Queen
Victoria is dead, killed along with her whole family in a terrible terrorist
attack that shook the empire and led to Juliette, young, inexperienced and far
from the throne as the next queen
The
New World Order has claimed responsibility for the deaths and threatens not
just Juliette’s reign but the world itself; Juliette must try to expose this
conspiracy while securing her nascent throne, some inconvenient romances and
the hunt for Excalibur itself.
Fantastical
Steampunk is one of my favourite genres - I do like the whole aesthetic and
plot of running around in dirigibles with mechanical arms and steam powered
gadgets - but to throw magic, unicorns (unicorns!!!) and arthurian legend in as
well and I am sold. We’re taking those elements - magic and machines - and
engaged in deadly attempt to take down a shadowy conspiracy that would plunge
the whole world into chaos by any means necessary, with battles, shadowy plans
and lots of hidden agendas and looking behind every corner for who the enemy
is.
If
anything I wish this book had explored this more because the world we have laid
out here is really excellent. The existence of magic, Excalibur and air ships
it all tantalises so much - but that’s kind of the theme of this book:
tantalises. We have Excalibur with apparently lots of powers and perhaps its
own agenda but we don’t really explore that.
We
have a fascinating female crime boss with a shadowy but apparently legitimate
past running around doing swashbuckling things… but we don’t really focus on
her except as a provider of resources.
We
have the American heiress to a major technological corporation pursuing an
illicit love affair and ready to offer friendship - but we don’t really explore
her
We
have a street urchin turned footman with a mechanical arm and lots of
streetwise contacts
We
have a society of magic users who apparently follow the legacy of Merlin and
have done so for generations - but they’re only mentioned.
A
county whose principle resource is unicorns, is in much demand by European
nations and appears to be African (it’s not explicitly stated but North Africa
was implied), but we only get their prince visiting?
It’s
like this whole book throws out a million fascinating storylines, characters,
world building etc and we don’t actually spend much time on examining any of
these amazing things instead focusing on Juliette
Who
is a decent fun character but kind of overshadowed by the vast potential of
everyone around her. Not because she’s bad, but because everyone else around
her, everything else around her, could be so amazing
Part
of this is because of the general feel of Juliette. I mean, I like Juliette -
as a “plucky adventuress uses grit, determination and intelligence to overcome
great odds” Steam Punk protagonist she’s great and would fit nicely with
characters from Magnificent
Devices, The Finishing
School Series, Girl Genius,
or even early Parasol Protectorate. Her character is fun and embodies
many of the elements I love about the protagonists of these series
But she’s the Queen of England. She is the heir to Queen Victoria (who died, presumably early in her reign since there aren’t eleventy million heirs) at the height of the British Empire. This character running off alone, doing lots of things by herself, being on the front lines and generally not being surrounded by a gazillion staff. Even the assumption of a grand conspiracy from the very beginning seems highly dubious on the strength of one terrorist attack. Juliette has 1 maid, 1 aid of her father’s from before she became queen and a military captain - she picks up a couple of others along the way (complete strangers with no background checks which, again, makes no sense!) but this is a ridiculous lack of support for the Queen of England. The whole framing of her character just doesn’t make sense and we have a weird feeling of dodging between being helpless, alone and lacking resources and then jumping back to “I’m the richest and most powerful woman in the world”. It just doesn’t work and it blends with the odd band of misfits she has around her which… also doesn’t work.
There’s
also a lot of rather tiresome romance around her: there’s the obvious hot
captain is hot and lots of admiring of his body and lots of moment when they
get close and kiss and then Not Talk about it and shadowy conspiracy group
guys, can we focus? Then there’s the prince hotness who is technically a good
political match but no-one ever really explains this beyond UNICORNS and hey
horny horses are cool but can we explore why this makes him politically
desirable? And she spends time exchanging semi-racy love notes with an
anonymous admirer who better not be trying to blackmail her because good gods
Your Majesty this is not sound judgement. And it all feels like this time could
be better spent on any of the awesomeness above.
Diversitywise
we have Prince Hotness and his brother who are POC. Prince Hotness appears a
few times, there’s clumsy flirting and he has the potential to be vast
important either against or for the conspiracy but he doesn’t make too much of
an appearance here to be sure. Ella, the swashbuckling underworld boss is also
described as “dark complected” which is vague but could indicate she is a POC.
We also have Designated Gay Servant. I suspected he was gay the minute his
cravates were described at length. For someone reason gay men in Steampunk are
impossibly obsessed with cravates. Cravates are clearly the Grindr of the 19th
century (the description of him borders on some pretty heavy stereotypes too).
He is fiercely loyal to Juliette because her dad didn’t hate him and he may
have had an unrequited crush: making him a loyal servant to him all his life
(even working with this man he had a crush on to help him meet and marry his
wife which… damn really?) which then transfers to Juliette which. The gay
servant is a trope, a poor one especially when they have no life outside of
that service. Having your daughter inherit your gay servant just exacerbates
things
I’m
left feeling like this book has vast potential and some doubts as to whether it
will achieve it given the focus of this one. But the foundations have been
laid, we have some excellent characters, some intriguing concepts, some
excellent world building and an excellently balanced writing style that gets
the necessary elaborateness of a steampunk setting without bogging it down -
there’s plenty of reasons to follow this series
