Bec McMaster Books

Bec McMaster writes from small-town Australia and has quietly become one of the most reliable engines in paranormal romance, with 42 books across 7 series and a readership that follows her from vampires to airships to fae courts without hesitation. She broke out with the London Steampunk series, beginning with Kiss of Steel (2012): a Victorian London ruled by the Echelon, blue blood aristocrats infected with a craving virus that makes them functionally vampiric, patrolled by metal-jawed enforcers and stalked by rogues. The original series runs nine novels, with fan favorites including Kiss of Steel, Heart of Iron, and Tarnished Knight, and continues in the six-book London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy sequence (Mission: Improper, The Mech Who Loved Me, and more), which pivots the world into spy-team territory.

For romantasy readers, her most relevant work is Dark Court Rising. Promise of Darkness (2019) kicks off with a premise engineered in a lab for this genre: Iskvien, daughter of the Queen of Thorns, is handed to the enemy Prince of Evernight as a treaty hostage for three months. Court politics, a mother worth fearing, a bargain with teeth, and a prince whose menace keeps slipping into something hungrier. The series continues with Crown of Darkness (2020) and Curse of Darkness (2022), plus the prequel Seduced by Darkness (2021). McMaster was writing dark fae romance before the market turned it into a gold rush, and it shows in the confidence of the worldbuilding: her courts feel dangerous because the rules never bend for the heroine's convenience.

What defines McMaster is craft consistency. Her books deliver the same core pleasures every time: fated mates tension or its enemies-flavored cousin, heroines with actual agency and often actual weapons, heroes whose possessiveness is interrogated rather than excused, and action plots that would hold up with the romance removed, though you would never want it removed. She is also one of the better pure-prose stylists in indie romance; her fight scenes are legible, her banter lands, and her pacing rarely sags across a nine-book series, which is harder than it sounds.

Heat check, because with McMaster it matters: she writes hot. Expect 3 to 4 on our spice scale, with multiple explicit scenes per book, written with choreography and emotional continuity rather than interchangeable filler. Dark Court Rising in particular pairs its heat with genuine emotional development, the enemies to lovers arc between Vi and Thiago resolving into one of her most satisfying relationships. Readers who prefer closed-door romance should sit this author out entirely.

Why she matters: McMaster represents the deep indie backlist that fed the romantasy boom before traditional publishing caught up. Readers who arrived via recent bestsellers and want more fae courts, more steam, and finished series with no waiting will find her catalog a feast. Steampunk-curious readers get the bonus of a fully realized alternate London that predates the current gaslamp revival.

Beyond the two flagship series, the catalog runs deep. Several further fae and paranormal lines extend the same world-hopping instincts, keeping the same template of dangerous men, capable women, and heat with consequences. Because most of her output is independently published, the books are priced for bingeing and the series are actually finished, two things traditionally published romantasy still struggles to offer. She has also aged remarkably well on consent; even her earliest blue blood heroes, written in 2012, negotiate more explicitly than plenty of 2024 shadow princes, which is why her backlist keeps converting new readers rather than embarrassing old ones.

Start with Promise of Darkness if you are here for fae royalty and treaty-hostage tension; the quartet is complete. Start with Kiss of Steel if vampiric Victoriana sounds better, reading the London Steampunk books in publication order. Either way, clear your calendar; her backlist does not believe in stopping points.