Book Review: Her Majesty's Necromancer by C.J. Archer (Ministry of Curiousities #2)

Title: Her Majesty’s Necromancer

Author: C.J. Archer

Series: The Ministry of Curiousities

Genre: Steampunk, Young Adult, New Adult, Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Self-Published

Pub Date: August 24, 2015

Pages: 240

My Copy: Bought From Amazon

Book Summary:

When bodies go missing from the cemetery, Lincoln and the Ministry of Curiosities investigate. But not Charlie. As a housemaid at Lichfield Towers, she doesn't get involved in Ministry business.

Instead, she conducts investigations of her own. She searches for details about her real mother, and makes inquiries into Lincoln's background. What she learns has the power to destroy the fragile trust they've built, or bring them closer together.

As secrets are revealed, and investigations don't go as planned, Charlie finds her necromancy sucking her into a whirlpool filled with betrayal, lies and danger. 

Book Review:

A terrific second installment in this wonderfully complex world. I totally love how Charlotte, Lincoln and the rest of the characters grow in ways that you would never expect. We also learn a lot more about what motivates certain people and their pasts.

I like how this book picks from the first book. We have a mystery of why the men who were taking a dead body out of the cemetery. Now there are two reasons according to Lincoln why they would be doing this, one is for medical research or they want to use the body for nefarious purposes. So of course Lincoln decides to investigate what Charlie has claimed to have seen.

This book was interesting as there are some things that happen, that you can’t predict happening. I like how Charlie and Lincoln are investigating who her mother was or is. Nothing shows up, even Charlie starts to get curious about things. We also learn that the body snatching mystery is part of something bigger as Charlie is becoming more comfortable in using her abilities with Lincoln’s help to control the dead. I also like how we learn a lot about how everybody has different goals and their pasts affect the present.

I like how everybody has a different view point of Lincoln’s love life or prospects of marriage. Even Lady Harcourt thinks she should have some say in who he marries. This was an interesting thing that happened as a certain young lady with her mother is interested in him. Charlie’s view point of this is that she don’t like this duo at all and thinks that Fitzroy would be smarter than to subject himself to do it. Yet he is a very cordial and conversational to them. Then we learn something about Harcourt’s ruthlessness.

We learn that Fitzroy’s childhood and learning from his tutors was not nice at all. There is a secret that Charlie wants to know, as well as does Lady Harcourt. Yet Charlie tries to be obedient, but she investigates Lincoln’s past and triggers something more than she expected to find. Also Lincoln tells her not to ask questions about his tutor. You can tell it’s a sore subject for him. 

Things happen in a way you can’t expect for the revelations that the tutor did and what caused this to happen.

Also we learn that the person who hired the grave robbers decides to kidnap Charlie. Yet Charlie has been taking self defense classes with Lincoln which helps her quite a lot. I like how things change through out the book. They manage to defeat the person who wants to use Charlie for nefarious purposes, but other things happen as well in this book because of curiosity. Curiosity is not always a good thing.

When Lady Harcourt comes and asks Charlie to resurrect the spirit of the old tutor, when Charlie refuses to do it, because she is very loyal to Lincoln, doesn’t want to do it. Harcourt blackmails her. This leads to some painful things being revealed by the dead tutor. Yet later on we get more detail on what lead to the death of this tutor and it’s not what you would expect. You get a deeper understanding of who Fitzroy is after hearing about what lead up to the death of this tutor and someone else as well, that we didn’t know about. Of course this leads to some awkwardness as well. I love how Charlie, Seth, Gus, Cook, Fitzroy are becoming almost like a family in their own bizarre way. 

There are two developments that I found myself liking in this book, the surprising interaction between Fitzroy and Charlie right at the end, which is sure to complicate things even more for Charlie and Lady Harcourt’s stepson has gone missing and she is very worried. I find myself enjoying this series more and more with each book.

Rating:

Four Hearts