This is a fascinating and highly engaging novel that isn't quite what it advertises to be. I'll look at why that is after I set it up, but I read this as a clockpunk gothic mystery, which is right up my alley. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I might and firmly believe that, with a minor note late on aside, it would translate very easily into a feature film.

It potentially sneaks in right at the end of the Victorian era, because it starts out in 1901 at Mr. Daniel Lane's clock shop in Grafton, Shropshire. He's been dead for years, having only run it for two, but his wife Lottie promptly took over and has run it for twenty-three thus far, ten of them with her niece, all without ever changing the sign over the door. After all, who in 1901 would be interested in visiting a clock shop run by a woman? This combination quirky setup with an overt social comment is a great way to set the stage for what's to come.

We quickly focus on that niece, Sydney Forrester by name. She's very good at what she does and what she does is fix things, because she's drawn to broken things that others have given up on. She's also an orphan, meaning that Aunt Lottie isn't her aunt by blood, just by being there and doing the job. The plot is triggered by her seeking her mother, Lady Gwendolyn, in the personal ads of a number of papers. She fails to find her but she does find a Great Uncle Emmett Sinclair, who's recently died and left her his fortune, as per a mysterious lady who arrives at the shop.

Well, not quite, as she finds out when she arrives at Blakely House, which is huge and sits on a hill on an island called Farneham Heald off the Northumberland coast, so the far northeast of England. She's clearly an heir, but there are three others as well and the two of them already at Blakely House are shocked to find that Sydney Forrester isn't male. They're Dane Hutchcraft, a chemist and Emmett's nephew; and Tom Jolly, a businessman and Emmett's cousin. Another cousin, Irving Purcell, a professor, is working at university. The will, it seems, is a sort of contest: the fittest and best candidate will inherit the entire estate.

And what an estate! Blakely House is a gloriously dramatic place, packed full of books, pirates and clockwork. It's a quintessential old dark house setup but with a lot more light. Emmett was an inventor, so he has a fantastic workshop, complete with a complex automaton which doesn't actually work. Making it work may well become a way to become the fittest and best and it's an immediate box of delights inside an even bigger box of delights for Syd, who's aching to fix it. It is moments like Syd's tour of Blakely House that make me ache to not have aphantasia.

There's a staff but it's an unusual one. André Montaigne is the butler, as well as the pirate who discovers Syd when she wrecks her boat on the island, saving her cat and warning her to leave. Mrs. Holligan is the cook and housekeeper, as well as being the woman who let her know about the inheritance. Oh, and there are a host of shipwreck victims, most of them likely pirates, who stayed on for free to help because they loved Emmett Sinclair. What else is notable is that none of them like Syd from the start, because they're under the impression that Sydney Forrester is the man, or at least the person, who murdered Emmett Sinclair.

It's fair to say that a lot of things were immediately obvious. Given how sympathetic everybody isn't and how we're following Syd rather than her newfound relatives, of course, she's going to win out in some fashion and inherit Emmett's estate. Given that the only romance even hinted at before Syd gets to Farneham Heald goes absolutely nowhere in the blink of an eye, she's also going to end up with André the butler; there simply aren't any other viable romantic partners anywhere to be found in the story.

What's more, while nobody else believes that Emmett ever had even a fleeting interest in any woman at any point ever, Syd figures out that there was a love of his life, Sophie Holland, and much of what he did was for her. So, clearly Syd is Emmett and Sophie's granddaughter, rather than his grand-niece. And, for good measure, as the story shifts along, it also becomes obvious that while someone is absolutely buried in his grave, Emmett has to still be alive and is waiting in the wings somewhere to reveal himself at a crucial moment.

Before other readers start to wonder which book I read, I'll reiterate that these things are just obvious. That doesn't mean that they happen and I'll happily point out right now that a whole bunch of them don't. In fact, only one happens how we expect. The others either happen but in ways we don't expect or don't happen at all. One of the big successes of this book is how these mysteries whose solutions we've quickly taken for granted turn out rather differently, without either disappointing us or breaking the story.

And so back to my first line, that this isn't quite what it advertises to be. The back cover of the ARC that I read labels it Christian/Romance/Historical. There's certainly a romance and it's a strong point because it builds slowly but believably and I was rooting for them both all the way. It's technically historical, as it unfolds in 1901, over a century ago, but it doesn't feel historical to me, perhaps because I've been a steampunk for fifteen years. Nothing in it would feel out of place in a steampunk novel set right now and, in fact, it checks a whole bunch of boxes for that sort of book.

That leaves Christian and, even though this was published by Revell, a Christian publisher, that angle is hardly present at all until very late in the book. André believes in God but Syd doesn't and both of those things are fine and dandy and don't affect the story in the slightest. Had this been released by another publisher, I wouldn't have expected this angle to go anywhere, but it kind of has to for a Revell book. Eventually, Syd finds herself on a boat on the ocean and there are three pages, each isolated from each other, that get all religious after the three-hundred-page mark.

And I do mean all religious. I could buy into Syd finding God on the water, given what happens, and I'm sure there's a way for an author to make that particular approach work. However, it's hugely out of place here. Having not been important for three-hundred pages, to suddenly be everything that matters at three very brief and completely separate points feels awkward. It's as if an editor read the manuscript and thought there wasn't enough religious content in it, so just rewrote three pages at random to provide it, without talking to the author. If anyone does turn this into a feature film, and I hope they do, they should minimise that aspect.

Of course, three awkward pages isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things and everything else here works, at least from the angle of a clockpunk gothic mystery. The gothic aspect is in the setting: the windswept island, the old dark house, the contested will. That theoretical film could easily be released in a black and white edition as well as a colour one. The romance fits under gothic too, as politely as it stays. The clockpunk is in the many accoutrements of Blakely House, not just the automaton, as well as various enhancements like the mechanical arm that Syd makes for André, who only has one otherwise. And the mystery is everywhere, in who and what and why at a whole bundle of levels.

Ignore those three pages and this is a quirky gem that I'd recommend to my fellow steampunks. Leave them in and it's still a quirky gem, just one that prompts us to wonder why. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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