I will admit this straight off, I came to this book with no expectations at all, but got a little worried when I saw that the author was a fan of Twilight -- or, at least, in the dedication she thanks some friends for going to see Twilight with her. However, since I conned a few friends to go see Twilight the first night for mocking purposes, I suppose I shouldn’t throw stones at sparkling houses.

That being said I found The Girl in the Steel Corset an enjoyable read.

Taking place in the steampunk version of Victorian England, The Girl in the Steel Corset follows a lower class girl named Finley with a bit of a problem. She has a dark side that she finds rather hard to control, a bit of a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde syndrome. This more than worries her because she’s afraid of hurting someone permanently, and the worst part being that her dark side would enjoy it. After a mishap at her serving position she finds herself caught up with a group of people her age who work for the young Duke of Greythorne, Griffin King, all with special abilities. There’s, Sam who is incredibly strong and heals quickly -- like, Colossus from the X-Men levels in strength ; Emily, who’s really good with machines; Jasper, an American cowboy who’s trick is speed; and Griffin himself, who can access the “Aether” -- which is sort of like the psychic plane where ghosts and things hang out. It’s a well known plane which people try to access in places like opium dens; except, of course, they’re called aether dens.

The thrust of the plot involves the group of them, under Griffin, discovering how to help Finley bring together her darker and not so darker impulses and figure how who the Machinist is and why is he so interested in Queen Victoria. The Machinist is the outside villain that drives the group forward to become a cohesive unit while causing exterior plot tension. While he does this, Finley provides the group’s interior tension as they learn to trust her and she trust them.

Starting off slowly, the story dashes off a few necessary checkmarks required for the genre in regards to Finley and Griffin. It establishes their attraction to each other and Finley’s distrust in being wanted in Griffin’s circle and then it moves on with the rest of the plot. This distrust, while supported by the character’s background, is perhaps one of the novel’s weaker points, but that may only be because it’s such an over used plot device to cause character emotional turmoil. Everything works better when Finley is acting on her ‘darker’ impulses and she’s more confident with who she is and what she’s doing. It’s when she’s like this that I feel she’s a much more fascinating character. Especially since a more intriguing personal conflict is how she feels about Griffin King and Jack Dandy -- a local underworld king.

However, once Cross gets all of that out of the way, the story starts getting more involved and interesting. There’s the slow exploration of how the characters got their powers --something that’s not known but is discovered in the book. Finley’s interactions with Jack and Griffin, and the search for the Mechanist as the days to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee slowly slip by. And all the strange steampunk versions of things like the cell phone and texting fit rather well into the setting without being pointed out overtly with a “Hey, look! Nifty thingy here!” The setting doesn’t detract from the narrative and things are integrated into it pretty smoothly.

For a first outing, I think this is a very good read. While there are some plot points I figured out ahead of the characters, (possibly because I’m more genre savvy than they are), and there are a few odd description quirks that bothered me (like constantly referring to Emily’s hair as ropey), I did enjoy the book once I got into it. The characters are very individual and unique; they have some real depth to them; and they’re generally pretty smart. The romance part of the book, which I was expecting to take up so much of it -- see the mention of Twilight at the beginning of this review -- it’s actually a minor detail and doesn’t become the ‘traditional romance’ plot of the two characters wondering if the other likes them or not, or Finley mooning over Griffin.

If there is a sequel to this book -- and I have a feeling one is planned -- then I wouldn’t mind reading it at all. In fact, I hope there is.

   -- Gabrielle Lissauer