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

If you’re looking for murderous automatons, steam-run motorcycles, chivalrous dukes, fiery absinthe and other bits of steampunkery goodness, then you need to go read 'The Girl in the Steel Corset'!

Finley Jayne is a young lady with something of a Jekyll and Hyde complex. Her personality is split in half, and while her sweeter, gentler side is usually in control, she can become a dangerous, rage-filled "monster" whenever she’s threatened, frightened or angered. Which, she finds out, isn't totally a bad thing. After being accosted by her employer’s drunk, foppish son, she gives the guy a good thrashing, runs away and then promptly gets hit by a duke on a steampunk-style motorcycle, Griffin King. Being a gentleman and intrigued by this strange girl who can survive getting hit by a motorcycle (velocycle), Griffin takes her home. There Finley meets Emily, a tiny genius inventor/medic/researcher, and Sam, a very grumpy giant of a guy who was turned into a cyborg after a near death experience because his friends couldn’t bear to let him die.

Griffin’s new house guest is not the duke's only issue; there’s also a villain loose in London who is using robots to do his dirty work, like stealing wax figurines and hair brushes as well as more deviant acts of crime. Meanwhile, Finley discovers that Griffin’s friends are not exactly normal, and neither is he. As she settles into the household, Finley starts to accept who she is and what she is capable of. Throw in a dashing, dangerous villain type as a second love interest, a thirst for revenge, an American "cowboy", a masquerade, and a mechani-cat, and you’ve got a fun, X-men-esque romp through steampunk!London.

The pacing of this book seems to quite good; the story moves along at a nice clip but nothing is revealed too quickly. Cross switches points of view between multiple characters, which gives the reader a good view into how each character thinks and feels. The powers that Cross chose to give her array of steampunk superhero folks make sense for each character.

While overall, I love this novel and will sing its frolicking AU-Victorian praises, there are a few little issues that rubbed me the wrong way. It seems highly implausible, impossible even, that Emily could create so many high-tech, 21st-century-type machines in a steam-and-clockwork world. The girl makes the steampunk equivalent of everything from motorcycles to flashlights to cellphones/pagers. Albeit, she’s a teenage genius, and she acquires an ability that could help her in the creation of all this tech, but the sheer number of inventions and their relation to modern day machines went beyond the believable. The plot is also a little predictable, but it’s still a very good read. Light and fun but with some meat to it! I think it’s a great read for late middle school through high school students, but adults could definitely enjoy it as well.