Frost by M.P. Kozlowsky, 2016

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Being human is her greatest strength.

Sixteen-year-old Frost understands why she’s spent her entire life in an abandoned apartment building. The ruined streets below are hunting grounds for rogue robots and Eaters.

She understands why she’s never met a human besides her father. She even understands why he forbids her to look for medicine for her dying pet. But the thing is, it’s not her real father giving the orders…

It’s his memories.

Before he died, Frost’s father uploaded his consciousness into their robot servant. But the technology malfunctioned, and now her father fades in and out. So when Frost learns that there might be medicine on the other side of the ravaged city, she embarks on a dangerous journey to save the one living creature she loves.

With only a robot as a companion, Frost must face terrors of all sorts, from outrunning the vicious Eaters…to talking to the first boy she’s ever set eyes on. But can a girl who’s only seen the world through books and dusty windows survive on her own? Or will her first journey from home be her last?

(352 pages)

When I was not far into Frost, I described it as a steampunk novel to my younger sister. When she asked me what steampunk was, I told her it's a genre of fiction that usually has a lot of advanced tech and clockwork motifs, a fair number of robots, a fantasy-esque scenario that's explained with sciency stuff rather than magic, lots of dystopian situations with oppressive bad guys, and stories that grapple with what it means to truly be human (and whether a robot "with a human-like consciousness" is still inferior to a living, breathing human being)

I legit started laughing halfway through Frost because it had every single one of those elements in it. I've only read about three steampunk novels counting Frost, but I must really have a deeper insight into the genre than I expected. Since it follows so many of my expectations, as you might guess, the book isn't exactly the most original book I've ever read; it sticks with the usual tale of robots gone bad, humanity oppressed, a quest to find the legendary human colony, etc. I'm a little sketchy on the details of why the humans all went nuts when Frost was a baby, because it seems like most of the dangers are human-inflicted rather than related to the robots, but it's definitely the humans' fault now that things aren't improving. Things get pretty gory at some points, with mentions of people eating their own bodies in order to stay alive (which is both really gross and highly unrealistic) and of the brutal treatment slaves receive under the dictator who offers asylum to the humans. They're not described in extreme detail, but Frost definitely is not for the faint of heart.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure I agree with Frost's decision to put herself and the people around her in danger over and over again in order to save the life of a pet that was already like eight years old. It's absolutely horrible when pets are dying, I should know that more than anyone right now, but I don't know that the solution is really to throw yourself and everyone you know into mortal peril in the slim hopes of finding something that would help it recover. It seems like throughout the book characters are unable and unwilling to deal with the finality of death; they're constantly either avoiding it, daring it, or cheating it (by way of uploading their brain to a robot). Death is awful and horrible, yes, but I don't think that trapping a soul inside a metal body is really a good long-term alternative. It cheapens the tragedy of a human body's death and decay when you can just install a copy of their brain in a robot and keep right on going. Their consciousness may still be alive in another form, but that original human being is still dead. And that is still a tragedy.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the whole issue. I liked Frost more than I thought I would, enjoyed foraying into a genre that I don't usually read, but I wasn't blown away by it. If you like steampunk, or you're interested in getting into it, then Frost might well be a good place to start–or at least I think so. Keep in mind that I've only ever read three steampunk's novels when you take my recommendation under consideration.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Curio by Evangeline Denmark, 2016

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Grey Haward has always detested the Chemists, the magicians-come-scientists who rule her small western town. But she has always followed the rules, taking the potion the Chemists ration out that helps the town’s people survive. A potion that Grey suspects she—like her grandfather and father—may not actually need.
By working at her grandfather’s repair shop, sorting the small gears and dusting the curio cabinet inside, Grey has tried to stay unnoticed—or as unnoticed as a tall, strong girl can in a town of diminutive, underdeveloped citizens. Then her best friend, Whit, is caught by the Chemists’ enforcers after trying to protect Grey one night, and after seeing the extent of his punishment, suddenly taking risks seems the only decision she can make.
But with the risk comes the reality that the Chemists know her family’s secret, and the Chemists soon decide to use her for their own purposes. Panicked, Grey retreats to the only safe place she knows—her grandfather’s shop. There, however, a larger secret confronts her when her touch unlocks the old curio cabinet in the corner and reveals a world where porcelain and clockwork people are real. There, she could find the key that may save Whit’s life and also end the Chemists’ dark rule forever.

(432 pages)

I'm a long-time fan of the author Donita K. Paul. Her DragonKeeper Chronicles are amazing - literally the best Christian fantasy I have ever read - and I've gobbled up tons of her books over the years. When I got a newsletter telling me that her daughter Evangeline had a book coming out, and that it was steampunk dystopian, I was excited. Then I saw the gorgeous cover and I was completely hooked.

It was available on BookLook Bloggers, a review program I'm a part of, but the copies were snapped up so fast that when I went to request it the day it became available, they were already out of hard copies. I hate reading ebooks unless I absolutely have to, so I sent a semi-begging email to Blink. I got a lovely email back letting me know that I would be getting a copy in the mail, asking whether I would like to interview the author, and just all-around being so nice and welcoming to me that it made me feel even more warm and fuzzy about the book than I already did. That was literally the most pleasant interaction I've ever had with a publishing company! Plus, they sent me a gorgeous hard-back copy instead of an ARC or even just a regular paperback. When I pulled that beauty out of the package my heart just about stopped.

