Note: This is a Review Dissection, meaning, it will be very long and detailed, kinda like a grad school lecture.
If you just want to know my general thoughts, head to “Closing Thoughts” or if you just want to know if this book is for you or not, jump to “So, who should read this book?”

Also it's more readable on the blog post: https://cannedbreadblog.wordpress.com...

Table of Contents: ctrl + f:

Introduction: &
Twitter Feed (Alpha): #
Dissection: =
Closing Thoughts: ^
So, who should read this book: ()

Spoiler-free Blurb: A Huntress, her police officer partner, and a living doll maid receive a letter to board a train that may or may not have a deadly monster on board. 10 eccentric passengers are on board. Can they make it through the night, or will they drink themselves under the train bar and get murdered? And where the fuck is that jar of jam?

Introduction: &

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Do you see this shit, dear reader?
That is a textbook picture of an existential crisis. (Ignore the fact it’s a Paperwhite, I’m too broke for the physical copy. I pleb my way to an eBook)
This wasn’t because of what was in the book (which frankly, only therapy will get me through it). This was because of Stang herself. Why?
I had the realization after finishing this book that you don’t need a world-class publishing house to come up with a killer book. Sometimes, and bear with me, you need an original thought that’s a little different from everyone else.
We have seen “Baking Bad” with their mix of cozy mystery and dragons, but this was a twist upon a twist of different genres mashed into one. Satire, humor, Soulsbourne, and cozy mystery combined to make me yeet “Gideon the Ninth” ¼ of the way and consume this book in 2 days.
You don’t get an author like this often that will consume your attention span the way Stang does. She’s here to stay in this genre no matter how long she writes for this crossover genre.

Twitter Feed (Alpha): #

· Magnifico is dressed too stereotypically like Shadi from “Yugioh”: This also applies to “Miss Peacock”, er, Peafowl. For as much creativity as Stang shows, she doesn’t play around with the murder suspects’ designs all that much. If you asked me to name anyone in a multiverse AU, I would only name our 3 MCs and Lady Constellation. And fucking Katherine Sharpe who still haunts my nightmares, by Shu-Dereth. And Anna Barrow.
· Where are the periods for the titles? Were they yeeted like “Gideon”? Not a complaint but one that genuinely confused me. I had to look up why Stang didn’t put periods in front of titles like Mr. and Mrs.
I think this is an American thing because dailywritingtips.com says: According to British usage, if the abbreviation ends with the same letter as the word entire, no period is necessary: Mr (Mister) Mrs (Mistress) Dr (Doctor)
So, there.
· Thunder: THUNDER!
· I feel like any of the Lamplight Mysteries can be a play script: I’ll go into depth in Prose. Stang’s style with this series is one I feel anyone can get into and descriptions and exposition, while they exist, aren’t all that much.

Dissection: =

True Tags: I’m not sure if this is normal for newly released books, but there are no tags as of publishing this Dissection. So, I’m going to copy-paste “Spindle Manor’s” as the style hasn’t changed too much:
Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Crime, Magic Supernatural, Detective, Horror

If this was an Ao3 fic: Murder on the Orient Express AU, Satire, Humor, Light Angst, LGBT, Thriller, Light Satire, Body Gore, Side effects include: a dash of Dead Dove, jam jars, and copious amounts of bullets, Eldritch Horrors, A werewolf that may or may not be Jacob, Puppets, Horror depending on if you ask your best friend or your grandma

Pacing: Pacing is extremely fast. There’s rarely a moment where it feels like there’s a lull in the story at all. She uses this to her advantage in both “Spindle” and “Lamplight”. The only place where there may be a slow pause is in the beginning of the book where Stang has to set the stage, introduce characters, and the purpose of the train ride. But do be prepared, once the pace picks up, it’s very hard to find a place to stop. What differs between Kingfisher and Stang: Kingfisher likes to put her hooks almost only at the chapter end. Whereas Stang somehow puts a hook in every other sentence, which is good when done right.
And she has done it right where it’s really hard to find a place to put the book down because someone lost their jam jar or a revelation happens with a guest.
Another example I can think of is Sanderson utilizing his pace pretty well. He is similar to Kingfisher in the way he usually has a hook at the end of each chapter, but sometimes he leaves nuggets of hooks that make you want to keep going in a long chapter.
So Stang, take it as a compliment, you and Sanderson give a run for their money in terms of pacing.

