Brass and Bone: A Captivating Steampunk Fantasy Novel of Magic and Unrequited Love

by Cynthia Gael

Being Simon Thorne, friend and collaborator to Lady Abigail Moran, isn't easy. Yes, being a daring thief does have its charms. But I still haven't convinced Abigail that she loves me, and thievery, for all the romantical writers say of it, is not the way to wealth. Especially if Abigail insists we continuously repair the airship with our ill-gotten gains. So when an old friend summons us to his estate and offers us a daring job with a hefty paycheck, we're happy to accept. The use our airship to transport secret cargo halfway across the globe. Oh, and we mustn't forget to take along the witch and her sinister keeper. A witch more beguiling than expected and her keeper-or is that companion?-with secrets darker than one could imagine. Alas. Perhaps I have finally bitten off more than I can chew...36,000 words

Genres: Steampunk

108 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2011

Reviews

[Marlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael was a pretty good one-third of a story. The only problem is that I was expecting a whole story. A fairly short whole story (I knew the book was only 86 pages) but a whole story nevertheless.

What I got was a decent beginning to something. And then an abrupt "Epilogue". Simon, one of the two point of view characters says that he feels like he's fallen into a "penny dreadful". Fallen into is right. And just as suddenly dropped out of.

Brass and Bone started out as lovely Steampunk. Two secret agents, one clearly a guttersnipe raised above his station, the other a Lady working considerably out of class, stealing secret plans and fantastic machinery for Queen and country from, and for, mad scientists. Airships fly overhead and steam men ply the streets alongside horse-drawn carriages.

Did I mention that Simon, the raised-up guttersnipe, has been in love with Abigail, the Lady of the piece, for years? And that she seems to be totally clueless in the matter?

But in addition to Simon and Abigail, there is a second plot involving Cynara and Henri. Cynara is a witch and Henri is an agent of the Witchfinder General. The Witchfinder General seems to also be a corporation known as WFG, Ltd. A very rich and influential corporation.

There is clearly some backstory about WFG, Ltd. from Gael's previous work, Balefire and Lodestone, and Balefire and Moonstone. But due to the brevity of Brass and Bone, the backstory wasn't in evidence here. There was just enough to tease, but not enough to satisfy.

When the two stories join things both get interesting, and get too involved to wrap up in the 86 pages available.

Escape Rating C-: I liked what I got, but I'm incredibly annoyed. This was really the first 7 chapters of a much longer story. I want that longer story. At least, I want to know when the rest of it is coming out. I expect novellas to have beginnings, middles and ends, not just beginnings. I was just starting to really get into the story when it stopped. The rating would be higher if I could find an announcement anywhere of when the next installment was coming out! Grrrr!

[Milena Benini · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all, this is a novella that doesn't really fit the form: indeed, it reads much more like the first part of a novel. Events happen just so they would, not because they form a coherent whole. I don't normally mind episodic constructions, but the overall structure has to be there. Unfortunately, in this case, it just doesn't happen.

The story revolves around two British criminals and a French witch forced to cooperate in order to get a mysterious, poisonous mechanical spider to the antipodes. The setup is intriguing enough, but the story gets no resolution - hence the feeling that it's just a teaser for a larger work. There are also all sorts of interpersonal relationships, but they don't get resolved, either. Instead, our heroes talk to Herr Tesla, look at the construction of the Eiffel tower, and get absolutely meaninglessly abducted by Italian bandits. All of which would be more fun if we cared for the characters. I must confess I mostly didn't.

The story is told in two alternating 1st person POVs, one male and one female, which is also a problem, because the difference between the two voices is not strong enough to tell them apart easily. I had to go back to the beginning of the chapters a few times to check who was narrating.

Finally, the writing itself was clunky, and particularly bothersome were the Google-translate type errors in the few French expressions appearing. While I found the name Des Jardin (pairing a pluralised article with a singular noun) jarring, I could sorta excuse it since weird things sometimes do happen in last names. But a Frenchwoman who says 'tu aussi' (instead of 'toi aussi'), pairs 'tu' with 'monsieur' and then addresses the same person with 's'il vous plait' (instead of 's'il te plait) just irritated me too much. It's not as if, nowadays, it's so difficult to find a native speaker to look over five and a half sentences and correct them.

