I always enjoy this gritty, down to earth, fantastic steampunk series, but I admit that book #3 was a bit hard on me.

First half of it is very dark as Cherry succumbs to her opium addiction more and more while unsuccessfully trying to find The Ripper and The Collector, both of whom are detrimental to her mental and material pay off to The Menagerie.

Everything is slow, depressive and kind of stuck until we hit the second half of the book which speeds up and becomes an explosive, shocking and edgy revelation in the end. Whew, me dears, the ending is fabulous!

I can't not mention Micajah Hawke who is shining very brightly in Corroded. Yum, just yum, peeps. He was definitely worth the wait, and I really hope we'll see more and more of him and his magnetic, compelling persona in the future.

Yet again I feel like I desperately need to know what happens next and can't wait t read book #4 in this marvellous series.

One thing is for sure, - this has been the darkest and the most depressing instalment of The St. Croix Chronicles for me personally, and I dearly hope that the reader wouldn't have to go through all this again. It's hard to read about drug dependency, because I went through that sh*t with people close to me, and I know exactly how horrible it can be and how badly it can end.

At the same time I admire imperfect heroines who have to battle their own very real demons while simultaneously taking on the world. Cherry St. Croix is just that type of a heroine with a flawless integrity, and she simply rocks. Recommended to the fans of Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane. ( )

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Cherry is eager for vengeance on the sweet tooth killer. The only problem is she doesn’t know how to find him. So, she issues a challenge he won’t be able to resist: the first of them to find Jack the Ripper wins. Now she just has to figure out how to find Jack…

Opening Sentence: A fortnight after my husband was murdered, I exhibited a severe allergy to sobriety.

The Review:

I’ve spent the last week speed reading my way through the first three books in this series. That more than anything should show how I feel about this series. Before starting this third book, I was very interested in finding out where the series was going to go after the way the second book ended. Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

Cherry St. Croix’s life has fallen apart. After the events of the second book, she finds herself living in the Menagerie because she feels there is nothing else left for her in London above the fog. Relegated to London below, she tries to continue collecting in order to both repay her debt to the Veil and to support her ever increasing opium habit. She’s haunted by the memory of her last encounter with the sweet tooth killer and will not rest until she finds him and gets her revenge. Trying to lure him out, Cherry issues a challenge on the collector’s board, letting the sweet tooth know she is going after Jack the Ripper. Will her challenge succeed? Will she be able to clear her mind of its opium-induced haze long enough to take her revenge?

Cherry is in a very rough spot in this book, easily hitting rock bottom. The reader can see Cherry fraying apart at the seams. She’s constantly taking opium, eating it now rather than smoking it, something she swore she would never do. It’s beginning to affect her judgment, making her feel invincible in situations where she really needs to take a moment and think rather than act impulsively. She knows she’s gone over the line with her opium use, but she just can’t bring herself to stop. While I continue to like Cherry, all of these factors led to me feeling extremely frustrated with her. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She’s separated herself from everyone she loves in an attempt to keep them safe, and this lack of her loved ones only makes her downward spiral accelerate. She’s definitely a sympathetic character, but not one who is easily likeable.

On the subject of likeability, I’m still not sure how I feel about Hawke. We see a lot of him here but don’t really learn anything more about him than what we already know. More mysteries are added to his character, and I’m definitely itching to know the answers, but I’m just not sure if I want him and Cherry to be together. Hopefully future books will help me figure out my feelings one way or the other.

The only negative thing I can really say about the book is it does take a while to get going. It just seemed like nothing was happening for the first third of the book, making it hard to get through. Once I got through that point though, I didn’t want to put the book down.

Aside from the slow start, this was another very good installment in the St. Croix Chronicles. While I think people who haven’t read the first two books could still enjoy this third installment, it’s definitely better to read the earlier books first in order to get a good idea of Cherry’s state of mind. Fans of this series are definitely in for a roller coaster ride, and the ending will leave them anxious to get their hands on book four.

Notable Scene:

I breathed as if I had run for hours, gasping for air as I rocked once more. My backside ached from the wear, but everything I was had become a terrible knot of panic and fear and pain and illness.

I wanted to laugh, but could not understand why.

