Burning Lamp, the second book in Amanda Quick's Dreamlight Trilogy (really just a subset of the Arcane Society series) is a fun trip back to the Victorian era. Quick's creation of the Arcane Society (a society to study the paranormal whose members are psychically gifted) was brilliant. It gives her considerable imagination virtually unlimited possibilities to create paranormal talents to gift (or curse) her character with. Add to that the way she moves the stories between the Victorian age (with backstory in the 17th century) and the present and, with her next book, to the future, interweaving characters and plot lines, creating over time a complex history, and you have the makings of a series reader's heaven. Of course, as others have pointed out, the books become formulaic (like the whole romance genre) and some don't surmount the formula to reach the quality of Quick's best books. This is one of those. But if you like Quick and the Arcane series, Burning Lamp is still the satisfying read you'd expect.
I don't agree with another reviewer that Quick's last 7 or 8 books have all been lackluster. Perfect Poison, the book just before the Dreamlight trilogy, was one of my all time favorite Quick books--a solid 5. I liked White Lies and Running Hot very much too. Perfect Poison was the story of Caleb and Lucinda Jones and the founding of the J&J detective agency. Having them return in Burning Lamp was a definite plus for me, even though their role wasn't terrribly important. Caleb was a well drawn character with idiosyncrasies that differentiated him from the cookie-cutter alpha male heros of so many books. Griffin Winter's of Burning Lamp doesn't stand out from other characters in the same way. He is described as a "crime lord". What are we supposed to make of that? We are told he doesn't deal in prostitution or opium, so I guess he's supposed to be sort of a nice crime lord. And Adelaide the heroine really didn't come alive for me either. Whereas Caleb and Lucinda's relationship developed, Griffin and Adelaide just fell in love. Blame it on the lamp, but it still doesn't satisfy the reader.
The two new elements in the Dreamlight trilogy are dreamlight reading and the Burning Lamp itself. Dreamlight reading is a somewhat interesting variation on aura reading--a well known concept that many people believe in. The Founders Formula, the holy grail of the first Arcane Society books, is an elixir created by Sylvester Jones to increase paranormal powers, but which ultimately twists those poweres and poisons those who take it. Again its an easy concept to understand with real life parallels such as steriods. The Burning Lamp, crafted by Nicholas Winters for the same purpose and posing the same danger to those who try to use it, is a much more clumsy plot device and one of the problems with the series. Its a big, clunky thing that the characters have to lug around, it can't be reproduced (so far), it can only be used by a Winters male and then only with a dreamlight reading female who may, or may not, have to be his lover first, and they have to be connected to it and each other to work the lamp. That's a lot to work into a convincing and flowing storyline.
This isn't a well organized review, but I have to add one more thing. I also loved that Quick brought back Mr. Pierce and Adam Harrow, the lesbian, cross-dressing, lovers introduced in Second Sight, for a minor role in Burning Lamp. I love that in the diversity of her characters Quick includes from time to time close female couples in a respectful way that makes them ring true as people. It's so rare in mainstream novels. It would be very interesting to read an Amanda Quick book with two female characters, something like the books in Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooter series that feature Jules and Robin.Get more detail about Burning Lamp (Dreamlight Trilogy).
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