Hell yeah, Super. Congratulations.
~~~
Hearts of Smoke and Steam
There were times during this novel where I felt like "You know what? I could get published someday if this person did", but not in a way where I thought "This writing is bad".... more like "I think that I can write at about this level easy enough". Self-confidence? In my VSMs?
At any rate, the actual book was worth reading, if you read the first of the Society of Steam novels, The Falling Machine, but it's a bit different---in the first book, everyone, from the heroes to the villains seemed very, very competent, efficient, and just plain good at what they do--in this book, everyone makes dumbassed mistakes except for... uh.... some of the villains. Some. Most amusingly is the daredevilesque badass called "Anubis", who has a "I'm a double-agent" thing going on, but.... really, he just sucks all the time. Like, pretty much everything he does in the book is failure. It's funny. (I'm also vaguely sure that Anubis is black, or, as the book so happily terms "A negro", given that someone immediately recognizes a secret about him by seeing a small hole in the BACK of his costume. There's a lot of talk in the book about "Negroes", largely because one of the villains is a KKK-themed guy called the "White Knight". I am not making this up.)
OK, you know what, I enjoyed this book, but I think I might just be a better writer. IN FAIRNESS to Mr. Mayer, it is only his second novel, and as I did find it quite enjoyable and fresh (although lately Steampunk fiction is becoming a real "thing") I suspect that he'll grow into something greater. I'll certainly continue to read the SoS books as they come out.