The Shadow Revolution

Here is my problem with this book. I didn't dislike this book, but I can't say I liked it either. It was better then OK but I would not really call it good. I guess I would call it goodish. There were parts about it I liked, but..... I just don't know.

The "Steampunk" subgenre can be a minefield for the unwary. It has gained "steam" over the last few years. (I could not help it, and if you feel like you can no longer take this review seriously after that terrible pun, I will understand.) Because of this, authors and publishes love to shoe-horn books that really have no justifiable reason to be called "steampunk" into the genre. A steampunk novel needs more a man (or woman) in a top hat with a few cog sewn in, or a woman (or a man, hey, I don't judge) in a corset. So many novels these day that claim to be steampunk are just romance novels with cogs. I demand more than that from my steampunk, and so should you!

Although The Shadow Revolution is not a romance per say, I just felt like it was one, and I kept dreading the "heaving bosoms, and throbbing members" I felt were going to be on the next page. It did not matter that there were no members, throbbing or otherwise to be found anywhere in this book, I found it distracting.

That really was it's main problem. This novel did not know what it wanted to be. Was it steampunk, a romance, a supernatural thriller? It just could not settle into any one thing which made it feel muddy and distracted.

I think there is potential in this series, and I am not quite ready to give up on it. I will read the second book in the series The Undying Legion and then decide how I feel.