A novel about the California Gold Rush should never be passed up.

“Steam and Sensibility” eBook was published in 2016 and was written by Kirsten Weiss (http://www.kirstenweiss.com). Ms. Weiss has published 20 novels.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set in the mid 1800’s just as gold was discovered in California. The primary character of the story is young Miss Sensibiliy Grey.

After the death of her inventor father, Gray travels to the primitive port of San Francisco to be with her uncle. Little known to her, she has secrets of her fathers inventions that others are willing to kill to obtain. She must both avoid those obviously out to take her and her secrets, as well as sort out who amongst her newly made friends she can really trust. She also finds that she learned far more from her father than her previous ‘tinkering’ led her to believe.

This was an enjoyable, quick 3.5 hour read of this 234 page Steam Punk tale. This isn’t the best Steam Punk novel I have read, but it wasn’t bad. It really just touches the surface of what could draw into a true Alternate History based upon the ‘discoveries’ Ms Gray has found. As expected, there is a touch of romance in the story. The cover art is a good selection. I give this novel a 3.5 (rounded up to a 4) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Steam and Sensibility is a steampunk, young adult novel set during the California gold rush. The book does bring in some steampunk aspects - automatons and other clockwork based technologies, goggles that allow one to see the unseen, and an alternative energy source that could enable world domination in the wrong hands. However, I felt these aspects of the book were peppered here and there and wasn't featured as prominently as other parts of the book. This made the book drag a bit more than it probably should have for me. Sensibility Gray, the main character, goes through this transition from a tinkerer to a scientist which could have been fleshed out a bit more. Her character came across as very gullible and too trusting of others. I found myself more interested in the supporting characters.

This was a good book, but at times it felt like it dragged a little. I did prefer the writing in this book over the Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum series, but it wasn't as good as other steampunk series I've read. The story was interesting, but Sensibility isn't my favorite character. Rather than being a strong character, she just lets everyone tell her what to do. I found the other characters to be more interesting than Sensibility, even though as the main character she should be more likeable.

I don’t read enough steampunk. I say that about things a lot….I don’t read enough mystery or crime or fantasy…..and now steampunk. But it’s true. I really don’t read enough steampunk. What I read, I always end up really enjoying and it always makes me make a note to find more books like it. But then that somehow gets lost in a pile of other books. I see a lot less steampunk novels, so I need to make more of an effort to seek them out.

Sensibility Grey is 19 and has recently just lost her father. She’s being sent to San Francisco, to her uncle only when she arrives and disembarks from her ship, he isn’t there. Several other people are though – a mysterious woman who claims to be a government agent, a dandy who claims to have her uncle and seems to want something he’s convinced Sensibility has in return, and a mysterious man. Sensibility needs to decide quite quickly what she’s going to do in this strange place where there are hardly any men. The men are all off making their fortune on the goldfields leaving behind a town of mostly women and a state not too far from anarchy.

From the moment Sensibility touches her feet on land, the book is fast-paced with plenty of action as one thing after the other seems to happen. It’s a game of cat and mouse between Sensibility and the government agent against the dandy, who wants the papers Sensibility rescued from her father’s things before the creditors took everything. Her father was a brilliant scientist who seems to have discovered something very important and a secret society will stop at nothing to have the notes on his work. They are heavily encrypted but no one knew her father and his work better than Sensibility herself, who grew up tinkering in his workshops. She’s actually very talented although she doesn’t yet see what she is capable of. Sensibility believes she can decrypt the papers although she’ll need some time, which they might not have as the dandy keeps threatening her uncle’s life.

I really liked Sensibility. She’s very young and she’s also very out of her comfort zone and she’s also grieving the loss of her only parent. I’m not sure what happened to her mother but it’s quite clear that it was the two of them for a very long time and his loss has definitely devastated her but in that sort of English young lady “well we must go on” sort of way. She is also learning that there was a whole side of her father that she never knew, that he was connected to this secret society, who are most decidedly nefarious. Sensibility is never quite sure who she can trust as it seems that there are plenty of games being played and some bluffing back and forth but I think she knows who she wants to trust.

This has an original publication date of 2014 and there are actually two further books in this series already published. I enjoyed this enough to definitely pick those up and see what is next for Sensibility and the friends she made.

7/10

1848 San Francisco and Sensibility Grey has arrived from Lima to the protection of her Uncle, after the death of her scientist father. But she becomes the pursued because of her father's journal. Who can she trust. Sensibility decides she must decipher the secrets in the journal but what will be the consequences.
A good fun mystery with a range of characters. An enjoyable read.

This is a better-than-average steampunk novel. If only that was a higher bar to clear.