The trouble started once I actually cracked open the cover. And I'm absolutely heartbroken to say it, but . . . Curio was really bad. And the terrible thing is that I actually really love the premise - even now, having read the book and kind of hated it, I'm still excited about the premise because I feel like Denmark really had some really awesome material to go on. She came up with a fascinating scenario, with the tocks and the porcies and the entire world full of fully-animated, living dolls. The entire dystopian backstory to everything sounded really cool too, and the writing was quite good - though I kind of lost track of all the myriad side-characters running around - and, with a few rounds of judicious edits, the book could have come out really well.

I'm not talking about editing for grammar or anything like that - Denmark is a competent writer, there's really nothing lacking there, though I wouldn't have minded a few more paragraphs explaining the dystopian setting before diving into the story. But no, what I would really focus on removing are all the lust scenes. Like, seriously. In Grey's community there's some rule (that really doesn't make any sense, to be perfectly honest) that forbids males and females from standing within a few feet of each other. Literally from the first chapter - when a childhood friend picks her up to protect her from a pack of wolves - every single time she touches a man Grey starts obsessing about it. Every. Single. Time. Her heart starts racing, she starts focusing on the touch of his skin, she forgets whatever super-important thing she's in the middle of and just starts thinking about that person's eyes. And I'll be straight with you: it's not just Grey who gets carried away with her lustful instincts. Whit does too, and so does a character who comes into the story later (whom I don't want to name for fear of spoilers). People who barely know each other randomly start passionately kissing, but it's supposed to be okay because we know that the kissing obviously means that they are meant to be a good match for each other - they're soul mates or something, never mind the fact that they have no idea whether they even have anything in common other than some hormonal urges.

But honestly. I don't really like reading a book where I get the feeling that if you left the two main characters alone together in a room for more than ten minutes you'd come back to find them, ahem, getting it on. I legitimately think that the self-control in all of these characters is so low that they could not deny the urge to take it all the way and sleep together if other pressing matters didn't keep them preoccupied most of the time. And that is really not a pleasant impression to have of the protagonists of a story.

Plus, I'll just add, there's some really creepy goings-on amongst the porcies, including a lord who we're told cycles through mistresses and who actually tries to rape Grey at one point. I wasn't such a huge fan of that, either, for obvious reasons.

Basically, if all those pages of racing heartbeats and trembling kisses and creepy hands-on-skirts had been deleted from the book, it would have been a very entertaining read; as it is, though, I struggled to get past all of the troubling parts and through to the meat of the story. I almost DNF'd about halfway through, actually, but I decided I was still interested enough in the core story to see it through to the end. I can't say I'd highly recommend this book to anyone, but I am interested to see what Denmark comes out with in the future; she's definitely inherited that knack for creating fascinating worlds from her mother, and if she would just stop giving her characters so many hormones she could easily write some quality fiction.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Fires of Invention by J. Scott Savage, 2015

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Trenton Colman is a creative thirteen-year-old boy with a knack for all things mechanical. But his talents are viewed with suspicion in Cove, a steam-powered city built inside a mountain. In Cove, creativity is a crime and “invention” is a curse word.
Kallista Babbage is a repair technician and daughter of the notorious Leo Babbage, whose father died in an explosion—an event the leaders of Cove point to as an example of the danger of creativity.
Working together, Trenton and Kallista learn that Leo Babbage was developing a secret project before he perished. Following clues he left behind, they begin to assemble a strange machine that is unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. They soon discover that what they are building may threaten every truth their city is founded on—and quite possibly their very lives.

(370 pages)

Oh my goodness, this book reminded me so much of the City of Ember books! But it's like an even more dystopian, futuristic sort of City of Ember, with all sorts of crazy restrictions added on to the already bleak top-down governmental control system. I think it's a pretty cool, out-of-the-blue version of the

The first time I saw the cover, I thought Fires of Invention looked like one of those little-kid books my brother used to read (I think the series was called Beast Quest?), you know the type - there are about a million of them, about two-hundred pages long, with just about the same recycled plot in every single installment. This is why I initially wasn't too eager to pick up Fires of Invention. But then I read a review that praised it highly and compared it to the City of Ember books, and I knew it wasn't anything like I'd originally thought it was. I put in a request for it at the library, and read it over the course of a few days during my break time.

I can't say I was incredibly wowed by the story (I actually didn't like the twist it took at the end - I'd have preferred something a little more realistic), but it was definitely much better than I'd first thought it would be. I think I'll stick with my beloved The City of Ember, but I can definitely see a lot of kids getting really into this more steampunk version of the scenario. The books of Ember revolve more around the remains of a battered humanity, struggling to thrive and learning important lessons about human nature along the way. The Mysteries of the Cove books take a completely different angle, focusing on the suppression of creativity (conformity is "safe") and the crucial role invention must have in order for humanity to thrive. For us to get better, the book argues, we must adapt. And to adapt, we must invent. I wholeheartedly agree with this (though maybe not so much with the need for lots of big, gas-guzzling machines to run everything), and I think the message was relatively well-buried. It could have been a little less obvious, but then I suppose this isn't the sort of book that needs to be that subtle.

I'll definitely be recommending this to kids I think might like it - starting with my own middle-school-aged brother, who will probably agree to reading it based on the cover alone. I'm not absolutely in love with it (I was . . . less than excited by the turn things took in the end), but I still really like the premise of the city of Cove, with its crazy restrictions and distorted heritage, and I hope the series fleshes out more of the themes it began in Fires of Invention. If it takes the turn I'm thinking it will, though, then I don't know if I'll continue it - there are so many series about AAA* that I can read.

*And by AAA, I mean something that I can't tell you because it's a spoiler. If you've read the book, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.