The Girl in the Steel Corset (The Steampunk Chronicles #1)

Before I get into the actual review, can I mention real quick how much I love and hate this cover? Love because it’s gorgeous.

Hate because the girl on the cover doesn’t at all resemble the actual main character of the book, who she’s supposed to represent. Come on, cover people. How hard is it to hire a blonde girl with dark streaks in her hair to portray a blonde girl with dark streaks in her hair? I’m pretty sure even some decent photoshopping skills could have fixed this.

Also, the dress is the wrong color.

Anyway. Cover rant over.

The Plot

The Girl in the Steel Corset opens as Finley Jayne, a serving girl in the house of the scoundrel Lord Felix, escapes an assault from her employer, runs into the park, and is promptly nearly run over by two men on “velocycles,” which are basically steampunked-up motorcycles.

The man who hit her is Griffin King, a duke and one of the most powerful men in London. He takes her back to his house where he and his group of oddly talented misfit friends reside. As Finley slowly assimilates into their group and begins to trust them, she also battles to control the two halves of her personality warring inside her: the sweet and demure serving girl, and the wild and violent “other” side.

Her two personalities frighten and mystify her, but strangely enough, Griffin may be the one to provide answers.

Meanwhile, Griffin & Co. are hot on the trail of The Machinist, a mysterious criminal on a bizarre crime spree in London. Finley, in an effort to uncover the truth, tries to help by joining forces with the dastardly Jack Dandy, lord of the seedy underbelly of London.

My Thoughts

[Warning: there is a minor Buffy spoiler below. Yes, I said Buffy. It's relevant. I promise.]

As you can probably tell from my plot summary, there’s a lot going on in this book. Maybe too much. We have the plot of Finley’s dual personalities, the overarching mystery of The Machinist, the weird love triangle between Finley, Jack Dandy, and Griffin, another love triangle between Griffin’s other three housemates, a murder mystery, some supernatural craziness, and — oh yes — another murder mystery.

It’s a lot to fit into one book. I was able to keep up with it, but it felt kind of cluttered to me.

I liked the characters. Griffin in particular was very appealing to me. The other housemates – Emily, Sam and Jasper – were also fun, and each certainly had their own distinctive voice and personality. No character was perfect, but their motivations were all (mostly) understandable.

Finley was a bit harder to relate to, because of her two “selves” battling for dominance à la Jekyll and Hyde. Jack Dandy was the hardest for me to grasp, partially because while he was supposed to be a criminal mastermind, he never came across as particularly dangerous. And also, the description of him as young, dashing, roguish, and educated with a thick Cockney accent never really gelled for me.

My biggest issue with the writing was there was quite a lot of telling instead of showing. I didn’t feel like I was experiencing events with the characters; instead, it felt like I was being filled in on what happened and told how to react after the fact. The attempt at world-building also felt a bit forced: lots of time is spent on describing exactly what everyone is wearing, and all the various technologies present in each scene, but rarely do the descriptions actually serve the plot. It’s funny, although I absolutely love the imagery of steampunk, I wasn’t a big fan of how it felt a little bit shoehorned into the story. It felt like a lot of scenes were trying to scream, “Remember! This story is STEAMPUNK! Don’t forget the STEAMPUNK!“ And I’d rather it just was steampunk. If that makes any sense.

There were also several occasions when there was a bit of a disconnect between the characters’ actions and what they were supposedly feeling. One scene that comes to mind is when Finley and Sam wind up fighting for their lives. They are both described as being terrified, yet outwardly, they are exchanging witty banter. I know that outward expressions of bravado can be a defense mechanism, but it didn’t ring true for me.

The story itself was interesting, but I felt it could have been pared down significantly to help with the flow. I think one of the murder mysteries could have been cut out entirely without hurting the story. The Machinist plot was fine (although I totally guessed the Machinist’s endgame very early in the game, and it’s actually extremely reminiscent of a certain ’80s Disney animated movie that my kids have forced me to watch about 100 times). I do wish the culmination of that particular storyline had been a bit more…challenging.

You know how in Buffy, there’s that one episode where Buffy fights the über-vamp in the gladiatorial-type setting, and it nearly kills her and is like the hardest thing ever, then by the finale she’s somehow dusting them left and right without breaking much of a sweat? Well, it’s kind of like that. But I forgave the writers of Buffy for that little discrepancy, so I can forgive Kady Cross for essentially doing the same thing.

However, although I obviously had several points of contention with this book, I still ultimately enjoyed it. The story is interesting (if not entirely unique – there are elements of Sherlock Holmes, Jekyll and Hyde, and the aforementioned Disney movie sprinkled in all throughout) and the world intriguing. The characters are fun and distinctive, and while I don’t think the book was entirely cohesive, it worked well enough to keep my attention.

And as for the ending, most of the main plot points are tied up neatly by the end of Girl in the Steel Corset. The last few pages introduce a new conflict, which is the setup for the sequel, but I still felt ultimately satisfied by the conclusion of this book. Endings for series books are always tricky. It’s easy to feel frustrated if not many questions are answered, or too satisfied if there aren’t enough loose ends (thus making you lose interest in the next book). I think this book handled that balance nicely.

Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable inaugural excursion into the world of steampunk fiction, and I’m looking forward to revisiting this world (hopefully with a more streamlined plot) in the sequel.

This book didn't ring my bells. The cover is AMAZING, and I had high hopes that I'd love what was between the cover as well. Let me say that even though it didn't work for me, I think there are many readers who will absolutely love it. The steampunk world-building is incredible. The plot has twists and turns. There's plenty of action. For me, it came down to the writing style. I found myself rolling my eyes wihtin the first few pages. So much was laboriously explained in paragraphs of exposition, characters' motivations didn't quite make sense to me, and there were multiple cliches (i.e. Depsite NO evidence that he's right and despite the fact that it made no sense at all, the hero "feels" like he must be connected to the heroine, even though she's unconscious and he's never seen her before, and therefore takes her with him instead of getting her medical help) that I recognize from adult paranormal romances, and I'm really not a fan of stuff that happens just to further the plot rather than for a solid, authentic reason.

Like I said, I couldn't get into the book because the writing style just didn't make it an enjoyable reading experience for me, but I think there are many out there who will enjoy the fabulous world building and plot.