Review: Lady of Devices

Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a YA Steampunk series, Lady of Devices suffers from both uneven world building and character development. It's hard to take a character seriously as an accomplished chemist when we are introduced to her by having her blow something up due to 'wanting to see what would happen' when she added somethings together against the instruction of her professor. I'm not sure if the unevenness of Lady Clair's character was the author's attempt to show us that she is a sheltered teen or just shaky writing of a first book.

Both Lady Clair and the author seem to get a grip as the story progresses, and by the time she takes her new charges in hand has a clearer idea of the character and story. However, one can't get around the fact that this book is mostly a set-up for the rest of the series so most of it is introductions.
Sadly most of the characters that you know will show up in later books have the same shaky sketch of their characters that Lady Clair has at the end of the book. The idea that Lord James, someone the reader can only suppose is in his mid-twenties and well-versed in society at this point would take such offence at a school girl's inability to pick-up on his interest in her that he holds it against her to such an extent makes one wonder.

The world building is fairly minimal, leaning heavily on basic steampunk tropes, but it does help to keep the plot moving, not getting weighted down by explanation. The overall pacing, once I got into it, goes quite fast. I was easily able to read the book in one day and is a perfectly fine YA book.

After a bit of a bumpy start I only hope that the series smooths out as I enjoyed the concept.

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