There Are Inkspots On My Page!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. You can find this, and other reviews, on my blog.

I have been searching for great steampunk for a long time now, so I was very excited to come across this anthology, wherein eleven different authors give us their steam-powered versions of fairy tales.

I really enjoyed the basic plot of several of the stories, especially A Clockwork Dollhouse, Clockwork Wolf and The Key Girl.

That’s about where I run out of positive things to say. Almost every story ends very abruptly with little to no resolution. The first couple of times this happened, I wrote it off as word count constraints. By the end of the book, I was rather frustrated. In many of the stories, it didn’t even feel like it was halfway through before it was all over.

The Key Girl was a notable exception to this - the main premise of its section was resolved, but ended in such a way as to not be much of an ending. If Grant Eagar isn’t fleshing this out into a full novel, I’m going to be sorely disappointed.

I was very surprised to see the amount of grammar and spelling errors found throughout the book, especially in the last few stories. I’m far from perfect, but I firmly believe that this book is in desperate need of a new editor. Seeing a character “chocked” and losing “conscience” is a bit much.

Ultimately, it was a very disappointing read, and I will continue my hunt for great steampunkery elsewhere.