I rated this steampunk historical fantasy a 3.5/5 stars. I’m willing to try more of this genre but needed one at a faster pace.
Here’s my live comments while reading:
Lucy is our main character and she’s on the way to visit her cousin who is newly married into the infamous Blackwell family. Their manor may be haunted and Lucy has suspicions that the rumors of murder within that family might be true.
I love that there are zombies, shape shifters and vampires in a historical fiction type of fantasy. And these robot like creatures called automatons have metal and clockwork interiors that are cloaked with biologically engineered facial features.
Mid chapter the point of view switches to Miles Phillip Charles Blake, or Lord Blackwell who apparently has a secret and someone out there knows about it. He’s receiving anonymous threatening letters and no one can figure out where they come from. What is his secret? Why does he have four hours? What happens then? Why does it matter that it’s the third night? Why does he hope nobody is near the hunting lodge? Is he a vampire?
So Miles is a bit hopeless about trying to prolong his life with scientific attempts. Apparently he’s a predatory shifter and also has a clock heart. So maybe those two things combined have created his life sustainability to be an issue?
After chapter 4 I’m a bit bored since so much of the evening events with guests was summarized. There’s a lot of telling and filter words in the exposition which brings me out of the story. Nothing has really “happened” yet and it’s still all set up for potential.
An example of the type of explanation writing: “Author laughed, as of course he would, and attempted to steer the conversation to safer ground by suggesting such unseemly talk was certainly something they could all do without.”
This could’ve been shown through dialogue instead.
But I love that’s they’re seeing ghosts and that Miles is a werewolf. I don’t quite understand how the title name is relevant yet. What does a clock have to do with a werewolf?
At page 90 I’m considering DNF. There’s just not much happening. I haven’t learned anything new for a while and it feels stagnant.
So I kind of just skimmed page 100-200 to see if things got good. I found out the answers to a few things I wish I knew earlier. The pacing is a bit too slow for me. I was so excited about my first steampunk genre but their emotional development is also feeling a bit flat. I want more intrigue. More passion. More intensity. More action. Or just more of something.
Things picked back up at the gravesite and events after got a little more exciting which I appreciated. It just took too long to get to this point.
I hadn’t guessed who the vampire was correctly which is also a bonus.
I’m glad they found their happily ever after and things were tied in a ‘loose’ bow
Cassie Swindon 