julio-alexi genao

TL;DR: a story as promising as it was disappointing.In other words: Fun, but sloppy.***I feel betrayed by whoever edited this book. Even the author bios have subject-verb issues.But then, when your authors appear to have been making shit up as they went along, there can't possibly be that much an editor can do. Because blithely winging it is not exactly the ideal approach to a credible attempt to meld AU Europe, a Steampunk London that openly intermingles with Faerie, and the kind of Sorcery that involves arcane mumbling and wiggling your fingers at things.Especially not if your intent is to cash-in a hundred handy plot coupons, too—like a mecha-Pinoccio who can get erections, and a cyphered book that becomes important next to never, and the eponymous boots fetched for the gentleman and then never seen again.How about an Indiana Jones sequence replete with comically ineffective booby-traps, or an airship that sounds rather awesome, actually, or a clockwork unicorn pulling carriage?Seen once, and then off we go! We need to make room for a bavarian inventor, and a mad baron, and Dickensian orphans running about in highly organized street gangs, and also a couple of Siamese cats in there for good measure.Never mind the—and, honestly, if you've already gone this far, can you blame them?—utterly unwelcome primer on how not to conduct a successful polyamorous relationship with a faithless prude, said mecha-Pinoccio, and a cat-burglar.This should have been awesome.It was not.