Museum in Bloomsbury, the haunt of Aegyptologists. For the first time in years, Rafe is free to be himself.
In a city powered by luminiferous aether and phlogiston, and where powerful men use House assassins to target their rivals, Rafe must navigate dangerous politics, deal with a jealous and possessive ex-lover, learn to make the best coffee in London, and fend off murder and kidnap attempts before he can find happiness with the man he loves.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Guild Review Team
AUDIO Garry Furlong Narrator
So, I might be hooked on the audiobook idea, even though I don’t often drive long distances and would actually need to listen to audiobooks on my phone in my own house. Listening is not the same as reading, and both have their pleasures.
I know this book from Anna Butler’s three-volume “Lancaster’s Luck” series that I enjoyed so much. The trick with an audio book is that both the writing, and the reading have to be good. Butler has found herself a winner in Gary Furlong.
The steampunk setting for “The Gilded Scarab” is (as I noted in my print review) expertly crafted to create a historical milieu infused with the particular technological fantasy that the genre demands. Butler makes this work extremely well by being careful in her presentation of a very late Victorian world (a year before the old queen dies), in which a great deal is recognizable—right down to historical figures, such as the famed Egyptologist Flinders Petrie.
Rafe Lancaster is not just the central character and the narrator, he is our guide in this world, weirdly shifted off its axis—a world in which there is the Imperium Britannicum instead of the United Kingdom, and rather than the aristocratic hierarchy of Dukes, Lords and Ladies, there are the Convocation Houses and the minor houses. Houses are noble families, but also quasi-corporate entities, with names like Stravaigor, Plumassier, Jongleur, and—most importantly—Gallowglass. It struck me that, despite the romantic names, there is an interesting echo of what actually happened in Gilded Age America—great houses like Astor, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller…and like the Robber Barons of the New World, the, Imperium’s powerful houses are driven by profit and politics, and some are not above a certain level of chicanery.
The many characters, major and minor, who populate Butler’s story are all intriguing. The danger for the audio book is that any voice narrator must do something with them to be fully effective. Gary Furlong is remarkable in his ability to create distinctive voices for each person in the book, no matter how small a role they might have. His agile voice brings a rich texture to a story that is itself already full of interest and emotion.
This was a great reintroduction to the world of audio books in my favorite genre.