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A review by liriel27
A Conspiracy of Alchemists by Liesel Schwarz
2.0
Full disclosure - I received a free copy of this book from the FirstReads program.
Oh, I had some fairly serious issues with this.
The writing style is repetitive, rather than clever (one can only be annoyed so often by the apparently shocking realization of feelings which have already been discussed before it loses any charm it might have had. And that "so often" is once).
The basic premise is interesting, but the execution of characterization and motive is woefully slapdash. More than once our intrepid and spunky heroine and her prerequisite brooding and mysterious hero react to things in ways which make no logical sense and veer into too-stupid-to-live territory. In fact, no one in this book makes any sense. The bad guys are doing a stupid thing that will never end well for anyone, for no real good reason. The power dynamics amongst them are (again senselessly) inconsistent - why make up a social order that you then have your characters completely ignore?
I didn't really buy the build-up of the love story, so the romance angle didn't work for me. The set up for the sequel was intriguing.
To be honest, I was put off by the note at the beginning of the proof that describes the book as "a perfectly engineered delivery device" because, well, it felt engineered. Throw in plot bits and descriptions and historical stuff and steampunk because who doesn't love machines and corsets and then needlessly complicate the romance with nonissues because Shakespeare was right about true love and then...
The artifice wasn't much fun.
Oh, I had some fairly serious issues with this.
The writing style is repetitive, rather than clever (one can only be annoyed so often by the apparently shocking realization of feelings which have already been discussed before it loses any charm it might have had. And that "so often" is once).
The basic premise is interesting, but the execution of characterization and motive is woefully slapdash. More than once our intrepid and spunky heroine and her prerequisite brooding and mysterious hero react to things in ways which make no logical sense and veer into too-stupid-to-live territory. In fact, no one in this book makes any sense. The bad guys are doing a stupid thing that will never end well for anyone, for no real good reason. The power dynamics amongst them are (again senselessly) inconsistent - why make up a social order that you then have your characters completely ignore?
I didn't really buy the build-up of the love story, so the romance angle didn't work for me. The set up for the sequel was intriguing.
To be honest, I was put off by the note at the beginning of the proof that describes the book as "a perfectly engineered delivery device" because, well, it felt engineered. Throw in plot bits and descriptions and historical stuff and steampunk because who doesn't love machines and corsets and then needlessly complicate the romance with nonissues because Shakespeare was right about true love and then...
The artifice wasn't much fun.