“One miller, two millers,” I whispered. “Three millers, four.” The term was Ishmael’s, interchangeable with hang-in-chains for the name of a murderer.

“How many millers to open a door?”

Two that I knew of, each demanding justice. Revenge. Rivals with each other, rivals with me.

The dead haunted my every waking breath. Feminine laughter, a woman’s screams. the wide, shocked eyes of an earl’s dying stare–foggy green, and never again to fill with warmth when he looked at me, or delight when I surprised him.

I saw in red and breathed the metallic reek of fresh spilled blood. Mine, perhaps, from the wound I would not leave alone between my teeth.

The earl’s, perhaps, from the wound I would not leave alone in my heart.

FTC Advisory: Carina Press provided me with a copy of Corroded. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

When one hears the word “corroded,” one thinks of metal that has been eaten away. However, in this case, the word does not describe metal but rather the main character, Cherry St. Croix. Cherry is a collector (bounty hunter) in a steampunk London. She has dealt with some serious darkness in her life. Her parents died and left her orphaned. Then her father re-appeared, but as a mad scientist who tried to kill her instead of the loving father she had once known. Then she battled a rival collector who, in the end, killed her husband hours after the wedding. Now she has only one thing on her mind—revenge. In order to cope with life, she has always utilized drugs, first laudanum and now opium. She has become a shadow of her former self, addicted to opium and leaving death and destruction in her way as other people pay the consequences for her actions. The denizens of the Menagerie have sheltered her, but she keeps failing to complete the missions assigned her. She is attracted and repulsed at the same time by the ringmaster Hawke. She must stop Jack the Ripper and the rival collector, whose identity will further rip her apart when she discovers it. By the end of the novel, she has sunk lower than she ever imagined possible. Is there to be any redemption for Cherry St. Croix?

I have not read the first two books in the series, although I have read The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway, a novella that describes Cherry’s first collection. It was quite shocking to jump from the 15-year-old Cherry going on her first collection to the Cherry of this book. I definitely want to go back and read those other two books because I do feel like I’m missing quite a bit. The events from those books were explained somewhat, but I just didn’t feel that I had enough information to completely understand what had brought Cherry to the desperate point we see her in here. Her whole “relationship” with Hawke is also puzzling to me. Again, I think I would have to go back and read those other two books to fully understand it. ( )

Our Review, by LITERAL ADDICTION's Pack Alpha - Michelle L. Olson:
*eARC Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
--Actual Rating 4.5 Skulls

Corroded was another amazing read by Karina Cooper! She's evolving so much with her St. Croix Chronicles, and you can really feel how enmeshed she's becoming in Cherry and the world when she's writing. Her narrative is so fluid and gripping, yet incredibly legitimate to the time period and sub-genre, even in regards to the divide of hierarchical social dialects. I found it absolutely fascinating.

As I stated at the end of my Gilded review, the series was on a continuously accelerating darkness slide - which I personally, absolutely loved - and after the tragic conclusion of book #2, Corroded was steeped in that darkness. Cherry falls back on old habits to numb her pain and help her on her quest for revenge, and more and more she heaps on the guilt for everything that has happened in the series thus far and finds new ways to punish herself. It was heartbreaking to read, especially after having learned to love Cherry like I have over the course of the series. You just want to give her a huge hug and then slap some sense into her immediately afterward. This heaviness also weighs the very beginning of the book down a bit, making it somewhat of a slower read than the previous books or the last 1/2 of Corroded, but I personally felt it necessary, and very apropos, given the heaviness weighing on and slowing down our leading lady.

Those of us on team Hawke get a startling amount of page time for Micajah in this installment, and it's oh - so - very - good! I can't say any more without giving anything away, but we all know how scary and sexy he can be... well the previous books had nothing on the Cage that we see in Corroded! :)

And as always, Karina gives us yet another incredible Victorian Horror Classic reference/feel (or at least I thought so), and the surprise unveiling of an antagonist that I don't think anybody will see coming. It was head shakingly gasp worthy.

Corroded's ending opened up a lot of doors for this series (or a possible spin-off)as well, and that has this loyal fan and reader incredibly excited.

Another beautifully written and intense St. Croix Chronicle installment that I would readily recommend. I can't wait for more! ( )