Radford
presents five short steampunk stories and an excerpt from her upcoming novel in
ebook format. In Radford’s steampunk world of alt history, air ships were
invented and came into wide use early in the 19th century; Lord
Byron was working on immortality before he died; automatons are no longer
novelties; Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage perfected their difference engine;
and the map of North
America is
very, very different from our historical version. Four of the stories are
related, featuring sisters Trude Romanz and Madame Magdala, one an airship
pirate, the other an owner of an incredible bookstore and governess/assistant
to Ada Lovelace. The fifth story is set in the same universe but with different
characters, and is, in my opinion, the best of the stories.
The stories are
fairly brief; they read like selections from a larger work or perhaps
installments of a series. They could really use a little filling out, a little
more plot. Some of the self-description of the heroines- four of the stories
are told in first person- need some work; there are passages in them that are
Mary Sue-ish. Radford is an experienced author, so I’m not sure why she had a
problem with this. I’ve not read anything else by her; perhaps this is her
first time writing first person POV? I don’t know. But this world she’s created
has great promise and I love that the main characters are women.
I received this book free in return for an unbiased review.
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through it and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This in no way affected my review.
No comments:
Post a Comment