For Steam And Country

Steam punk is cool. It looks awesome, it opens the gate for cool ideas and stylistic choices. For some reason, though, it seems a bunch of steam punk books are kind of meh. Which... yeah, it happens here.

Zaira is the only daughter of a legendary baron/airship captain and just basically a freaking awesome guy everyone loved. He went MIA 2 years ago, after Zaira's mother also died, so she is alone running the family farm the way she can. The neighbour family is there for her though, with their handsome son. It's all going kind of crappy up until people show up and tell Zaira that now his father is officially considered dead, so she inherited his airship.

You know, I am personally not huuuuge about teenage girl protagonists. To be fair I also didn't really love being a teenage girl too much when I was one, so yeah. Zaira wasn't that bad, I have seen much worse. Still, the characters were the big weakness of this thing. Somehow they all seemed to just do things and say things without it being... real? They claim to all love Zaira after 2 days of her not doing too impressive things. They also point out their feelings without me buying any of it, because the depth just wasn't there.
The whole “my dad is a legend, but I only know him as weird dad” thing is awesome. I love that, I love relationships like that. I also prefer friendships or family relationships compared to romantic love. Sue me.
Still, the characterisation of this thing wasn't good. The people just weren't relatable and the emotions didn't cut it.
Which comes from another reason as well; the story happens so fast. Sure, people can bond over harh conditions and shocking experiences, but here I didn't buy the thing with being so so close after spending together like 3 days in total.

The action itself was fun, though. As I said, the idea of this girl not really knowing how her father was seen was also fun. I just wanted it to build up more. To spend some time on it all being connected, not just events and concepts that we have to believe progress in a certain way because the characters tell us so. Honestly, the style needs a bit of work.

It was fun, though, it has a lot of potential with some technical development and work. So there is that. I will give the author more time, I am not against reading more from him. Al in all a fine book. Not brilliant, not the worst. Oh, well.

Good night and let out some steam!