In my search for a short and interesting read, I happened upon Like Clockwork on NetGalley. Of course you know that as soon as I saw the words "Steampunk" and "Romance" I was in. This is a subgenre I truly feel love for, and so I dove right in.

Now I probably should have noted at the beginning that I didn't realize the page count was so low. I'm not complaining, as I wanted a short read anyway, but that means this story has to wrap up quickly. Barbara Dee packs a punch into these 95 pages for sure. However people who are uncomfortable with inexplicably quick attractions may not be happy with the romance aspect. I, on the other hand, actually quite enjoyed the fact that there were no really messy parts. Attraction is enough for me.

At the heart of this Steampunk novel is a rather interesting story about automotons and their continued widespread use. Victoria is at the forefront of this movement, but not by choice. It was interesting to see how people so willingly accepted these humanoid lookalikes as replacements for actual humans. I don't deny what draws me to steampunk in the first place are ideas like this. Although she much build it quickly, Barbara Dee does build a nice world for the reader to be immersed in. Victorian London meets steampunk. Delicious.

Character wise, I liked Victoria and Dash equally. I enjoyed the fact that there were from two different parts of society, and yet they found so much in common. My one gripe was that in such a short book there seemed to be a lot of focus on their inner monologues. I realize it helps the reader get to know them better. However I wanted much more Victoria/Dash interaction time. Much more stolen time under the trees. That was the part of this book that really drew me in.

Honestly I rather enjoyed this read. My only gripe is that it was so short. Had it been 200 pages, I still would have read and probably enjoyed it that much more. Still, Barbara Dee has written a hidden gem that I see lovers of steampunk, and romance, thoroughly enjoying.
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3.5 stars

This story was better than I was expecting. I liked Victoria and Dash as characters, though I didn't think there was much chemistry between them. I did admire that they were trying to fix a mess created by society's need for the automatons. There was a side story involving a Jack the Ripper type serial killer that was interesting and surprising. This was my first Bonnie Dee read and I'm curious to read something else by her. ( )

I was so happy when I realized that Carina Press has several audiobooks on Audible priced at less than $5. I identified a few with interesting-sounding descriptions, culled the ones with truly terrible narrators, and then selected one that I knew I didn't already own in e-book form. The book I ended up with was this one, Like Clockwork. I listened to the full sample, but I didn't bother to hunt down the e-book excerpt. Maybe I should have. Or maybe it wouldn't have made a difference.

At any rate, on the surface this seemed like a good fit for me. I like steampunk, and the narrator sounded fine. There would potentially be automatons. Nice, right?

Wrong. Right from the start, the heroine annoyed me. She was involved in the creation of the automatons (actually, from what I could tell, the only thing she invented was their realistically human exteriors, but whatever), but she was horrified at how quickly society had adopted them. She had intended for them to replace humans in dangerous jobs, that's it, but instead people started assigning them to service positions. (One more thing: why did the automatons need realistically human exteriors if they were just going to be doing dangerous industrial jobs? Victoria really didn't think this through very well.) Victoria grudgingly had one as a butler, and she even spotted one taking care of a child. The horror! What would become of children raised by stiff, soulless, emotionless machines? And what about those reports Victoria had gotten of automatons spontaneously attacking humans? Later examination revealed nothing wrong with the automatons, so what was going on?

I admit, the anti-automaton aspects were obvious in the description. But I had expected the situation to not be quite so black-and-white. In particular, I was very upset by developments near the end. It reminded me ofevil AI stories, which I dislike. It didn't make sense, unless there was someone (a human someone) behind the scenes pulling the strings, but there was no evidence of that. It felt so lazy.

I might have been able to live with that, and the disappointingly light steampunk aspects, if Dash and Victoria had made a more enjoyable couple. Unfortunately they did not. I hated their romance so very much.

Okay, so they first met when Dash chloroformed Victoria and kidnapped her. He and his anti-automaton group hoped to use Victoria to stir up anti-automaton sentiment somehow. The details were kind of fuzzy and badly thought out – Dash was stupidly impulsive. Anyway, I knew immediately that I was going to hate the romance when Dash felt a “hot stab of lust” while looking at Victoria's unconscious form. I would love it if all romance novels and books with strong romantic subplots would quit doing things like this. It is disgusting. I don't care if the hero (or heroine, but it's almost always the hero who lusts over the unconscious heroine) feels ashamed at his reaction. I do not want a hero lusting after an unconscious woman, period. Particularly if he doesn't even know her. That makes him creepy and gross and definitely not hero material.

It got worse. Dash and Victoria turned out to be quite a pair. Dash was the kind of guy who lusted after chloroformed strangers, and Victoria was the sort of woman who felt “a heat that surged through her” when she looked at the guy who chloroformed and kidnapped her. They had known each other for maybe a few hours. This romance was terrible.

The only decent thing about this book was the narrator, and even she was just okay. Her “voice” for Dash bore an unfortunate resemblance to Stephen Briggs' “voice” for some of Terry Pratchett's trolls.

If I could sell or donate my Audible audiobooks, I'd offload this one, because I don't ever plan to re-listen to it. Once was enough. More than enough.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

This book was perfectly average. ( )

This novella from Carina Press sounded highly intriguing: A young woman named Victoria has pioneered work on automatons, originally intending for them to replace humans in dangerous jobs. However, society quickly latched on to her invention and started using automatons to replace humans in other positions as well, creating mass issues of unemployment.

Fearing social unrest and more potential deaths from disillusioned individuals like the notorious Slasher (who has been killing young women and removing their hearts), Victoria travels to a meeting of scientists and political leaders in order to plead her case: Restrict use of automatons before it's too late.

Of course, she never makes it to the meeting. She's kidnapped by an underground faction who are willing to do anything necessary to create the downfall and destruction of the automatons... but her kidnapper's plan gets skewed when Victoria pledges her assistance to the cause.

Naturally, Victoria and her kidnapper Dash fall in love... and quickly, at that. It seems to just happen, without any real lead-in, and becomes a backdrop for the resolution of the Slasher plot, the automatons, and the underground's unwillingness to resolve the problem peacefully.

It's an interesting story, with interesting characters. The problem I found was that the story was too big for its format. Dee could have written a full-length novel with this plot, and been able to better explore the themes of automatons and humans being replaced by machines, social unrest, and so forth. In this short 31,000-word novella format, she's forced to rush through the causes and consequences, leaving out crucial elements of character development and logical sequencing, resulting in a rushed story and a forced romance.

Naturally, the hero and the heroine defeat the odds and rise above the confines of polite society to be together. That's fine, as unbelievable as the romance is because of its rushed nature, readers expect the main characters to be together at the end of a romance book.

What I didn't expect, however, was the randomly tacked on, extremely graphic sex scene at the end of the book. Out of the blue, the main characters consummate their relationship and then the story ends. There's no lead-in, and there's no wrap-up. It felt like the author submitted the book, the editor said "okay, that's good, but we need more heat", and the author tacked a sex scene on to the end because it was 'required'. I'm not saying that's what happened, it just read that way.

If you want a quick, entertaining steampunk novella, it's not bad. It has its flaws, but it's a decent story and will quench your steampunk thirst without demanding a commitment to a longer book or series.

I'd simply recommend that you stop reading before the final chapter -- trust me, the story will make more sense and you'll enjoy the book much better that way! ( )