Vibe: We’re on a train a la “Murder on the Orient Express” except there are a lot of fantasy and exaggerated elements as well, like a living doll maid and the female version of “Frankenstein”. Expect to feel like you need to be a rich Victorian widow on her way to feign shock over her Russian husband's untimely death just to even sit with any of these people.

Worldbuilding: Here is where most of my deduction comes from and why this book isn’t 5 stars for me. I deduct other things from other elements and they weren’t egregious for me to plummet this lower than 4.5 stars (and honestly, this book doesn’t deserve anything under 4)
Stang has a world where it’s comfy with Penny serving you tea and martinis (if only it was sake), but also dark as shit with different monsters that will leave you having nightmares if you’re not prepared. Nobles that do not see themselves as gods and have mysterious origins and feelings about their place in the world. Magic in the form of different schools of thought (like mesmering from “Spindle”). The Guild of Hunters makes you wish that you could see what their academy is like. How monsters affect society as a whole.
I could go on, but Stang, if you’re reading this, I’m begging you. I need more.
Though that said, sometimes readers don’t exactly know what they want when the author isn’t sure how to implement a certain critique effectively. It’s like, if you’re at a café asking the coffee barista to make you sushi. It becomes harder when they don’t have the knowledge or the equipment to make said sushi. I mean, they can if they learn and understand how to do it, though it takes time and resources to do so.
I want more worldbuilding (sushi), but if the barista (Stang) doesn’t know how to make more of it while also keeping her style and pacing, I’m not going to nag at her to do more because there could be any number of reasons why she doesn’t want to add more. This could be anything such as not having the resources to learn how to do it effectively, it’s how the author wants it, their long lost uncle got teleported to a magical girl AU, etc.
All I’m just listing is my personal feelings of wanting more worldbuilding, not that it’s necessary if that makes sense.
Ah, I forgot to mention, when Stang does do worldbuilding, it’s in the Orderly Method which means it’s chunks of exposition or text that expands on the world that can be seen as a separate document if placed back-to-back. Usually has uniform-sized chunks of text.

Plot: The plot didn’t differ too much from “Spindle Manor” as we had the usual, murder, suspects, solving… the same stuff in a murder mystery. The difference in Lamplight Murder Mysteries is they take place in a dark Gaslamp fantasy with humor and satire, eldritch horrors, and dark elements. And somehow, Stang weaves it all beautifully. I can’t tell if she was the girl that found comfort on Halloween and watches murder documentaries in her spare time that is somehow cathartic for her, or if she just found that loving dark things is comfy. I only have a B.S. in Psych and I'm not getting paid nearly enough to explain why we love dark shit. Google it or go to my Kofi, I need to feed my cats, Barbara, pl-
Anyway, the plot structure doesn’t differ too much from “Spindle” so if you like having novels that have similar structure, then take comfort.

Prose: My mind is a bit foggy from “Spindle Manor” and what the prose was like, so I’m not going to try and compare it with each other.
Stang’s prose is fitting for the type of story she is trying to do. Naturally, this is not set in stone to match the prose style to the story, as we know from Sanderson that it can work if you know how to utilize it well. Her prose style can almost be seen as an artistic play script, but with adding the elements of a novel in between.
Her prose for “Lamplight” is concise, never dallies too long in one place, exposition is sprinkled in very sparingly, and while we do see the same literary device of using “but” as a transition to the next part of the sentence, it’s not as noticeable as with Williams and Casey where they use the same device too frequently that the reader notices it.
This brings me to the realization that if you do use the same literary device over and over (and I’m not saying you fucking should) at least make the plot so interesting and not delaying in one poetic exposition after another that we start seeing the faults of the train. And that’s what Stang does here, whether she realized she saved herself or not.

