Helpful Score: 2
This blew me away. What I really loved was the world building. I have a very basic idea of steampunk so I came into this book with no expectations and was just blown away at the images of Ondinium while I was reading this book - from a city with winding, intricate streets, to the costumes of members of the different castes, and all the little nooks and crannies in between like the interesting things in Alister's crowded, paper filled office and in Cristof's watch shop. I also enjoyed the idea of card-punch computing (old-school!) being a large part of the plot and a system built upon this that is used to help run Ondinium. It was fantastic! The cherry on the top of all this was the slow moving romance that did not take over the book and worked alongside the mystery of what is going on in Ondinium.
The only negatives I can think of for this story were very minor. One was that at times I ran into a few typos like repeated phrases next to each other and missing words. I'm not really the most observant person about this type of thing so when I do catch it I figure others will. The other comment I had was on the ending well there was a really satisfying HEA for the romance, but the mystery part somehow didn't tie up to my complete satisfaction. The reveal was a bit of a surprise (when I mull this over I think that perhaps I was distracted by red herrings thrown in by the author), and yet WHY also didn't fully make sense to me. Maybe I expected to understand the reasons for the villains' actions more fully than was presented.
Overall: Already one of my favorite reads of this year, I think it's a shoo in for my best of 2009 list. This combines fantasy, steampunk, romance, action, and intrigue into something new and fresh. If you are the least bit interested go find this book. I was so addicted I just read this straight for hours and when I came up for air I was disoriented about how much time had passed.
The only negatives I can think of for this story were very minor. One was that at times I ran into a few typos like repeated phrases next to each other and missing words. I'm not really the most observant person about this type of thing so when I do catch it I figure others will. The other comment I had was on the ending well there was a really satisfying HEA for the romance, but the mystery part somehow didn't tie up to my complete satisfaction. The reveal was a bit of a surprise (when I mull this over I think that perhaps I was distracted by red herrings thrown in by the author), and yet WHY also didn't fully make sense to me. Maybe I expected to understand the reasons for the villains' actions more fully than was presented.
Overall: Already one of my favorite reads of this year, I think it's a shoo in for my best of 2009 list. This combines fantasy, steampunk, romance, action, and intrigue into something new and fresh. If you are the least bit interested go find this book. I was so addicted I just read this straight for hours and when I came up for air I was disoriented about how much time had passed.
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