Corsets & Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances

The title pretty much says it all.  Another steampunk anthology, this one focusing on steampunk romances.  The title is fairly silly.  I mean, it might as well be Corsets & Clockwork & Top Hats & Goggles & Airships.  However, I thought these writers did a much better job at creating steampunk worlds than the authors that were part of Steampunk!  Perhaps because these authors were given some kind of direction as to what constitutes steampunk?

I read about half of it.  As ever with an anthology, some stories were good and some were not, but by the time I'd read six stories I was bored and wanted to read something else.

Of the ones I read, I most enjoyed Wild Magic, by Ann Aguirre, who wrote Enclave, and Deadwood by Michael Scott who wrote the The Secrets of Immortal Nicholas Flamel series.

Wild Magic was a fairly straight forward love story, with a high class girl falling in love with a boy beneath her station, but it had a bit a twist, and I thought Aguirre did an excellent job with the world creation.  I really got an understanding of how the world Pearl lived in work, and the fear of magic, even though the ruling houses are the ones who have magic in their backgrounds.  Pick is one of the Wilds, and convinces Pearl to help him let magic loose into the world.  Pearl falls in love with him, and it seems like Pick loves her too, but there's something he isn't telling her.  This story was really more fantasy based than steampunk, but there were some automatons that attacked them.

Deadwood was lots of fun.  It took place in the American west (Deadwood is in South Dakota) and was very exciting and adventury.  Martha and JW meet on and airship on their way to California, and find themselves in the middle of a terrible plot!  Luckily for the rest of the passengers on board the airship, both Martha and JW don't let much get in their way, and they're not about to leave anyone behind.  There's a funny little reveal at the end.

So it's not that I didn't enjoy the stories I read, it's just that after reading a handful I was all set and ready to move on to something else.