CET Writes

"It's 1888, and seventeen-year-old Verity Newton lands a job in New York as a governess to a wealthy leading family, "but she quickly learns that the family has big secrets. Magisters have always ruled the colonies, but now an underground society of mechanics and engineers are developing non-magical sources of power via steam engines that they hope will help them gain freedom from British rule. The family Verity works for is magister, "but it seems like the children's young guardian uncle is sympathetic to the rebel cause. As Verity falls for a charming rebel inventor and agrees to become a spy, she also becomes more and more enmeshed in the magister family's life. She soon realizes she's uniquely positioned to advance the cause" but to do so, she'll have to reveal her own dangerous secret." - From the Publisher This is a fantastic read - a real page turner. Lovers of steampunk and speculative history will find a new heroine in Miss ...

Image from Goodreads A prequel to the Syfy web series, this novel serves as an origin story for Riese, an orphaned princess wandering her former kingdom, which has been overthrown by religious radicals who venerate machine technology. Cox writes for the newcomer to this multi-media narrative universe, but it is clear that in many places the story would be more meaningful for someone already acquainted with later events. The action occurs both in a frame story set in the present-day of the Reise universe, as well as in extended flashbacks to the protagonist’s youth at the time of the upheavals which lead to her change of fortune. Given the author’s background in television, it’s not surprising that the story reads like a long, possibly two-part, TV episode, with fairly predictable outcomes consistent with genre tropes. The world of the novel is liberally peppered with tellingly broad and sometimes oddly inconsistent references to familiar Earth culture, although Cox takes care not...