Welcome to my book review of the Obsidian Heart Trilogy by Mark Morris. Please find my reviews for each book below.

Alex Locke is a reformed ex-convict, forced back into London's criminal underworld for one more job. He agrees to steal a priceless artefact - a human heart carved from blackest obsidian - from the home of a decrepit old man. But when the burglary goes horribly wrong, Alex is plunged into the nightmarish world of the Wolves of London, a band of unearthly assassins who will stop at nothing to reclaim the heart. As he races to unlock the secrets of the mysterious object, Alex must learn to wield its dark power - or be destroyed by it.

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The Wolves of London Review

The Wolves of London is one of those novels that ended up being absolutely nothing like what I expected. It crosses the borders of multiple genres, and the best way I can think to describe it is similar to one of the darkest Doctor Who episodes. This isn’t that surprising, considering Mark Morris has written several Doctor Who novels himself. The Wolves of London is not my usual type of novel, it’s a bit too much mystery/thriller than I like in my books, however, it has a plot that catches the attention and doesn’t let go. Once I got started, I had to keep reading to find out what happened next, to unravel the mysteries that just kept building on top of each other. Then time travel got into the mix, and I was hooked.

Transported through time to the dank streets of Victorian London, Alex Locke seeks to unravel the mysteries of the Obsidian Heart, the enigmatic object to which his fate is inextricably bound. When a string of grisly murders takes place across the capital, Alex follows a trail that will lead him through the opium dens of Limehouse into the dark and twisted world of the Society of Blood, and ever closer to unlocking the secret of the Heart.

Content Warnings:

Please note
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programmes I earn a small commission from items purchased using links featured in this post at no extra cost to you. Click here to learn more. Every purchase you make through Just Geeking By helps keep this blog running.

The Society of Blood Review

This was my favourite book in the Obsidian Heart trilogy, and it was largely because it was set in the Victorian era rather than the present day.

The first book was primarily Alex Locke running around trying to get his bearing as his life fell apart after his daughter was abducted. In this book, he’s still chasing his tail a bit as he’s coming to terms with what strange and supernatural creatures really exist in the world. However, we see him come into his own as he starts to make plans and start to work things out.

Unfortunately, I also began to work things out and piece things together, which meant that by the end of The Society of Blood, I had worked out most of the trilogy’s overall plot. It didn’t stop the book itself from being enjoyable, but for me, it did affect my feelings toward the final book.

Alex Locke is desperately trying to hold onto the disparate threads of the complex web of time he has created. He travels to the First World War, living through the horrors of trench warfare in order to befriend a young soldier crucial to his story; then to the 1930s to uncover the secrets of a mysterious stage magician. He moves back and forth in time, always with the strange and terrifying Dark Man on his heels, gradually getting closer to uncovering the true nature of his destiny with the obsidian heart.

The Wraiths of War Review

The Wraiths of War is the last book in the Obsidian Heart trilogy by Mark Morris, and it’s an unfortunately predictable end to what has been an interesting read.

I’d worked out the big twist in the first book, and the other twist in the second book. There was a third twist I didn’t expect, and the book wasn’t terrible, but it kind of takes the fun out of the whole thing when you’re just flipping the pages waiting for it to get to the reveal that you know is coming. It’s like reading a book you’ve read before.

It felt like a big chunk of The Wraiths of War was spent stuck on one particular scene, going into massive amounts of detail. 

View Spoiler »I’m not sure why several chapters needed to be dedicated to Alex crawling across No Man’s Land to get his heart back, most of which was the description of him crawling through the mud over and over again. While I understand how important it is/was to give tribute to the horrific conditions in the First World War, this was done before this point and later when Alex returned to the War. This part of the book just felt like filler and the zombie part? It was never ever explained. « Hide Spoiler

There were also massive inconsistencies and plot holes that never got answered, things that the author just chose to push under the carpet in hopes that all would be forgiven when the big finale came along – for me, the big finale just wasn’t worth it. In my opinion, the first two books were much more interesting.

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