Audiobook Review: Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey

Steadfast
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Narrator: Carmela Corbett
Series: Elemental Masters (Book 8)
Publication: Audible Studios (June 4, 2013)
Length: 11 hours and 37 minutes

Description: The new novel in Mercedes Lackey’s best-selling series of an alternative Edwardian Britain, where magic is real - and Elemental Masters are in control.

Lionel Hawkins is a magician whose act is only partially sleight of hand. The rest is real magic. He’s an Elemental Magician with the power to persuade the Elementals of Air to help him create amazing illusions. It doesn’t take long before his assistant, acrobat Katie Langford, notices that he’s no ordinary magician - and for Lionel to discover that she’s no ordinary acrobat, but rather an untrained and unawakened Fire Magician. She’s also on the run from her murderous and vengeful brute of a husband. But can she harness her magic in time to stop her husband from achieving his deadly goal?

My Thoughts: STEADFAST is the eighth book in the Elementary Masters series. Katie Langford is on the run from her abusive husband, circus strongman Dick Langford. She finds her way to Brighton and a job as a magician's assistant in a music hall. 

Lionel Hawkins is her boss and an Elemental Magician with some control over air. The air elementals help make his act very magical. He realizes that Katie is an unawakened fire magician and along with Jack, the hall's doorman and army veteran and fire magician, they manage to convince Katie that her magic is real.

Katie's main focus is earning the money to divorce her abusive husband. Getting a chance to be a star act because the ballerina scheduled to start a turn defaulted for a better opportunity, she thinks she will soon be able to divorce and marry Jack who has become more than a friend. 

But Dick manages to track her down and begins as he had before with stealing the money she earned and beating her. Lionel and Jack don't know how to help Katie. But Katie is trying to help herself. She isn't going to put up with more abuse for any longer than it takes to think up a scheme to get rid of Dick.

This was an engaging historical fantasy based on the fairy tale of the tin soldier. Jack lost a leg in the Boer War and still suffers from guilt about the treatment of the Boers that he hated but could do nothing about. 

The characters were all interesting and well-developed. Carmela Corbett did an excellent job with the narration. 

I bought this one September 28, 2021. You can buy your copy here.