Scan barcode
A review by karrama
Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan
4.0
To be fair, I read this book without reading the first book. The writing style is good and pointedly appropriate for a modern take on a steam era, but at the same time it is modern time according to the dating system. The female-protagonist-written-by-male is done better than I've seen before, barely a slip.
I'm going bare-bones on this one because I think I would have appreciated the nuance more if I had read the first book.
The overly complicated plot and intertwined countries and characters are fun, but sometimes I wonder at the final equations.
The romance is a slow build, and with the Elizabeth/John Farthing connection, which may be the romance discussed, I would have felt it was more a build if he hadn't exploited her visually in a window used as a mirror much as she exploited his willingness to turn around at a crucial moment to allow the plot to continue forward on the character's terms rather than the government's. But here's the thing for me as a reader, from that point forward, the actions stopped making sense to me. Still a lovely read, I didn't understand people's willingness to help her and the people following her in the second half of the book appeared out of nowhere. I can only assume I missed a lot in the first book.
Final accounting:
Fun read, good steampunk-ish world.
I'm going bare-bones on this one because I think I would have appreciated the nuance more if I had read the first book.
The overly complicated plot and intertwined countries and characters are fun, but sometimes I wonder at the final equations.
The romance is a slow build, and with the Elizabeth/John Farthing connection, which may be the romance discussed, I would have felt it was more a build if he hadn't exploited her visually in a window used as a mirror much as she exploited his willingness to turn around at a crucial moment to allow the plot to continue forward on the character's terms rather than the government's. But here's the thing for me as a reader, from that point forward, the actions stopped making sense to me. Still a lovely read, I didn't understand people's willingness to help her and the people following her in the second half of the book appeared out of nowhere. I can only assume I missed a lot in the first book.
Final accounting:
Fun read, good steampunk-ish world.