ARC Review: Incarnation by Emma Cornwall

What really happened to Lucy Westonra

Title: Incarnation
Author: Emma Cornwall
Publisher: Gallery Books
My ratings: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Releases: 18th September, 2012

Lucy Weston is just your regular rich girl in the Victorian Era who attends parties, balls and opera and plans to get married and have a normal life. One night she wakes up, in a grave with a stake in her heart. She digs her way out and is suddenly hit by the uncontrolled hunger for blood. She is in the wilderness, alone and desperate. When she tries to look for her family, she realises she has been abandoned and she is not the old Lucy any more, she has been turned into monster. Lucy is confused and angry as to why she was made and discarded and want to find her maker. So, she goes to London in search of more vampires like her and find her maker. When she reaches London, not only does she find answers to her question but also finds herself in the midst of an inevitable bitter political power struggle which was going to get bloody soon, starting with her maker.

"Information can be hoarded, traded, used as a wapon, and - if only very rarely - offered as a gift. Properly deployed, nothing else is as powerful, not for a human or a vampire.”

Cornwall has given a brilliant twist to the old story of Lucy Westonra with added creatures that go bump in the night. There was a fantastic world of werewolves and vampires all embroiled into a mixture of the paranormal realm which the government is tiring it's best to keep hidden. The world is set in a steam punk work with clockwork, masks and machinery.

"On impulse,I put my hand over his. At his touch, such longing flowed through me....I cannot give words to it - not for the lack of them, poetry sings in my spirit as it does in all my kind even those who wish to be deaf to it - but because even now, after all that had transpired, some things are too fragile, so perfect, so necessary to the fabric of existence, that to speak of them risks that they will shatter like crystal struck by a single, souring note whose beauty is destruction.”

The new Lucy has been given justice as the confused girl who wakes up a vampire. Lucy is smart and resourceful if slightly boring. She is not kick ass or a smart mouth, which adds to a sense of realism as to what she used to be and what is is now. She had been brought up as a lady and she will forever remain one even in death. We meet many new characters like Mar co and Nicolas who play a crucial role in the story. The love interest is Mar co who was your stoic, brooding gentleman who had secrets of his own. There was a few secrets which were revealed later but unfortunately I saw them coming miles away. The romance is light, as with everything with Cornwall's writing. She lets the reader use their own imagination to fill in the gaps.

"Rising, I went to him and took both of his hands in mine. The warmth of his skin threatened to melt the coldness that encased me. I felt his strength and will honed from childhood to stand between humanity and the evolutionary rival whose natural superiority could condemn all humans to being little more than cattle kept to be fed on.”

The plot was interesting but the twists didn't surprise me very much and the villain was predictable. The story started off really well with Lucy in the wild fending for self, trying to piece her memory together. As the story moves on we see many more revelations as to why Lucy is so different than the rest of the vampires.I also enjoyed the fable and history of the behind the existence of vampires and how it was all intertwined with King Arthur.

Overall, an entertaining read for fans Bram Stoker's Dracula, Meljean Brook and Parasol Protectorate's Gail Carriger.

Realeases 18th September, 2012

ARC provided by Gallery