Stable the Bull, Free the Muse!

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The Girl in the Steel Corset
by Kady Cross

Pub. Date: May 2011
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Hardback, 473pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: The Steampunk Chronicles #1
ISBN-13: 9780373210336

 Synopsis from Amazon.com

In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one…except the "thing" inside her.

When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no normal Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch....

Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of them. The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret.

Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help—and finally be a part of something, finally fit in.

But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on—even if it seems no one believes her.

Jennifer's Review of The Girl in the Steel Corset

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

There comes a moment when you’re reading a book that you slip your bookmark between the pages and notice that you’ve just passed the halfway point. If it’s a tedious book, you might react with a resigned sigh. (Oh, man. Three hundred more pages of this lunatic chasing a whale.) On the other hand, if it’s a page-turner with interesting and extremely likable characters, and with a storyline that bounces along in a steady and comfortable rhythm, then you might regret that there are less pages awaiting you than there are lying behind you.

The Girl in the Steel Corset, from its beautiful cover to its final pages, is of the latter ilk. Yes, it has its flaws, some fairly irritating ones at that, but they're mostly steamrolled by the absorbing plot and immensely pleasing characters. Still, there’s a wee bit too much blushing going on, and a tad too many eyebrows “arch”. The lone American character at times sounds more British than he ought (or, conversely, like a stereotype of a cowboy). And I have to wonder if Cross is working on the old pulp mag penny-a-word scale: He raised a hand to his nose, and when he saw the blood on his fingers, he made a growling sound in his throat. Indeed. You know, he could have just "growled", and replacing the weak (and trite) phrase with a single, forceful word would have increased rather than sapped the potency of that sentence.

But my biggest complaint is that the author frequently exhibits a sameness in her prose. For example, midway down page 298: ...[Sam] demanded, coming at her like a bull at a red flag. Jump to the top of 299: Sam came at her. And finally, drop to the next paragraph: Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. Nice analogy the first time, not so much the second. Actually, it's the second and third times, at a minimum. On page 16, there's a different character, but the same verb and the same male bovine: He came at her again, like a bull. Cross tends to recycle her analogies -- an uninspired way to write that, by not challenging the writer, does her craft and her manuscript no favors. A writer's best friend is her Muse; allowing complacency to shut the door on inspiration and creativity is asking for stagnant prose, as is evident here when Sam's movements are described by the words “coming”, “came”, and “coming”. (Now that I think of it, monotonous prose is very pulp mag-ish, too! Just be aware of what you've already written, and if you're tempted to recycle an analogy, for example, force yourself to be a better writer by taking a few extra minutes to create something new.) Then there’s the character on page 309 who’s said to be profoundly glad that his friend was going to recover. A few pages later we are told once more that this character is profoundly relieved that his friend was alive. Clearly, there was some lax editing on the part of the writer and lazy proofreading on the part of both writer and editor. And that brings up what is without doubt the most nettlesome thing about this book: the dozens upon dozens of typos and other printing errors in the text. There are missing commas, commas where there shouldn’t be any punctuation, missing words, extra words inserted, and so on. A truly abysmal publication job, Harlequin Teen.

And yet, how good this book must be to overcome those difficulties and garner such a high rating! Well, actually, I’m not sure that good is the best word. Fun would be a better choice. It’s been a while since I’ve had such a blast reading a book. The romances (this is a Harlequin novel after all) are handled lightly, but are one of the highlights of the tale; there are good characters who struggle with the bad side of their natures, and bad ones you want to believe are better than they seem; and there’s just the right amount of humor to offset the drama. The steampunk elements are believable and enjoyable, and though they are an essential part of the story, the descriptions of machinery, etc., are easygoing and do not intrude on the narrative.

Oh, I could quibble over the muddled and ever so slightly contrived denouement. And I could complain about the author’s habit of adding descriptive sentences or phrases after "he said" that at times undercut the emotion being expressed by a character and/or interrupt the flow of a conversation. To see what I mean, let’s revisit page 299:

“It could have killed her,” Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. “She wouldn't let me die, but she risked her life for you. You are not worth her life. You're not worth her blood.”

