Well, I'd say they compare moderately favourably if you think of them as Carriger-Xtra-Xtra-Lite.
A little like
Soulless, where the couple-to-be are still spending much of the time panting and pawing at each other, only with slightly less of a sense of humour since instead of being tongue in cheek, the narrative seems to be seriously for serious about the heroine's apparent-disadvantages-that-turns-out-to-be-a-Good-Thing™ virtues and the Victorian social structures/gender relations (aside from letting girls make machines and wield swords, which it's fairly reasonable about).
And I don't know whether this would be considered a plus or not as far as your reading tastes go, but when I say that they couple like crazed ice weasels for 20% of the book, they really do couple like crazed ice weasels for 20% of the book. And it's rather… lovingly described.
But yeah, there's a reasonable amount of time spent on actually trying to find out whodunnit, so it's fairly decent in that regard.
For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction, and I am providing the counterbalance right now:
You have
got to hie yourself over to Amazon's summer sale and get yourself a copy of
Barbara Hambly's
Those Who Hunt the Night, which has been
dropped to a dirt cheap 99 cents. (Sidebox says you have an iPad, so you can use the Kindle app if you're not going to strip and convert, yes? Or you could wait a bit to see if the other stores pricematch, since Amazon says the sale is valid until the 15th or so and maybe they're pulling from publisher promos already.)
I'm pretty sure I don't have to sell you on the quality and enjoyability of Hambly's writing since you've read her already, but I'm going to say that this is one of her very best books in any genre, and it's an awesome take on Victorian (okay, Edwardian) paranormal investigations involving finding out whodunnit when the apparent set of murders involves vampires-with-no-y. Plus it's got academics and redheads, though those are really only bonuses for my reading tastes.
Anyway, it is really and truly excellent and imaginative and well-researched, -thought-out, and -written and worth at least fivefold every single penny of the 99 cents plus tax you'd spend (and I shall be picking up my own copy as soon as I'm done typing this, which will make it the 3rd version I personally own).
It's a bit on the thriller-esque side and the sequels while still mostly very good, don't come nearly up to the same level, but I think you'll really enjoy the series, especially since you like amateur sleuth mysteries and paranormal fantasy.
And that has been my enabling deed for the day.
And once I'm done my 1-clicking, will be moving on to continue with
Jim and
Joyce Lavene's 2nd Renaissance Festival mystery,
Ghastly Glass, which sees another craft apprenticeship turned murder investigation for our intrepid amateur sleuth. "Another year, another dead body", as the Amelia Peabody books would say.