You Only Love Twice

Books of August slipped by and we’re well into September. Oh well. Work happens… blogs pause…  I get a summer cold and forfeit all my free time to play baseball chauffeur. Life happens. It’s a thing.

Anyway, while I was clearly neglecting my garden of snark and general weirdness, I was fortunate enough to have a veritable smorgasbord of books laid at my feet. Thanks past self for being hella proactive and putting in a metric shit ton of Amazon pre-orders!

Here’s a quick visual of all of the books that have crossed my blessed eyeballs. It scrolls!!!

I probably won’t get to retroactive reviews for all of the goodness that has crossed my path this past six weeks (even ones of the speedy variety), but I am committed to keeping The Big List updated.

Shameless plug: The Big List is my running catalogue of books completed, what genre they belong to, and my star rating.

Disclaimer: These star ratings are based on my enjoyment, not on whether a book employs nuanced metaphors, allegorical references to The Bible, or prose so beautiful that angel-writers in heaven destroy their typewriters in fits of jealousy. I’ve noticed a trend. If the book involves shit talking between characters who like and respect each other, romantic witty banter, and/or destroying cities with automatons, it’s gonna get a good rating.

OMG. I just broke tech writer rule #287 and put two notes in a row. #thehorror #meaculpa

The book I’m reviewing today, You Only Love Twice by Bec McMaster, fits in the “shit talking between teammates” category, so if you like that kind of thing mixed with your vampire conspiracies, sexy time, and fake Victorian science, this book (and the series it belongs to), might be for you!

Prerequisite reading and possibly unnecessary context

You Only Love Twice is book three of Bec McMaster’s series: The Blue Blood Conspiracy. In general, I’m not a fan of reading a random book in the middle of a series (or apparently reviewing one), so this is your disclaimer. I’m basically going to review the whole series here. And the one before it. And you can’t stop me.

For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to call the first series, London Steampunk (LS), and second series, The Blue Blood Conspiracy (BC). I will not call it BBC because if I type that a million times the internet will think I’m a porn site and flag the shit out of you for reading this at work. (Waves to big brother).

Both series are romance/adventure cross-overs that take place in a pseudo-victorian London where a sort of vampire aristocracy made up of “Bluebloods” (called “the echelon”) are the power behind a weak throne.

Sure, you could read BC on its own. Yeah, you could read You Only Love Twice by itself. But I’m going to argue that you’d appreciate it much more if you’ve also read the London Steampunk series. LS is not required reading before you dig into BC, but the first series does a bang up job of building out the universe—an effort that was not replicated by the second series.

A brief lesson on the topic of Bluebloods

{puts on serious teacher face, slips black rimmed glasses with beaded necklace eyeglass thingie down her nose, and prepares to tap old-timey blackboard with a ruler or stick}

In McMaster’s extended world, families with wealth, prestige, and superior blood lines are granted rights to become Bluebloods: a special sub-type of vampire so unique that they get to start their name with a capital letter. The echelon is made up of Bluebloods and the women who love them. Blueblood get togethers are pretty much a sausage fest because very few women are granted the privilege to get all immortal. However, the few lady-Bluebloods that appear in these books are certified badasses. So, take that, patriarchy!

I know I just said that all of the Bluebloods are aristocrats, but if Jurassic Park taught us anything it was that science is HAWT. Oh, and that nature finds a way. So, yes… there are accidental blue bloods. And yes, one or two of them run gangs, have atrocious cockney accents, and wear overly flashy second rate suits. But most of them are forced to join a kind of vampire army—either policing the people or directly serving the queen. The good news is that they’re still immortal and that they get to wear rock star-meets-special-forces leather armor cool enough to make Batman and his 9 abs drool.

F yeah it does, Professor…

Bluebloods of the echelon are like every other vampire you know and love… powerful, deadly, sexy, refined, and well dressed. They would never wear a badly cut suit. However, after a good long run of being generally fabulous, McMaster’s Bluebloods diverge from the normal mythos and go crazy. If they aren’t ritually killed before they reach full crazy status, they turn into nasty, yucky, decomposing, ill-mannered bags of death called vampires. Not sexy.

To differentiate for you, I’ll write a handy list of bullets:

• McMaster’s special brand of vampires wear limp, bedraggled hair, decaying skin and bad breath.

• Vampires can’t chat you up at the club because they can’t talk. They can only screech.

