By Jove, I think you've got it.

I'll never have anything bad to say about Mercedes Lackey or anything she has written. A Scandal in Battersea is yet another triumph in her Elementals series.

Seamlessly weaving her familiar characters into the world of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Lackey creates a terrifying yet ultimately hopeful tale of good versus evil.

Memsa'b and her husband, who, along with their multi-cultural servants from India, run the Harton boarding school in London. A very special school for psychically sensitive children who need guidance and training.

Back from previous books are the two young ladies, Sarah and Nan, who have been befriended by the oldest of old things in Londinium, Robin Goodfellow.

Something cold, dark and close to death is on the rise and Sarah, Nan and all their allies are called into action to search this evil out and try to destroy it.

This is definitely a 5 star book. I couldn't put it down and it took me an entire day to come back to the 21st century. ( )

Simultaneously creepy and tedious. I just wish Lackey would return to the fairytale romances of the early Elemental Masters books. ( )

The twelfth Elemental Masters books stars returning characters Nan Killian, Sarah Lyon-White, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. John and Mary Watson. It is Christmas time and all are determined to make the occasion special for Nan and Sarah's ward Suki. But while they are attending the Panto and window shopping, Alexandre Harcourt is planning on calling on a dark power to get himself power.

Alexandre Harcourt hates the Christmas season but this year a new occult book he finds at his favorite bookstore gives him an idea for a way to increase his power and wealth. He is a resentful man who hates that his father left him under the supervision of his lawyers. He learns about an entity who will grant his wishes if he just follows the entity's instructions. The entity instructs him to find victims for him and sends Harcourt and his loyal man Alf out to find pure young people to feed to him.

People go missing in London every day, but when a young woman from the prosperous middle class goes missing and is found wandering mindlessly, Sherlock Holmes is called in. Sherlock asks Nan to look at the young woman. Nan discovers that the girl is little more than an automaton. Her soul is missing!

When other girls go missing and are found in the same condition, and when a young women the Watsons, Nan and Sarah have rescued from an institution for the insane because of her visions sees a London in ruins, forces are gathered to try to find out what is happening and how the forces for good can stop it.

The story is richly detailed and filled with amazing images. It drifted a little bit more to horror than I am usually comfortable with, but the compelling storytelling kept me reading and listening. Gemma Dawson did a great job with the variety of accents and characters and also did an excellent job with the story's pacing. ( )

Lots of interesting characters and a plethora of bad spirits and their ilk, the game was on. Certainly, a different world for Sherlock Holmes to be in. However, It never seemed to come together ( )

This was a fast read for me, due in part to the fact that it was such a predictable novel I found myself skimming bits of it. I find that really sad, because I used to love this series and now it's all cookie-cutter perfect. Spoiler-not-spoiler alert: the good guys win, the bad guys get what's coming to them, and no one is even majorly hurt. I have lost interest in this series, and no longer care what happens in them, because I am convinced that nothing even remotely bad can happen to the main characters. (For the record, that wasn't always the case. In the first few books of this series, there was a definite threat that something bad would happen. Even though these are fairy tale re-tellings, I believed that they were in danger. And sometimes they had to sacrifice something in order to get their Happily Ever After.)

Also, the probably MOST ANNOYING THING EVER in this series (and most of Lackey's other work past a certain point) is the use of written accents so thick I have to translate them. I mean, really? Is this actually necessary? Part of Lackey's charm has always been her ability to draw the readers in and keep them wrapped up in the story. If we're stopping every few paragraphs to unravel a bit of dialogue, we ARE NO LONGER WRAPPED UP IN THE STORY. It was very jarring, and very annoying.

In short, I enjoyed this book as a library skim-read, but will not be buying it. I will also be removing all the remaining books in this series from my TBR list, and will not be wasting my time on them. If I want to read a good story from this series, I'll stick with #0-3, with the occasional inclusion of 6 & 7. ( )