I'm not sure that I have anything good to say about this book. The majority of the short stories were rip offs of other, far better written, stories that haven't been read much by people outside of literature classes. There's a Rappaccini's Daughter knock off in here, and a few others from the same time period, and earlier. I was not impressed.Come on, people. It's a short story. Is it really that hard to write something that's less than 15 pages and isn't complete copy of something from the American Renaissance, or the Victorian era of literature? I think the reason this gets such good reviews is because people are so obsessed with the theme. The theme only works if it doesn't drown out all other creativity in a story. I only read the story by Adrian Kress, so I can't count this as a book I actually "read."I think I would have really enjoyed this as a longer, more fleshed out story. In this iteration it was pretty bare bones, with a basic outline. I think Kress did a pretty good job at giving her protagonist a personality (no nonsense, tom boy, get-it-done kind of girl) but we didn't actually get to know Rafe at all, nor was there enough time in the 20 or so pages it covered to really create a big conflict and arrive at a resolution. Or maybe it could have been done, but it wasn't done here. There was more set up than action, but that was okay. :-)
What do You think about Corsets And Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances (2011)?
This was a good read. Some short stories were better than others and left me wanting more.
—shannybanany2000
Not going to finish this one. What I did read was fine enough.
—ura
Got bored. Didn't get past second story.
—Bamalee2008
