Review: The Mysterious Madam Morpho by Delilah S. Dawson

Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Steampunk romance, Paranormal romance
Series: Blud #1.5
Length: 100 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books
Date Released: October 2, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Taking place after Wicked as They Come, this original eBook features a mysterious lady and a reclusive mechanical genius who find love and danger in a traveling circus. An elusive woman arrives at Criminy’s doorstep with a steamer trunk, begging for a position in the caravan to perform her unique new act. She opens her trunk to reveal a menagerie of brilliantly colored butterflies. The woman, who calls herself Madam Morpho, is on the run from a dark past in London, where she was forced to leave her equipment behind and abscond with only her tiny performers. Playing a hunch, Criminy hires Madam Morpho on the spot. Taking her down to meet Mr. Murdoch, the reclusive talented engineer who keeps the carnival’s clockworks running, Criminy instructs them to work together to design and build a groundbreaking new circus for the butterflies. Amid the magical ambiance of the circus and the hint of danger from Madam Morpho’s pursuers, she and Mr. Murdoch soon find that their scientific collaboration has produced chemistry of a more romantic kind.

My Review:

I was hungering for the next full installment of Delilah S. Dawson’s darkly delicious Blud series after the chills and thrill’s of last year’s Wicked As They Come (click here for review), but was disappointed to discover that Wicked As She Wants won’t be out until April 30.

And that Edelweiss doesn’t seem to have egalleys. Damn.

Then I remembered that I have egalleys of two “tide-me-over” novellas, that might just satisfy my taste for Sangland until the end of April.

So the Mysterious Madam Morpho comes to Criminy Stain’s traveling carnival. As with all of Criminy’s other carnivalleros, Imogen Morpho is running away.

In Sang, only the truly desperate run off to join the circus. And Imogen Morpho is truly desperate. Or she would be if there really were an Imogen Morpho.

Instead there’s only Jane Bumble, running from London with a fortune in carefully preserved butterflies and a circus act that lets her make them perform spectacular feats of magic.

All of it stolen from the greatest museums in London. Along with an artifact that is worth more than Jane’s life. Or the life of the entire carnival.

Criminy should turn her away. Her act is a dead giveaway, pardon the pun, of her spectacular theft.

But his wife, the oracular Tish, tells him that the circus needs the butterfly mistress.

Or rather, that one particular member of the circus family needs the butterfly mistress. And Criminy’s circus needs that very special family member.

Jane Bumble thinks that her value is in her butterflies. Her real value is in emerging from her crysalis and becoming a butterfly herself.

And in helping one of the circus’ most important family members shed his cocoon at the same time.

Escape Rating B+: It was marvelous to visit the world of Sang again. There is no place quite like this one, where the adorable prey animals have evolved into vicious predators like bludbunnies. When Jane/Imogen is attacked by bludbadgers, it is frightening, incongruous and hilarious all at the same time.

This is a romance between two unlikely people. Not unlikely because they are not suited, but unlikely because they are people who have both remained hidden behind masks, drab clothing, inside walls and/or wagons, and fake identities. They both have to reveal who they really are before they can have a chance.

With a bit of help from a clockwork cougar to clean up the bloody mess. Sang is not for the faint of heart. But neither is emerging from your shell and facing the world as the person you were meant to be.