"...I was the most famous living-dangerously aeronaut in the history of the Corps, and now I'm reduced to adding spices to my coffee to try and get my pulse racing." [p. 190]
M/M romance set in an alternate, late-Victorian steampunk-flavoured London -- or rather Londinium, heart of the Britannic Imperium. Rafe Lancaster, black sheep of a minor House, was the jewel of Her Britannic Majesty's Imperial Aero Corps until a stray Boer shell knocks his fighter out of the sky, and Rafe (whose eyesight is permanently damaged) out of the Corps. Returning to London, he finds himself at something of a loose end. His House would like him to repay their investment in his education and military commission: but Rafe is not fond of the House system, and anyway would rather retain his independence. His preferences do not incline him to marriage or settling down -- though he does enjoy a liaison with a handsome archaeologist, and yearns after the handsome chap he meets at the select Margrethe's -- but an unexpected business opportunity opens new doors.
Why, yes, this is a steampunk coffee-shop story, albeit with added Aegyptology and some intricate political manoeuvering. Rafe is a charming and witty first-person narrator with a stiff upper lip and hidden reserves of sentiment, vulnerability et cetera. Londinium is recognisably London, complete with the Britannic Museum (Rafe's establishment is in Museum Street) and an upstart chain of American coffee shops, Philtre Coffee, which is 'spreading its tentacles across Londinium', and is finally quelled by taxation. Rafe's next-door neighbour is a pastry chef whose wife is an opera singer, but knows how to handle a cold-fusion pistol. These things bring me joy: as does a romance between two men of the world, neither of whom is in the least feminised, fragile or slight.
The Gilded Scarab has a thoroughly satisfactory ending, though there are plenty of unresolved threads setting up the next in the series. Which of course I purchased as soon as I'd finished this one ...
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