All in all, a disappointing read, not recommended for anyone except the most die-hard steampunk fan.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

how disappointing to discover this is only HALF a book.

[J.L. Hilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED "Brass and Bone" up to about page 70. I enjoy first-person tales, and I liked both POV characters. The British guttersnipe turned stylish thief Simon was an adorable leading man, and the charming Parisian witch Cynara was a very interesting supernatural element. I loved the world-building -- possibly some of the best I've seen in the genre. THIS was a fully-realized Steampunk World, not (like so many other novels in the genre) just a story with a few dirigibles and goggles thrown in to make it steampunkish. The secondary characters were all interesting and well-written.

But it lost me when Simon and Cynara seemed to fall for each other -- but not, exactly -- while they supposedly loved others. And then the story went from having an interesting plot to being a romance -- though not really very passionate, just a bit of snogging. Then it just ENDED. Nothing resolved, nothing explained. I would have given it 2 stars if not for the fact that I so very much enjoyed the first 3/4 of it. I would have loved to give it 5 stars -- but, the ending? WTH?

I think it was a bad decision to release this as a novella, rather than waiting and releasing the complete work. Assuming there's more to come. There MUST be, because nothing was resolved, not the romances, not the plot. But the publisher's website doesn't list this as part of a series. It came out in Oct 2011, and the authors' blog (Cynthia Gael is actually a pen name for two people) hasn't been updated since Sept 2010. The authors' website is inaccessible, at the moment. :(

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always waver about how I feel about novellas. They're either fantastic (like Crime Scene in a Corset) or meh for me. Unfortunately, Brass & Bone leans more towards the meh side of things because it left me feeling unsatisfied. I really liked Simon and Cynara, the two characters who take turns narrating, but the plot meanders without giving a sense of resolution and the hopping between narrators is distracting, particularly the first time Cynara starts narrating since it was completely out of the blue.

I think that Brass & Bone would have worked better for me if I were more familiar with Cynthia Gael's work. The idea of the Witchfinders is from her Balefire Universe; Brass & Bone takes the idea and transplants it into a steampunk setting. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed this more if I were more familiar with her work.

http://ireadgood.wordpress.com

[Jess the Romanceaholic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was GREAT until the first POV switch then went downhill to the point I could barely finish it.

Completely my own fault -- for some reason I thought it was categorized as steampunk ROMANCE, when in fact it is purely steampunk.

From the perspective of a steampunk fantasy, it was decent, though I greatly disliked the POV changes.

From the perspective of a romance lover, don't bother with this one.

3/5 Stars, because that's as neutral as it gets.

[VampireNovelFan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not badly written, but it's just not interesting at all. I couldn't get sucked into the world, and with a novella you've only got a short span of time to make an impact. The author is a decent writer though, so I do encourage her to keep going.

*Review also posted to Amazon

[Melindeeloo · Rating 3 out of 5]

My New Year's resolution is to follow through and finish a handful of books that I requested ARCs for on NetGalley but didn't read for some reason - possibly because life got very complicated for a while.
Anyway the ARC is long gone, but I found this on Audible Escape.

I didn't realize this was a novella but actually enjoyed this. A bit of a steampunk mixed with magic. I'd have read the next one, but alas there isn't one. So I'll never know if Simon gets his girl or if Sanora gets her revenge and her freedom.

[Book Utopia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more published steampunk I read, the more I wonder what the big deal is. Because if these are the best the genre has to offer – and it seems everybody across the internet proclaims steampunk as the next big thing by begging for more – then I really have to ask just how awful the stories are that don’t manage to get published. Because this novella I recently finished just doesn’t cut it.

