45) The Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina

The Blurb :

London, 1889. Victoria is Queen. Charles Darwin’s son is Prime Minister. And steam is the power that runs the world.

At 17, Claire Trevelyan, daughter of Viscount St. Ives, was expected to do nothing more than pour an elegant cup of tea, sew a fine seam, and catch a rich husband. Unfortunately, Claire’s talents lie not in the ballroom, but in the chemistry lab, where things have a regrettable habit of blowing up. When her father gambles the estate on the combustion engine and loses, Claire finds herself down and out on the mean streets of London. But being a young woman of resources and intellect, she turns fortune on its head. It’s not long before a new leader rises in the underworld, known only as the Lady of Devices . . .

When she meets Andrew Malvern, a member of the Royal Society of Engineers, she realizes her talents may encompass more than the invention of explosive devices. They may help her realize her dreams and his . . . if they can both stay alive long enough to see that sometimes the closest friendships can trigger the greatest betrayals . . .

My Thoughts :

I am always on the lookout for a new Steampunk series to sweep me off my feet.  Ever since Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate introduced me to the new genre I have been eager to get into more books dealing withe the strange machines and weird history.  However it seems that the Parasol Protectorate was either the best there is or it ruined all other Steampunk series for me.

This debut wasn't bad.  It had a lot of the quirkiness I like about the genre and it had some fun characters.  The story was pretty slow in the beginning and the second half read like a completely different book but there was some humour and fun with the pages.  The world building was poor and lacked a lot of information.  I didn't feel like I was in a different Victorian age with lots of machinery but a version of Downtown Abbey with better technology here and there.

Of course this book is more Young Adult than I would have liked and there wasn't anything very paranormal about it.  Two things that put me off slightly.  All in all I did like the book but there just isn't enough pull to make me rush off and read the next book in the series.  Maybe one day in the future when I have nothing to read (like that will ever happen) then I would definitely hunt down more about this Steampunk Lady.  However right now I have so many other books and series that I would rather invest my time in.

Well worth checking out if you are a Steampunk fan or like Young Adult books.  I am sure the rest of the series could be even more interesting than this first installment but as I said, I have too many other books to read and this one doesn't make it on my list of ones to read.

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