Clara has a gift -
she can raise the dead. It’s not a talent she uses often - but when she needs a
husband to keep her home and protect the children she keeps safe she can think
of no other way to get a man quickly
Though he turns out
to be far less pliable than she imagined.
Steampunk! Sign me up
Steampunk with magic!
Sign me up twice! I do so love a paranormal steampunk.
This is a moderately
low-key steampunk and magical setting though. The central premise is that Clara
does have the power to raise the dead. And I can see you looking at me now and
questioning how “low key magic” and “resurrection and necromancy” can actually
co-exist - but this, so far, seems to be the sum total of the magic of this
book. Clara doesn’t have an army of zombies in the basement, but she can raise
the recently dead so long as they’re not too beat up. And she uses this
ability, for the first time, on Liam - because she needs a man. But after that
she doesn’t use it much nor does she have other magic to fall back on to help
her in her hour of need. The battle instead rests far more on the limited
resources they have at their disposal with a lot of that limited by the
prejudices and injustices of the world and time they live in
Clara has turned her
house into a haven for the dispossessed. Most of them are children- abused by
parents or employers, poor, injured and disabled from industrial accidents and
generally desperate in a time when there’s no support and no care for the weakest
and most vulnerable in society - including child labourers and the extremely
lethal factories that were so common in the Industrial revolution. We also have
Georgina, a Black woman and a former slave who has also joined the household -
who is clever, honest, tough and deeply valued by Clara. She also has a whole
side storyline of her romance with Clara’s lawyer and the whole scandal of that
atr the time
Liam himself is Irish
and is considered both inherently criminal and utterly disposable by many of
the wealthy and powerful characters in this book.
The central conflict
of the book - trying to fulfil the legal requirements to keep the house feels a
little… odd. I mean the terms her grandfather set is that she has to be married
by the age of 21 or she is evicted. Granddad clearly wants this and will
maliciously pursue kicking her out… but… why? I mean, why set the condition in
the first place? Why even stick to these conditions? I want to see these legal
papers that the grandfather has signed that legally compel him to give a house
AND annual income to his granddaughter which he doesn’t have the power to just
tear up and declare “nah”. And if he was so against his daughter’s husband and
his granddaughter, why even give them anything at all? If it’s social status
and a fear of being seen kicking his family out onto the street, why doesn’t he
fear this still? I mean, in these sexist times, a wealthy patriarchy kicking
his unmarried 21 year old granddaughter into the street doesn’t exactly look
good either.
Still running with it
isn’t hard and it’s still fun if you don’t dwell on that which isn’t hard as it
isn’t overly that central. The internal logic of the McGuffin doesn’t matter so
much as the journey
An element I just
can’t get past is the examination of Clara’s morality. It’s very good that we
have this moral hand wringing from Clara about whether she is a terrible person
in how she decided to use Liam for her own well being. Treating him as a blank
slate because she needed him to keep her home rather than viewing him as a
person or considering whether he has any kind of history at all. I mean this is
all extremely good debate and we see Clara repeatedly make some really
difficult decisions as she considers the easiest path that would save them all
but be morally reprehensible. There’s one thing she doesn’t consider