It starts out well enough. Simon and his partner Abigail rob a man of a device, having been hired to steal and deliver it for a hefty sum. Things go mildly awry when Simon is poisoned by the thing, but he is treated in time to suffer no long-term damage. He finds out the next morning that they are traveling to see an old friend of hers, a man he can’t stand, because he was both the one that hired them for this particular job and is in need for more work, something he says only Abigail can do. Once they get there, they discover they are to transport something to Australia, where it will be locked away forever using the combined blood of a witch and a human. He has a witch on hand, a French woman named Cynara, but she is treated as more of a thing and prisoner than a person. He’s sending along a keeper, the man who was Cynara’s lover before he turned her over to this group of Witchfinders, and so the four set out on this around the world journey.

If this sounds interesting, don’t be fooled. It’s a muddle and turns even more tedious after they actually leave. The story is riddled with so many weaknesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint just which holds it back the most. First of all, the author chooses to write it in alternating 1st person POVs – Simon’s (the male half of the airship pair) and Cynara’s (the female witch half of the paranormal pair). I normally love 1st person, but I find it much more difficult to switch between two within the same story, especially from chapter to chapter. It erases the deep perspective 1st person creates, and forces the reader to start over again with a character from scratch. Don’t get me wrong. It can be done, but it requires top notch writing and voices to truly pull it off. That doesn’t happen here. Instead, we only get one decent voice – Simon’s. When it switches to Cynara, the entire story gets thrown into confusion, largely because much of what happens in her POV is told instead of shown, and the world-building explaining the magical/paranormal aspects of the story is some of the sketchiest I’ve read in a while.

The telling vs. showing is a problem that runs throughout the entire story, though. For too much of it, it reads like a summary of a much longer work, skipping over what felt like should have been crucial events, skimping on the details on too many things. Characterizations suffer as a result. The only one who felt fully well-rounded and real to me was Simon. Cynara falls short on believable motivations or interest, her keeper Henri is too secretive to be anything but frustrating, and Abigail is put on a pedestal by Simon. The only aspects of the story that seem to get a good balance of loving detail are the steampunk gadgets. Abigail’s airship alone merits nearly 500 words of description, just so “you may visualize it when I discuss such aeronautical locations as the bridge, engine room, galley, hold and so forth.”

Here stems the roots from which my problems with most of the steampunk stories I read grow. I buy a genre book to read a story and be entertained in some fashion, not to be regaled with the author’s imagined gadgetry that seems to fit into this new world. Ultimately, I still need to experience an actual story, and I mean experience it, not told it. Too often, that feels like it gets forgotten, in favor of lavishing all this attention on the elements of a steampunk world. World-building is fantastic, but not the sole purpose.

Though it doesn’t say so on the site, this novella has to be the first in a series, because the conclusion is very open-ended, with nothing actually resolved. It’s just as dissatisfying as the rest of the story, but I won’t be bothering with any more that might come along. I’ve read enough of this author’s voice to know this style is just not for me.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for Brass and Bone, as I've developed a new love for Steampunk. However, my hopes were not realized, unfortunately. The story was just ok. I found myself getting a little bored with it, even though it's only 102 pages long.


The author, Cynthia Gael, obviously has a very imaginative mind. The ideas were good, but I think the storytelling fell short a bit. My biggest issue with the book was the rapid switching between first person narratives. It made the story choppy instead of flowing well. Making that mental switch in my mind lost the thread of the story for me.

Also, for me, the ending was not an ending. Nothing happened, nothing was resolved. Brass and Bone is meant to be the first of a three book series, but I think every book in a series needs to have a definitive ending. Hopefully, the next two will.

*Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I was not required to write a positive review.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was quite interesting, but ended very abruptly, without any of the main conflicts resolved. Cliffhanger endings are par for the course in a series, but this felt like 3/4 of a novel.

[David Cooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great as far as it goes but it finishes only part way through the story!!

[Cynthia Fulbright]

stopped reading because I was bored with the book. never reached chapter five despite having the ebook for six or seven days

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Novella length; decent story, but far too short to really get a feel for the characters or to understand what drives them.

[Stephani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a complete book. Just kind of ends.

Also, the narrator swallowed. A lot.