Monday, January 7, 2013

100 Book Challenge - Book 5 - The Girl in the Steel Corset



Book 5 / 100
Book: The Girl in the Steel Corset
Author: Kady Cross
ISBN: 978-0-373-21070-1

I came for the cover, I stayed for the story and the characters! Yes, I’ve read some bad reviews, but I think they didn’t read with an open mind… I loved this book.

Finley Jayne is not a normal young woman. A working class young woman in London in 1897 with a difference, the time and the woman. It’s a London where mechanical horses run amuck, automatons attack people and a waxwork of Queen Victoria has been stolen from Madame Tussauds!  Griffin King’s father, the late Duke of Greythorne had led an expedition to the centre of the earth and discovered an ore that generated energy, an ore that revolutionized the world. Finley’s father had experimented with something else, tiny organisms that were found there too, experiments that changed him permanently, changes he passed on to his daughter.

Joining forces with Griffin and his friends, Sam, Emily and Jasper, Finley finally finds a home for herself with others that have special powers. Griffin has a direct line to the Aether, Sam has the strength of many men, Emily is a genius and Jasper moves very, very fast. Together they learn the origin of their abilities and work together to defeat a plot against Queen Victoria.

In a world where the technology we have today is second nature, the steampunk world to Kady Cross’s London 1897 is like a breath of fresh air. It’s a world where robots, or automatons, act as assistants, waiters and servers, larger robots help to dig in the London Underground, and mechanical horse replace the more conventional horses. Battery powered lighting replaces gas and velocycles are the brand new form of transport. It’s London baby, but not as we know it.

Rating… 5 out of 5 gears. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys alternate history, or steampunk, or a slightly different take on the idea of superheroes…

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