Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold
So Steampunk seems to be sticking around, and I really enjoyed Bioshock Infinite, so I figured I should try to get into the fiction and see what it's all about. I was pretty hesitant at first because the whole Steampunk thing looks like it involves a lot of made up words and there's all these gears and steam and it looks like I need to take a math course just to get the basics of this fantasy world.
Turns out, in this case at least, I had nothing to worry about. This is basically an adventure story with a little retro sci-fi dusting on it. We follow our heroine as she is plucked from the street by a mysterious stranger who sends her to a school for lady spies. It's like Hogwarts, but all the teachers are mean and/or skeevy perverts. Honestly, I picked up this book because there was a cool picture of a steampunk dragon/centipede looking thing on the cover. While we do get a steam punk dragon, the story is not nearly as epic as this setup suggests. In fact, this is actually a pretty cool story of a girl who loses everything and slowly gets it back. It's reminded me of a Charles Dickens book more than anything else. The storytelling and plotting isn't great, but I grew attached to the main character and found myself really enjoying the book despite it's flaws and lackluster conclusion. It was a nice taste of a lite-steampunk story and I look forward to reading some more. If anyone has some good suggestions, let me know.
8.5/0
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