Title: The Doctor
Series: Magic & Steam: Book Three
Author: C.S. Poe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 255 Pages
Category: Steampunk
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: The Doctor is full of some wicked surprises and gruesome illustrations of the evil that people are capable of when seeking to play gods and monsters. This sinister plot is deftly woven and deliciously teased out to keep readers on the hook from one chapter to the next, never sure whom to trust or what perils will challenge these men next.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: 1882—Gillian Hamilton, magic caster and Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam, has been stripped of his title, badge, and freedom. Gillian’s true name and powers have been exposed, so now he’s kept under lock and key. To make a tragedy worse, Gunner the Deadly has returned to his life out in the Wild West and has not been heard from since.
Rumors of a doctor, known only as Sawbones, with access to illegal magic have persisted into the new year. Gillian believes that violence, chaos, and certain death will befall New York City if this criminal isn’t apprehended. And despite having lost his sense of purpose, Gillian knows he’s the only one capable of confronting this new madman—with or without the backing of the FBMS.
But such dangers should never be undertaken alone. Gillian will need both Gunner’s deadeye marksmanship, as well as his love, if he’s to detain Sawbones before irreparable damage is done to the magic of his world.
Review: On a scale of one to sublime, author C.S. Poe has penned a dreamy chef’s kiss-worth of post-Civil War steampunk in her Magic & Steam series. The secrets that continue to surface along with the peril and chaos that inevitably ensue from their revelation leaves little room for doubt that Gillian Hamilton and Constantine Gunner (aka Gunner the Deadly) have a long fight ahead of them before they get anywhere close to a happy ending.
And, once again, that cliffhanger . . . it’s a stunner.
Gillian’s past persists in haunting him in the cruelest and most unusual ways, and there’s no one who punishes him over it more than Gillian does himself. Although, having said that, there is someone who’s trying their damndest to use, abuse, and seemingly destroy him, someone who knows about him and his past, and were it not for his tenacity and deep well of courage, they might have succeeded. Were it not for the fact he’s the most powerful magic caster in existence, he might not have escaped and been labeled a fugitive, on the run from the FBMS, the very agency he’d given his all to serve loyally and respectably, while in search of the mastermind behind a plot that is dangerously close to rending the magical world asunder. And there’s only one man he wants by his side in the hunt—but he must find him and beg his forgiveness first. Fortunately for Gillian, Gunner found him first.
The Doctor is full of some wicked surprises and gruesome illustrations of the evil that people are capable of when seeking to play gods and monsters. This sinister plot is deftly woven and deliciously teased out to keep readers on the hook from one chapter to the next, never sure whom to trust or what perils will challenge these men next. The romance between Gillian and Gunner takes on a deeper aspect as well, which promises to be put to the test as the pursuit of a dangerous foe wages on. I wouldn’t expect anything less, however, from a book that promises its readers “violence, chaos, and certain death” if the criminal isn’t stopped. The cleverness and imagination C.S. Poe has infused this world with is, to the point, ::chef’s kiss::.
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