First, the copy editing. Even though I received my review copy through NetGalley, I will talk about the copy editing, because there's a 2014 publication date on it, so I assume it's not going to get another editing pass any time soon. It needs one, though it wouldn't have to be a heavy pass; it just needs someone who knows the coordinate comma rule to take out unnecessary commas, clean up a few typos ("Put perhaps...", "take it from me my force", "at the head the table"), remove one interrobang, rewrite the several dangling modifiers ("As the only female on board... the ship's master had taken her under his protective wing"), remove an unneeded hyphen in "six inches high", move the apostrophe in "smashed one of the thug's faces" (there are multiple thugs, each of whom has only one face, so it's "one of the thugs' faces" or, even better, "the face of one of the thugs"), change "ransom the journal for her uncle" to "ransom her uncle for the journal", and fix the homonyms plum/plumb, loathe/loath, waivered/wavered, and damn/dam. Oh, and "wheel barrel", which appears to be an eggcorn for "wheelbarrow".

Believe it or not, that's actually pretty good for steampunk.

The author rather clumsily tells us near the beginning that it's 1848, and I didn't spot anything that was obviously wrong or out of period, except that dageurreotypes were on glass, not pasteboard. The tension is established strongly early on, and kept up well; it's not at all clear through most of the book who the heroine should trust, which gives all her decisions a greater weight. She's mostly sensible, and not the usual steampunk heroine; many steampunk authors, though not this one, make their heroines headstrong in the mistaken belief that this is the same as "strong".

Here, however, we hit perhaps the most glaring language error: the heroine's name is Sensibility, and this is treated throughout as if it means "the quality of being levelheaded and sensible," instead of what it actually means, "the quality of being sensitive and aware". Other than that, I didn't notice any vocabulary words being abused, if we leave aside the relatively few homonym errors, and for steampunk that's highly unusual; generally, there are words being used in the wrong sense left and right in this kind of book.

I note in passing that, despite the title, there's very little actual steam, though the book is none the worse for its lack.

The plot is the fairly familiar "must prevent the Maguffin from falling into the wrong hands" one, but it's well executed, and the Maguffin itself is not only interesting but also used to help in the heroine's escape (which she manages for herself, hindered rather than helped by the only man in the vicinity; extra points for this). There's a female villain, too, and a good one.

Overall, then, this is a well-executed steampunk story with a strong, tense thriller plot and better-than-average characters. While it shares some of the editing flaws so common in the genre, they're less prevalent than in many other books I've read, including award-winning ones; if the author learned the coordinate comma rule, watched the homonyms, and stopped dangling modifiers, she would be well on the way to a clean manuscript. And since steampunk readers mostly seem unaware of such flaws, I expect this one will do well, if it gets any kind of decent promotion at all.

The year is 1848. Sensibility is the name of the heroine who lost her father and traveled from Lima to San Francisco to come to her uncle. She never met this man before and is disappointed to learn that nobody is waiting for her. At least not her uncle. A young lady named Jane Algrave saying she is an US-Agent rescues her from a few men that seemingly wanted to rob her. But what could they wanted from her? There is a run to the Californian gold and Sensibility is poor; almost nothing is left beside a few things from her father. But now she is in an adventure with magic, betrayal and danger for her life.

Don't know what to say. It was nice but most of the time I didn't like the heroine very much. I understand, she is young and grown up in a really other era but she was in the first two-third of this novel too naive and passive and rather useless. For my taste there was too little steam for a steampunk story and I missed that. Only in the end you could get an idea of steam, the rest of the time there was too much magic and Victorian era behavior and I didn't understand why Sensibility got to like the hero, the stiff Mr Knight.

Steam and Sensibility, A Steampunk Novel of Suspense,  Kirsten Weiss

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre:  mystery and thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy

 I haven’t read a lot of Steampunk, a couple that were really enjoyable and a few that were OK reads, but its good to read outside one's comfort zone occasionally.

This book sounded fun, but for the first half it really was a western type read more than steampunk, with very little to bring the story into that category.
I liked Sensibility, and her confidence in her abilities, and enjoyed the aether refs, they made for a bit of extra and Steampunk does need that touch of magic IMO.
I wasn’t really taken by any of the other characters though, and found the plot to be a little thin.
It seemed to be a who can be trusted and everyone is out to get the Journal, and rather too much bumbling around to fit my taste. It picked up after the halfway point, but never really hooked me fully into the story and the steampunk elements were very thin on the group.
The author mentions this was a book that has been reworked to fit the steampunk  category and to me it feels like that, doesn’t feel as if its fully immersed in the genre, but another story with added extras making it fit where the original story didn’t. There was the watch, and the little mechanical sweeper she made, but no traditional elements such as dirigibles, fantastic creatures etc until close to the end.
Maybe it will appeal to steampunk lovers more than those like me who tend to stay on the fringes, I don’t know, its not a bad book, just one that was only an OK read for me.

 It’s a fun read, but definitely a one off for me.

Stars: Three, an OK read but steampunk is a bit thin.

ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers

Thank you.
Enjoyed it. Good read.
Will get copies for family and friends

'Magic, mayhem, and mechanicals' indeed. 'Steam and Sensibility' is an enjoyable pre-steampunk tale, taking place in the Gold Rush era of California. 19-year-old Sensibility Grey is a strong, independent young lady thrust into a world of secrets.