A review by veronica87
A Conspiracy of Alchemists by Liesel Schwarz

2.0

I decided to read this book because the two main characters, Elle and Marsh, were listed on a top ten steampunk couples list somewhere. Well, what a disappointment this turned out to be. The best word I can think of to describe this story is...superficial. Paper thin characters, flimsy world building, stilted dialogue that often seemed as though the author was plucking random sentences out of a hat and then writing them down. There was never a single emotion, and I use the term loosely because emotion implies depth that this story completely lacked, that was ever explored for more than two sentences. Everything just felt shallow, shallow, shallow. Some stories are the stick to your ribs meat and potatoes variety. Others are sweet desserts. This story was more like a scratch and sniff. I didn't care enough about any of it to bother reading more in this series.