Stephen Hunt

When street-wise Molly and sheltered Oliver are targeted because they possess a magical secret, they find themselves on the run in the company of outlaws and spies who assist their efforts to counter ancient enemies of the state.

The Court of the Air

Aaron J Mitchell

I absolutely loved Court of the Air. A wild steam punk adventure, alternative british history, X-men like royal gaurds, a society of clockwork robots, something akin to steam punk nanotech, and all other manner of fantasy weirdness. My only complaint would be that the constant onslaught of concepts and characters can be a bit overwhelming. This was definitely addressed in later books when the series honed in on different characters who were only in the side lines in this book. The whole series is great and I recommend it for fantasy fans looking for something different.

This is a spoiler free review, but also a review of someone who actively chose not to finish reading this book.

I would like to preface this review by acknowledging that I am not a big fan of steam punk. Books in the genre have not appealed to me much in the past, so I didn’t have high hopes for this book. And that’s no fault on the part of the book. It just isn’t to my tastes.

I will say that the world building is solid. There are a lot of cultures and concepts jumbling around in the same space. In some aspects, it has the feeling of a Dinotopia type setting, where all the aspects of society come together. In the maybe ten percent of the book I read, I really liked the detail about the arms of the kings being cut off so they couldn’t take up arms against their people ever again. However, most of the world building was just slapping a different name on real world cultures and making them afraid of certain types of magic. I was especially annoyed by the robots, which have a caste system based on their visual monstrosity. Visual beauty shouldn’t mean anything to a mechanical being, especially in a steampunk setting. It should be all about function.

The main characters were okay, I guess, though a bit bland. That said, I didn’t get far enough into it to get them any real character development through plot so give that a grain of salt. However, the myriad of small side characters were the handful that were memorable or the multitudes that had the same voice the whole time, resulting in me unable to differentiate between them. And I only made it in 10%! Imagine how many more there were to come!

Ultimately, this book was not my cup of tea. May someone find my copy at my used book store and come to love it.

I have only one more note to add, and that is that I think the pacing of this book would be much more suited to being adapted for television. That way, you could focus so much more on all the aspects of the world and the characters than you can in this book. But dude, don’t give your robots prejudices against each other. Like why???

Kirsten Simkiss

This is a spoiler free review, but also a review of someone who actively chose not to finish reading this book.

I would like to preface this review by acknowledging that I am not a big fan of steam punk. Books in the genre have not appealed to me much in the past, so I didn’t have high hopes for this book. And that’s no fault on the part of the book. It just isn’t to my tastes.

I will say that the world building is solid. There are a lot of cultures and concepts jumbling around in the same space. In some aspects, it has the feeling of a Dinotopia type setting, where all the aspects of society come together. In the maybe ten percent of the book I read, I really liked the detail about the arms of the kings being cut off so they couldn’t take up arms against their people ever again. However, most of the world building was just slapping a different name on real world cultures and making them afraid of certain types of magic. I was especially annoyed by the robots, which have a caste system based on their visual monstrosity. Visual beauty shouldn’t mean anything to a mechanical being, especially in a steampunk setting. It should be all about function.

The main characters were okay, I guess, though a bit bland. That said, I didn’t get far enough into it to get them any real character development through plot so give that a grain of salt. However, the myriad of small side characters were the handful that were memorable or the multitudes that had the same voice the whole time, resulting in me unable to differentiate between them. And I only made it in 10%! Imagine how many more there were to come!

Ultimately, this book was not my cup of tea. May someone find my copy at my used book store and come to love it.

I have only one more note to add, and that is that I think the pacing of this book would be much more suited to being adapted for television. That way, you could focus so much more on all the aspects of the world and the characters than you can in this book. But dude, don’t give your robots prejudices against each other. Like why???

The Court of the Air

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