Yesterday, I finished reading The Steampunk Chronicles by Kady Cross, which consists of the four main books:
The Girl in the Steel Corset
The Girl in the Clockwork Collar
The Girl with the Iron Touch
The Girl with the Wind Up Heart
And there are three novellas as well:
The Strange Case of Finley Jayne (Prequel)
The Dark Discovery of Jack Dandy*(2.5)
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn (3.5)
*I didn't actually read this one. My library doesn't have this one on the shelves or through Overdrive. As Jack Dandy literally tells you what happens, I don't feel the need to track down this one. And I have no desire to purchase this one outright due to my feelings for the series as a whole.I have read everything else, though.
The three novellas weren't really necessary for the books themselves. With The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, there were a few things that didn't add up with the rest of the books. In this, she appears to have control over the dark side that she has. However, once you start reading The Girl in the Steel Corset, Finley states that she has no control over this darker side.
The Wild Adventures of Jasper Renn really didn't add much to the series. It just explained where Jasper was during part of The Girl with the Iron Touch. It didn't really feel like it added anything to the series.
Through the course of the first three books of the series itself, we are consistently told how "not normal Finley is." And the word normal was always in quotation marks when we were told how not normal she is. Instead of just showing us how she wasn't normal. we get beaten over the head with being told she is. And then see it. It got old rather quickly and took me out of the books several times. It happens with several of the other characters as well. But we see it predominantly done with Finley.
As well throughout the first three books, we are told that Finley's father died while her mother was pregnant with her. And then, randomly in Wind Up Heart, he died when she was three. He also tells her that he and her mother were invited the Greythorne estate before he passed away and Finley not only knew Griffin but played with him. Sam as well. We do get Griffin and Sam's POV throughout the series and no one bothers mentioning it anywhere prior to this. This either is a continuity error someone missed or ignored for reasons unknown.
The characters were fairly flat and seemed more concerned about how good looking their partner was. Or arguing with each other because they just couldn't come out and say what they wanted to. The majority of their problems could have been resolved just by talking to each other. But if they had done that, these books would have been thinner. I could have done with so much less romance. Since the publisher was Harlequin Teen, it's to be expected. The whole "I like him/her but can't be with him/her because we're of different classes" thing with Griffin and Finley also got old fairly quickly. We got it after the first few times it was mentioned. We got it. There are feelings there. But since Griffin didn't care about what anyone else in society thought about him, why did it matter in regards to Finley? And when they finally started making progress towards their relationship (which we all knew was inevitable), all I could think was that it was about time.
There was way too much convenience. Someone thinks something, someone else says something to them about that same thing they were just thinking about. Finley feels guilty about spending Griffin's money? He tells her not to worry about it "as if reading her mind." Only one person is said to be a telepath in the series, Griffin's aunt Cordelia. And we only see her in Steel Corset. So this much mind reading is a little too convenient.
With Mei in Clockwork Collar, it became pretty apparent that she was working with Dalton fairly early on. And that she hadn't had any kind of feeling toward Jasper. And he was supposed to have been in love with her. But got over her pretty quick once she had died, it seemed, and moved on to Cat as soon as Cat "needed" his help finding her little sister.
The plot of the books is what had drawn me initially to the series. And it fell so short from what it could have been. All sorts of cool things could have been worked into the story and it wasn't. It almost didn't feel fair to call this series a steampunk one.
I rated every book two out of five stars. I wanted so much to like this more than I did. Looking at the reviews on GoodReads, I am apparently of an unpopular opinion since almost everyone else loves this series. Which is fine since not every book is going to be for absolutely everyone.
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