Notice how Sam's anger dips after “raged”. The phrases that follow check the growth of his wrath (which is contrary to the violence about to pour forth from this outburst), as his subsequent statements are disconnected from “raged”. But read that paragraph aloud without the phrases following “Sam raged”. Now his anger, rather than slackening, gains momentum, and his act of violence erupts more naturally from his words. (In fact, removing the first phrase alone accomplishes the task almost as well.) Though such expository phrases are a common and useful tool for writers, Cross inserts an overabundance of them into her dialogue, and as a result some conversations feel choppy and bumpy. (More words, more pennies, I suppose.)

But darn it, reading The Girl in the Steel Corset is like having an uncomfortable seat at a terrific play. You squirm every now and then, and grunt out an “Ouch!” or two, but as the play progresses, your senses become enthralled by what’s happening up on the stage. And when you leave the theater, you do so energized and sporting a giddy smile. That was wonderful! you think, the uncomfortable seats of no consequence (until you get home and write your review of the play).

And if a sadness that the magic is over and the cast is gone tries to creep over you, it may be readily banished by the happy thought that this is only book one in The Steampunk Chronicles!

(A shorter version of this review was published in June 2011, on GoodReads.com.)

There But For the Grace of God

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Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century
by Laura J. Rosenthal

Pub. Date: August 2008
Publisher: Broadview Press
Format: Paperback, xxxii, 229pp
Age Range: Adult
Series: None
ISBN-13: 9781551114699
 

Synopsis from Broadview Press

This anthology makes available for the first time a selection of narratives by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century. These memoirs...offer important insights into female experience and class and gender roles in the period. Portraying the lives of women in both success and hardship, written in voices ranging from repentant to bawdy, the memoirs show the complexity of the lives of the "nightwalkers." For eighteenth-century readers, as Laura Rosenthal writes in her introduction, these memoirs "offered sensual and sentimental journeys, glimpses into high life and low life, and relentless confrontations with the explosive power of money and the vulnerability of those without it." 

Jennifer's Review of Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century

Nightwalkers is a collection of prostitute narratives from the 1700s written not by the women themselves, but by those who claimed to possess the facts of their lives. So though we don’t hear their experiences first-hand, we do get a good look at the reasons why these specific women, and others like them, wound up in the oldest profession. The editor, Laura Rosenthal, whose excellent introduction sets the historical  and literary stage for what follows, did a fine job of gathering together a cross-section of reform, sentimental, and libertine narratives, each differing in style, tone, and purpose (though none are the least titillating). As a result, we learn that some prostitutes, like today’s expensive call girls, moved freely and openly in high society, setting themselves up time and again as a wealthy man’s mistress in order to extract as much money and property from him as they could, occasionally leaving him bankrupt, or nearly so, in the process. Others longed to reform, but then as now, character references were needed for most respectable jobs and these women had none. We find, too, that with society’s help, some fortunate prostitutes were able to mend their ways and live a happier life.

Despite the sadness inherent in them, the narratives often contain unexpected and amusing treats that shed light on the culture of the times. For instance, in The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty Fisher, Kitty, whose love-lorn soliloquies are eavesdropped upon by her landlady (who misinterprets them as a sign of insanity), is examined by a doctor: 

He had...enquired of the people of the house concerning her behaviour; when they unanimously informed him, that she had been raving all day 'till just then....[E]ndeavoring to discover from what source her disorder sprung, he touched upon the usual topics that occasioned madness: adversity, disappointments, application to study, poetry, and at last on love.

If you’ve read Richardson, Fielding, or Defoe, then you have an idea of what a prostitute’s life was like in eighteenth century England. But through the narratives in Nightwalkers, the reader comes to understand that not all of society condemned these women, and indeed, only the strictest moralist would find them all worthy of condemnation. Circumstances – There but for the grace of God go I – put many of these women on the streets and kept them there. Of course, there were those like Sally Salisbury, whose biography opens the book, who seemed born to the profession. No one reveled in her work like the beautiful, devious, acid-tongued Sally. “It was always my Ambition,” she was reported as saying, “to be a First-Rate Whore, and I think, I may say, without Vanity, That I am the greatest, and make the most considerable Figure of any in the Three Kingdoms.” 

(Original, though shorter, review first published May 18, 2011, on GoodReads.com.)