I liked this one much better than the first book by Lackey that I read. This one is set in Victorian England and revolves around a community of magicians, true magicians, who deal in natural elements. What I liked most about it was the way in which the magic was made to seem like nothing out of the ordinary, and it didn't feel like a 'fantasy' novel at all, just another novel. It was all totally normalized, and the story was more about the characters and their battle with evil than about the fact that they could do magic.

It was well written, as well, without a lot of the dated slang from the Children of Darkness novel by the same author, which was most likely due to that one being set in 1980's America. I was also drawn in by her period details, and I think she did a good job of capturing the era.