I recently read The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross. I selected it because it was what the library had when I went in search of my first steampunk novel.
I love the world imagined by Ms. Cross and I like the characters (even if they are a little cliché). However, the wonderfully diverse world is not enough to carry the plot, which develops as quickly as a thundering herd of turtles. By the time the stakes of the disappointingly shallow plot are revealed you are 359 pages into the 473 page book. Mix the plot from Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective with the characters from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and you’ll have this book nailed.
I hope the slow start and ridiculous amount of time spent on character development are just setting the stage for future books. I like the concept and world enough that I'm going to try the second book in the series, The Girl in the Clockwork Collar. But, if it starts off as slowly as this one, I probably won’t finish it.
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