Book Review: Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant

When a wounded soldier falls from an airship and lands in her garden, lonely Rose knows he's going to fall in love with her.  And if things don't work out, well, there's always the time-travel device her father invented...

The Glory Girls are the most wanted outlaws in the West - and mechanical genius and Pinkerton Detective Adelaide Jones has been sent in undercover to discover their train-robbing secrets.  But the allure of the Enigma Apparatus and the freedom of riding with the Girls might just be more than Adelaide can resist.

Constable Aurelia Etreyo knows that arrogant golden boy Detective Wilkins has the wrong man - there's no way homeless, rambling Nutter Norm could be the notorious, brilliantly elusive Califa Squeeze, the serial killer who's been terrorizing the city for months.  Using the modern crime-solving Bertillo method, Etreyo sets out to prove that Nutter Norm is not the Squeeze - all before he's set to hang.

Sofia despises automatons with every fiber of her being - after all, they led to the death of her beloved father.  Convincing her cousin Amelia that there is no way Nicholas, the dancing master automaton, could be in love with her, should be easy - shouldn't it?

If you love steampunk, you're going to love this fabulous collection of short stories!  Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Garth Nix, and M.T. Anderson are just a few of the authors that contributed tales of gothic horror, the Wild West, Appalachian toy-making faeries, clockwork romance, interplanatary misdeeds, and gadgets galore to this anthology of awesome.  Wait, what's steampunk?  It's that stuff that's Victorian and gothic and full of crazy advanced, futuristic technology that uses clockwork, gears and steam power.  Automaton armies and space-going dirigibles, clockwork time-travel devices and swashbuckling adventures through past and future (sometimes at the same time) are all very steampunky.  If you loved Kenneth Oppel's Airborn and sequels Skybreaker and Starclimber, Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince, and Philip Reeve's Fever Crumb and A Web of Air, this collection of the strange and marvelous will be something to savor!

Megan
(now devouring The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler and laughing pretty hard at the thought of running with a ginormous Discman!)