Dragons & Dirigibles (Gaslight Chronicles #7) by Cindy Spencer Pape

Captain Victor Arrignton is forced to return to land, when his brother and sister in-law are killed in an accident.  As the second son, Victor never expected to become the Earl but with a firm sense of duty, Victor attempts to establish a life at Black Heath and raise his niece Emma.  Victor struggles with his new role, particularly trying to raise Emma to be a proper lady. as she seems for more interested in mathematics and science. than learning the traditional womanly skills of stitching, music. and dance.  This task becomes that much more difficult when dirigible pilot Melody McKay. falls from the sky. after being shot down.  Now. Victor finds himself struggling to bust up a smuggling ring and deal with the this difficult woman, who challenges the very idea of what it is to be a lady.

Dragons & Dirigibles is a novella, coming in at a scant 125 pages and is the story of Melody Mckay, sister to Connor of Cards & Caravans.    Like all of the female love interests in this series, Melody is a very strong character.  Melody knows her own mind and will not be told what to do.  When Melody is found in a compromising position with Victor by Tom, Melody is adamant that Tom not interfere.

Melody came around Victor and laid a hand on his wait.  "Thomas Aloysius Devere, never take that tone with me again.  I am an adult and I make my own decisions.  Does it look as if I'm here under duress?"  She gestured at Victor's unbuttoned waistcoat.

Tom flushed. "No, of course not, but -"

"Do I need to tell Wink about this?  Or Caro?" Melody tapped her foot.

Victor knew he should intervene, take control of the situation, but right now, he was too entranced by the fiery creature by his side who seemed to be handling things just fine on her own.

"Look, Mel.  I'm sorry.  But you know this is a bad idea."  Tom looked u at the ceiling, as if requesting divine assistance.  "Let's just all go upstairs and forget all about this."

Forget? Every second of this interlude would be branded into Victor's mind until the day he died.

"Just walk away, Tommy." Melody's voice lower instead of rising.  "You're out of line and you know it.  Leave now, if you place any value on my friendship."

Of course, Melody is another in a long line of gently used protagonists, while her love interest, Victor, is an experienced lover.  This is yet another trope that is all too common in paranormal romance. In some ways, it undermines some of the strength that Melody has been given in this novel.

Kilts & Kraken by Cindy Spencer Pape Book 3 of the Gaslight Chronicles

This time, the Gaslight Chronicles moves to the highlands.  A young Lord, Magnus, Baron Findlay, washes up from the sea nearly dead after fighting a kraken.  Dr. Geneva MacKay is dispatched by the order to see to his care.  Though she is not pleased to once again leave her practice behind even briefly after struggling to establish herself as one of the few female physicians in Edinburgh, she assents to her father's wish. Geneva does what she can for Magnus but fears that it won't be enough and decides to help fulfill his dying wish  to return home.  Once in Torkholm, much to her surprise, the magic of the island quickly heals Magnus.  Though his health has returned, they must still deal with the fact that krakens continue to leave the deep to attack the tiny island.  Can Magnus and Geneva discover the source of the attacks? How will the two deal with their deepening attraction, when Magnus cannot leave the island?

Kilts & Kraken is an exceedingly quick read coming in at one hundred and eleven pages.  I actually found the mystery itself quite interesting and which that it had been expanded.  In many ways, the mystery of the kraken attacks was too often displaced to center the romance between Magnus and Geneva. We did get some of the legend that has been customary from this series with Magnus clearly being a descendant of the vikings and the name Torkholm being derived from Thor. The people of Torkholm are still very suspicious and there is a strong belief that the Gods are angry about the modernization of the island as the cause of attacks, making Kilts & Kraken and age old story of superstition and old religion versus progress.

 In some ways the character of Geneva is progressive.  She becomes one of the first female doctors and is not shy about being sarcastic when there is a suggestion that her gender disqualifies her from being a good doctor. While Magnus is brandishing weapons to fight the kraken, it is Geneva who uses her intelligence to get to the root of the mystery.  Many of the weapon in Kilts and Kraken are employed in some way and are not waiting on a man to make their life complete.  Geneva in fact makes it clear that her practice is her life.  

Sexually, though Geneva has not had intercourse, she does have some experience.  Magnus however views himself as having taken her innocence, because Geneva's hymen was intact.  This of course privileges intercourse as the only kind of sex that matters and is problematic given that once again, there are not GLBT characters in this series. Geneva even admits to masturbating but is too embarrassed to admit it to Magnus though he has no problem acknowledging that he self pleasures during his time of abstinence.  This casts a veneer of shame and over Geneva' desires. The following passage was further troubling:

"This was what her body had been made for.  Much of her life, she'd felt mannish and ungainly because she was tall, sturdy and interested in science.  With Magnus, she was pure woman, and that sensation was almost as blissful as the feel of his body lodged so deeply inside her it seemed he'd filled her very soul." (pages 70-71)