Dead Iron by Devon Monk
So, when I go to large pop arts conventions (such as the San Diego Comicon) I tend to acquire quite a few new books. This was the one I'd actually started reading during the convention itself. That and it looked steampunk. I am such a fangirl for steampunk at the moment.
The story is about Cedar Hunt, a man with a curse and a tragic past, as he investigates the disappearance of a little boy in a small frontier town in the Oregon territory. He meets up with Mae Lindson, a witch, who is looking for her husband's killer. Enter Shard LeFel, railway tycoon and creep, who is the ever so obvious villain du jour. And then there's the girl Rose with a special talent.
The plot could use a few lessons in narrative economy and exposition. For a while it seemed that all movement of the story from the protagonist side of things was coming from three minor-ish miner characters. I ended up with the distinct feeling that if left alone Cedar and Mae would have been left chasing their tails in both the literal and figurative sense. Then there was LeFel and his motivation infodumps. On the one hand I liked that there was some attention paid to villain motive, but on the other hand I can't forgive infodumping as tacked on as it was here. It would have been nice to gradually about him rather than getting it all in one big lump in the beginning.
The other characters were better. I'm not sure why Cedar continually confuses his apparent lycanthropy when he is explicitly told that this is bestowed upon him to hunt bad Shadow things. I also could have done without the rather obvious romantic arc between him and Mae, but that might be my instant prejudice towards romantic subplots showing. He wasn't all that bad once the pathos regarding his brother got sorted out a bit and the miner movers got him pointed in the right direction. It just seemed a bit unfinished.
Rose was kind of interesting, but for the life of me I could not figure out why she hadn't taken off for a more welcoming place before the novel started. She seems like she has good sense, she has a useful talent of fabricating things, but why stay in a place where the people you live with don't like you and most of your neighbors don't like you? This becomes even more mystifying if one considers that women had a more expanded social role in the Western territories in the nineteenth century.
Since I've mentioned the miners a few times, I might as well mention that I thought that they were hilarious. I kind of wish that they were featured more predominately, since they seemed to have a better idea of what plots were going on in the town. In any case since they had done quite a bit of the pushing on the story movement front, I hope that they play a larger role in the rather obvious sequel book.
Putting the shortcomings aside, I did really like the setting. There are enough factions between the miners, Mae's sisters, Native American gods (as mentioned by Cedar), the Shadows, those with the talent of fabrication and (of course) the scared normal people with torches and pitchforks. It was an interesting blend of the seen and the unseen in the Old West. I have to admit, I liked the mix of different factions with different goals and dispositions. I just wish that either there was more to the book besides Cedar trying to escape his past and Mae looking for vengeance. Fortunately it looks like book two might actually have some things more to my liking.
The story is about Cedar Hunt, a man with a curse and a tragic past, as he investigates the disappearance of a little boy in a small frontier town in the Oregon territory. He meets up with Mae Lindson, a witch, who is looking for her husband's killer. Enter Shard LeFel, railway tycoon and creep, who is the ever so obvious villain du jour. And then there's the girl Rose with a special talent.
The plot could use a few lessons in narrative economy and exposition. For a while it seemed that all movement of the story from the protagonist side of things was coming from three minor-ish miner characters. I ended up with the distinct feeling that if left alone Cedar and Mae would have been left chasing their tails in both the literal and figurative sense. Then there was LeFel and his motivation infodumps. On the one hand I liked that there was some attention paid to villain motive, but on the other hand I can't forgive infodumping as tacked on as it was here. It would have been nice to gradually about him rather than getting it all in one big lump in the beginning.
The other characters were better. I'm not sure why Cedar continually confuses his apparent lycanthropy when he is explicitly told that this is bestowed upon him to hunt bad Shadow things. I also could have done without the rather obvious romantic arc between him and Mae, but that might be my instant prejudice towards romantic subplots showing. He wasn't all that bad once the pathos regarding his brother got sorted out a bit and the miner movers got him pointed in the right direction. It just seemed a bit unfinished.
Rose was kind of interesting, but for the life of me I could not figure out why she hadn't taken off for a more welcoming place before the novel started. She seems like she has good sense, she has a useful talent of fabricating things, but why stay in a place where the people you live with don't like you and most of your neighbors don't like you? This becomes even more mystifying if one considers that women had a more expanded social role in the Western territories in the nineteenth century.
Since I've mentioned the miners a few times, I might as well mention that I thought that they were hilarious. I kind of wish that they were featured more predominately, since they seemed to have a better idea of what plots were going on in the town. In any case since they had done quite a bit of the pushing on the story movement front, I hope that they play a larger role in the rather obvious sequel book.
Putting the shortcomings aside, I did really like the setting. There are enough factions between the miners, Mae's sisters, Native American gods (as mentioned by Cedar), the Shadows, those with the talent of fabrication and (of course) the scared normal people with torches and pitchforks. It was an interesting blend of the seen and the unseen in the Old West. I have to admit, I liked the mix of different factions with different goals and dispositions. I just wish that either there was more to the book besides Cedar trying to escape his past and Mae looking for vengeance. Fortunately it looks like book two might actually have some things more to my liking.