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As mentioned in 2025, a Page Odyssey, the issue with book series is often that the plot runs out of steam and gets bogged down, usually falling flat like a soufflé in the grand finale. Stephen King's Dark Tower seven-book series is a very good example of this phenomenon, whereas J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga is a perfect counterexample. In the former, the author goes with the flow without really knowing where he's headed. In the latter, her imagination is channelled into a roadmap that is sufficiently detailed to prevent her inspiration from straying too far from the main narrative arc, at the risk of losing readers along the way.
Originally published ten years ago, the Lady Helen trilogy is the exception that proves the rule, falling into the second category of narrative consistency and masterful development from beginning to end. It is a huge favourite of mine that I wanted to share right away.
Jane Austen-Style Romance and Dark Fantasy
To set the scene, its author, Australian Alison Goodman, views it as a cross between Pride and Prejudice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A book of manners tinged with dark fantasy.
On her website, she explains how, before she started to write the first of the Lady Helen series, she spent eight months reading books and watching documentaries about the English Regency (1811-1820), which was a time of excess for the aristocracy, but also a period of uncertainty caused by the Napoleonic Wars, the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the social unrest that came with it.
More specifically, for Book 1 — The Dark Days Club — she studied Regency London and what was called “the Season”, which went from about January to June while Parliament sat. She says, “It was the busiest and most important social season when young ladies made their debut to polite society and entered the marriage mart.”
The second book — The Dark Days Pact — took her research to the seaside resort of Brighton and the summer social season, and Book 3 — The Dark Days Deceit — is all about the spa resort of Bath and the winter social season.
So Lady Helen Wrexhall is a young English aristocrat about to be introduced to Queen Charlotte's court — a crucial moment for her social and marital future. She lives under the guardianship of her very uptight uncle — some sort of Regency-era Vernon Dursley — and her kind aunt who treats her like her own daughter. Orphaned since a shipwreck that claimed her parents' lives, she also has to deal with a reputation tarnished by scandalous rumours of her mother's treason.
Lord Pennworth’s views on women, and unholiness in general, were often expressed, both at home and in public. He was an admirer of the evangelical Hannah More, although unlike that moderate lady, his own particular brand of piety was made of choler and spit. His vehement campaigning against the bawdy houses had captured the attention of the caricaturists, who had rechristened him Lord Stopcock in their savage cartoons. On one of her midnight forays into his papers, Helen had found a published engraving of him by Cruikshank. She had been forced to stuff her fist in her mouth to stop from laughing at the uncanny depiction of him as a cockerel: huge barrel chest thrust out, round eyes bulging, and florid face colored in the bloated red of the coxcomb drawn atop his head.
Deceivers vs Reclaimers
Even before her presentation, the disappearance of a maid leads her to a hidden reality: London is home to demons infiltrating all strata of society.
Enter the handsome, brooding Lord Carlston, who has returned from exile after being suspected of murdering his wife. He belongs to the Dark Days Club, a secret organisation appointed by the home office to maintain balance in the face of vicious (and numerous) demons known as Deceivers.
These creatures, much like vampires (and Archons), feed on the vital energy of humans and their emotions — fear, violence, chaos, lust. They live inconspicuously among them, produce offspring destined to serve as their hosts when the bodies they occupy become compromised, and even attend high society events. Some within the Club itself whisper that Bonaparte could be one of them. As long as their existence remains unknown, they maintain the status quo. So the supernatural world does not stand apart from the real world: it coexists with it, invisible to most.
Deceivers are not mere predators driven by instinct. They operate within a framework, a pact, a form of negotiated balance that regulates their violence without ever eradicating it. They can survive, thrive, and circumvent their demise — always at the expense of others. The chilling thing is not only their predatory nature, but the sophistication of the system that makes it possible: an organisation where the survival of some methodically depends on the gradual eradication of others. Their threat goes beyond the individual. It infiltrates lineages, moves from body to body, leaves traces that cannot be erased without damage.
They are not just monsters. They are masters of persistence. The struggle is not between pure Good and a caricature of Evil, but between two forces compelled to act in a world where every decision creates casualties.
Lady Helen discovers that she herself is, by nature, a member of this club — a direct heiress. She possesses a special energy and gifts that make her a Reclaimer and force her to choose: to remain in a rigidly codified existence of privilege and carefree living, or to step into a more stimulating but infinitely more dangerous world, where madness is as real a risk as death.
How Lady Helen Holds the Reader Spellbound
What makes this series a page-turner that you can't put down isn't just its fantasy element. The perfectly recreated historical setting alone provides a solid foundation that makes the characters strikingly real — so perfectly portrayed that the personality of the ultimate antagonist was enough for me to recognise him as such, even though his identity is only revealed at the very end. It's as if words could produce a vibration and make fictional characters 'real'. This gives us food for thought about the nature of this simulation, doesn't it?
But let's get back to the characters created by Alison Goodman.
Lady Helen's gradual evolution from a naive upper-class young woman to a Deceiver-slayer and soul-Reclaimer is very well crafted because, from the outset, behind her apparent submission to the oppressive social constraints imposed on women of her time, she never passively accepts her fate, educates herself in secret on subjects considered ‘unladylike’ and fights against this new identity that destiny has imposed on her. Her journey is as much internal as it is physical: it is one of emancipation in a society that drastically limits women.
Her mentor, Lord Carlston, embodies the figure of the maverick hero, bearer of forbidden and morally ambiguous knowledge that disturbs conventional thinking. He is shrouded in an aura of mystery, so much so that it is impossible to know where he stands, as the line between good and evil is blurred. Think of him as a kind of Sirius Black who never went to Azkaban.
Lord Carlston was handsome, Helen conceded, in a hard, angular way that made the men around him seem somewhat effeminate. Yet there was a ruthlessness to the set of his mouth that was decidedly repellent. His skin was unfashionably tanned—both Andrew and Aunt Leonore had mentioned he had been on the Continent—and the brown of his eyes was so dark that it merged with the black pupil, making their expression impenetrable. It was very disconcerting and gave him a flat look of soullessness, like the eyes of the preserved shark she had seen in the new Egyptian Hall. Helen lifted her bare shoulders against a sudden chill. How apt. There could be no soul in this man: he was a murderer. And possibly an abductor. She wrapped her fingers more firmly around the head of the fan and the miniature. Just in time, for her aunt was turning to introduce the men.
Not to mention a gallery of colourful secondary characters, full of light and shade, with qualities and flaws that make them all the more human.
“A number of the minor characters are my interpretations of real historical figures”, explains Alison Goodman. “The Prince Regent, of course, as well as Queen Charlotte and Princesses Mary and Augusta, Beau Brummell, Lady Jersey, Lord Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Perceval, and John Bellingham. The events around Lord Perceval and Bellingham are also true—Bellingham did assassinate the Prime Minister—and my depiction is entirely based on newspaper and magazine reports from the time, as is my description of the terrible Ratcliffe Highway murders.”
Even the “villains” in the story always have a good reason for being so. It is these subtle nuances that, in my humble opinion, make it so endearing, to the point that a certain nostalgia sets in once the very last page has been turned.
While the members of the Dark Days Club have returned to their immortal resting place on our library shelf, the Deceivers are still very much among us. It is up to us to exercise the vigilance of a Reclaimer's gaze and our neutrality so as not to provide them with any more precious loosh.
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