• Bluebloods are mostly a force for good.

• Vampires are the crazy uncle who was once an okay dude but then started killing the neighbors pets. They’re definitely BAD.

So, let’s think of Bluebloods as the vampires you’ve known from every other book or vampire movie franchise (except the sparkly faces… that’s not a thing) and think of vampires as something way worse. 

There. I’ve captured the universe for you. You’re welcome.

But what about this book? Is it good? If I recall, you were pretty lukewarm on books 1 and 2 and pondered not picking up book 3.

Short answer: 

With McMaster, I find that history is repeating itself. In London Steampunk, book one and two were okay. Decent but not leave-me-alone-I’m-reading-go-make-your-own-dinner engrossing. Book three started the comeback… and books four and five kept me up all night reading.

With this second series, The Blueblood Conspiracy, it’s the same pattern. Books one and two were fine, but book three introduces complexity that I needed to keep going. Now that I know what they’re fighting, who is tee’d up for major loving in books four and five, and I actually feel invested in the cast, I’m in.

Long answer:

In the BC (which should not be confused with the double B + C), shit is calming down after the civil war that tore London apart in LS. There are some minor things going on, which get handled by a new cast of characters and another kind of bad vampire, the Dhamphir. No, we really didn’t need ANOTHER super scary, doubly powerful super vampire strain adding unnecessary complexity to the vampire family tree. Then again the introduction of evil-er vampires gives the squad something new to fight.

And if you’re going to fight fucked up abominations, you might as well make up a team of Blueblood scientists, assassins, mechs, inventors, and spies and give them a saucy name like The Conspiracy of Rogues, right? 

While the first two books of BC features plots that introduce elements that later mature into a fully imagined conspiracy and show the team developing rapport, book three adds much needed emotional depth through backstory. General ribbing of team members begins to indicate that synergy is growing, which is a big deal for me. While the good natured ribbing and team-i-ness in You Only Love Twice isn’t yet on the level of Six of Crows or Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, it’s trending in the right direction. #priorities

Did I mention that the reluctant hero of You Only Love Twice is one of these super vampires? Since he’s pretty unstable thanks to some major brainwashing, it makes it kind of hard for the heroine to bring him home to the family of rogues. I enjoyed this twist.

Gemma: “Malloryn, I want you to meet Obsidian. He used to be that guy Dmitri who I was madly in love with… until he shot me in the chest and left me to die in that Russian river.” 

Malloryn: “WHAT?!”

Gemma: “He’s back and I think I love him again. Oh, and did I mention that he’s pretty much a time bomb that will probably wipe out the entire court? Le bummer.”

Malloryn: “I’m gonna offer him a job. Also, stop breaking furniture with your sexy time. It’s bad form.”

The voice of Sarah in my head asks, “That’s all great, but I just saw the word sexy time. What about that?” 

Well, disembodied voice of my best friend, you’ll be relieved to hear that there is fair amount of intense coupling. There’s a kidnapping situation, so that was a minus for me, but I got over it because nobody seemed to be in any sort of actual danger.

Zero witty banter , which is why I’m probably not giving this book full marks. But since I can’t imagine a Russian spy being particularly chatty, I have to give it a reluctant pass.

Fun fact! Russian super vampires with trust issues and steampunk microchips in their heads aren’t known for their quick tongues or double entendres. From now on, I’ll associate them with revenge sex, breaking furniture, and hiding from our enemies (AND besties) in abandoned buildings.

Oh, and did I mention that You Only Love Twice gave me the dramatic cliff hanger I’ve been needing? It did.

So, to sum it up (because I haven’t written enough words already?!)

As I warned you earlier, You Only Love Twice cannot stand alone. Not only does it end with a cliffhanger, I think it’s best enjoyed with a side of historical Blueblood context. There’s no question that that takes investment, and unless this is your favorite genre ever and you read a ton of books a year, it may not be your cup of tea. But if you enjoy steampunk, pulpy vampire universes, or adventure romances AND you have some time on your hands, I’d recommend taking up one or more of McMaster’s series—including this book. You could do worse. (Vampire CEO, ahem… Kristina… cough… ahem.) Then again, you may want to hear what I have to say about book four or five before you run to the Amazons.*

*You won’t have to wait long, book four is supposed to drop in November, with book five likely coming in early 2019.