The Falling Machine

Mayer, Andrew P. (2011). The Society of Steam Book one: The Falling Machine. Amherst, NY: Pyr.

ISBN: 9781616143756

Pages: 285

Genre: steampunk

Annotation: After her mentor is murdered Sarah searches for the truth.

Summary: Sarah Stanton went to the Brooklyn Bridge with her mentor to see a marvel being built. She leaves shocked by her mentor’s murder and awareness of a danger threatening New York and the world. Things get worse when she finds there is a traitor in the superhero group protecting the city. Now she must find out the truth or all will be lost.

Evaluation: good read

Sarah’s backstory shows her to be a determined heroine the reader roots for. Her father, the superhero known as the Industrialist, is interesting because he is grey: he wants to protect the world but some of his actions are questionable at best. The other characters are intriguing. Sleuth, for example, is a Sherlock Holmes like hero who is charming and intelligent. A nitpick I have is that more should have been done with the character of Tom. He is an automaton who embodies progress because he is so advanced, but also causes mistrust because he is a machine and not human. We see his actions, and they show his character, but I would have liked to see more of his thoughts. Just seeing his actions makes his character feel flat to me. How is he reacting to the events of the book? The reader clearly sees this is a steampunk world through the descriptions of machines. The workings of society are shown through the chapters in Sarah’s point of view. The storyline gets readers thinking about what being human is, can machines/progress be trusted and how we can be oblivious to what we need to see. The chain of events is believable and the point of view switches are handled skillfully. The book leaves plenty of questions to be answered in the next books. This is a good read for those who like over the top superheroes and villains and/or steampunk.

What else to read:

The next book in the series.

The Bookman (The Bookman Histories series) by Lavie Tidhar for steampunk and a good villain.

The Iron Duke (Iron Seas series) by Meljean Brook for steampunk, strong heroine and romance.

Phoenix Rising (Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series) by Phillipa Ballentine for steampunk and a strong heroine.