A review by fishsauce
Corsets & Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances by Trisha Telep

2.0

Of the thirteen stories in this book, I only really enjoyed three (Frewin Jones' mermaid story, Adrienne Kress' piece, and Caitlin Kittredge's piece -- although the latter would have worked better as a straight-ahead Lovecraft homage without all the extra bits, which felt tacked-on). Several of the other stories had potential, most notably Dru Pagliossotti's and Kiersten White's, but they felt too slow to start and too quick to finish, a problem that plagued most of this collection. It's a bit shocking that pacing should be such a problem for so many veteran authors, but there it is. I also had a few conceptual difficulties with some of the stories; I felt like the rules of the various worlds hadn't always been worked out to any real degree, so I was expecting rabbits to come out of hats to resolve things rather than Chekov's gun, so to speak. In the end I sometimes felt like I was just reading a collection of 'cool little ideas' that were interesting in themselves, but hadn't yet been properly integrated into a narrative.