Characters: Like “Spindle Manor”, Stang’s characters are surface level with a hint of depth. Kind of like a scratch-off lottery card only instead of disappointment and depression, there’s a level of darkness or mystery. Every character plays a part in the plot in one way or another. No character will stay on the sidelines like in Fire Emblem (fucking Ferdinand is worthless and as loud as a squeaky door)
It's hard to expect an epic level of character depth like a Sanderson novel as this is technically a cozy mystery in structure, so expectations for this need to be reined in a little.
Personally, I wish Isabeau had a bit more depth than what was revealed in “Spindle Manor”, but we do get a lot more background for Evie in this book that blindsided me, so look forward to that!
We got a lot more lore about the nature of this world and the Nobles stuck on to the end of the story which had me screaming and reeling that there wasn’t more of it. And partly why I was lying on the floor.

Fix It AU (Beta): As I’ve mentioned in Worldbuilding, I would personally have wanted more of it, characters to be a bit more fleshed out, Nobles more in the forefront (even though I know it defeats the purpose of their mysticism) and vary slightly more with literary devices in the prose. Stang is so close to Pratchett territory that it’s not even a joke. (That’s a compliment)
My other personal grievance is that this book isn’t long, but I understand if she made it longer it might overstay its welcome. I also had a personal grievance with who the murder suspect was, but that’s just me.

Closing Thoughts: ^
As you might tell with this Review Dissection, I loved the shit out of “Lamplight”. I can’t recommend this book as a standalone as it does reveal some spoilers of “Spindle” so I would advise reading that first before coming to “Lamplight”. Which, anyway, it’s also a really good read, even if I did have slightly rose-tinted glasses (I rated that shit 5 stars because it deserved it, bitch).
The rating, 4.5/5 for “Lamplight” is a little biased because I like this book, but that doesn’t mean everyone will agree (as seemingly everyone either loves or hates an author’s work. No author is universally loved). Stang also had very minor editing errors (because really, if you’re self-publishing on Kindle Unlimited and made sure it didn’t have glaring errors and only the minor comma displacement, you’re winning at life).
But Lady, you had problems with multiple things with this book! The book should be lower based on your rating system!
Guess what? This book is so good to me that it bypasses a lot of its problems with grace.
Fix It AU brought to light some things that could have been improved on, but by no means is this a bad book. Quite frankly it’s the opposite.
Think about it. You don’t want a book too perfect otherwise it’s just a group of people being like, “Herp, I like this book” or “Yeah I also like this book” or "Did you read about those perfect muscles on that goblin?!" without any meaningful commentary.
It’s a good problem to have when you have tiny problems that are shadowed by the book being really good. If the book is so good that the cheese holes are just an afterthought, that means you have a strong storyteller on your hands. The worldbuilding drug Stang dangles in front of me is a good problem to have as that shows that people care about your world and story. And really, a lot of authors have a problem getting their readers to care about their work.
All that said, it’s still a fucking good book. If you loved “Spindle Manor” and/or if you’re the type that likes to mix dark elements with humor and cozy mysteries, this series is a really good time.
I know Stang wants to write more of this series, and I’ll be here yeeting “Gideon” away from me every time she publishes, but if she ever decides to stop (girl, please don’t), we can be graced that The Lamplight Murder Mysteries exists and binge the rest of her books.

So, who should read this? ()
Read if you are the type of person that loves Halloween or Soulsbourne mixed with cozy murder mysteries and satire, cause man, we have a strong writer in the works in this new mashup genre. I can’t rec this as a standalone book, so it would be advisable to read “Spindle Manor” first before reading “Lamplight”. This series is on Kindle Unlimited, and you will double-take that this is a self-published work and not traditionally published and you will find yourself on the floor next to your favorite fantasy blogger having an existential crisis.

4.5/5