Synopsis from Goodreads.com
We Wish You a Steampunk Christmas
Changed forever after tragedy, a woman must draw strength from her husband's love. A man learns that love isn't always what you expect. A thief steals the heart of a vengeful professor. And an American inventor finds love Down Under. Enjoy Victorian Christmas with a clockwork twist in these four steampunk novellas.
Anthology includes:
Crime Wave in a Corset by Stacy Gail
This Winter Heart by PG Forte
Wanted: One Scoundrel by Jenny Schwartz
Far From Broken by JK Coi
My Review
This was my first venture into the genre of steampunk and not really knowing what to expect, I can honestly say I wasn't overly impressed. In fact I was quite bored with these short stories and it took a lot for me to get through them all. I was constantly checking my percentage meter to see how much more I had to endure. And other than the odd reference to Christmas I didn't really feel these were Christmas stories at all.
There are 4 stories in this book, but the first one was the best of them all. Crime Wave In A Corset was a tale about Cornelia, a thief who stole a Fabergé egg from a university professor, who now wants her to steal it back, but instead she manages to steal his heart. 3 STARS
The Winter Heart was a love story gone wrong between Orphelia and Dario. She returns to him with their son after being made destitute following the death of her own father. However, Dario isn't at all pleased to see either her or his son, especially as her genetic make-up declared her as being barren. Will love conquer all? This one was ok, but I thought it was a bit far fetched. Maybe that's what steampunk is all about - technologies far too advanced for the time period. 1.5 STARS
Wanted: One Scoundrel was just plain boring. Esme, a strong suffragette, wants to hire a scoundrel to put forward her opinions in the men's clubs in the gold mining town of Fremantle in Australia. Not a great deal really happened in this one. As expected Esme falls for her scoundrel. He helps another man get his comeuppance after he tries to force Esme to marry him, claiming he had kidnapped her father. 1 STAR at a push.
Far From Broken was a nice love story, but again was too far fetched in my opinion. Callie was tortured, almost to the point of death and her husband Jasper agreed for the government's War Office doctor to put her back together again with a mechanical eye and limbs and biomechanical organisms which helped her to heal really quickly. Jasper had to fight for their love and she slowly broke through the shell she had created to push everyone out in return, but when someone unexpected comes back to kill Jasper, will love win? 1.5 STARS
If this is the kind of stories that steampunk authors produce then I don't think they are for me at all. I like lots of action, with a bit of blood and guts thrown in for good measure and a bit of sex and romance. These stories are more of the kind of books my mother would read and I'm not your kind of soppy romance fan that she is!
Thank you to the publishers for letting me receive this book through NetGalley and review it completely honestly.
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