Book Review: Lady of Devices

Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina

So, free books are awesome.  Free steampunk books that are actually well-written and entertaining are even better.  This 200 page novel is available free for the Kindle on Amazon.

The heroine of this book is an upper-class young  lady named Claire Trevelyn about to graduate from finishing school.  She dreams of going to university to become an engineer, but her traditional family won't hear of it, of course.  The story is set in a Victorian era only slightly changed from the real one.  Society is divided into Wits and Bloods.  Wits are the scientists of the age while Bloods are the traditional aristocracy.  Other than that and some advanced steampunk technology, not much is unfamiliar.

Tragedy in her family leads Claire to break social norms and seek out a new independent way of life.  This story surprised me in the direction it ultimately went.  I expected more romance, though there is a hint of the possible beginnings of a romantic plot.  I found some of the events very improbable, but they did continue to entertain me even so.  I was becoming quite interested in where the story would go right about the time that the book ended.  It ended surprisingly abruptly, too.  I turned the page and expected another chapter at least, when I got an epilogue.

This is the first in a series, and I will probably continue reading it eventually.  But for free, you can't really go wrong checking out this opening tale.