Personal Rating: 2.75 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.49 Grey Haward has always detested the Chemists, the magicians-come-scientists who rule her small western town. But she has always followed the rules, taking the potion the Chemists ration out that helps the town’s people survive. A potion that Grey suspects she—like her grandfather and father—may not actually need. By working at her grandfather’s repair shop, sorting the small gears and dusting the curio cabinet inside, Grey has tried to stay unnoticed—or as unnoticed as a tall, strong girl can in a town of diminutive, underdeveloped citizens. Then her best friend, Whit, is caught by the Chemists’ enforcers after trying to protect Grey one night, and after seeing the extent of his punishment, suddenly taking risks seems the only decision she can make. But with the risk comes the reality that the Chemists know her family’s secret, and the Chemists soon decide to use her for their own purposes. Panicked, Grey retreats to the only safe place she knows—her grandfather’s shop. There, however, a larger secret confronts her when her touch unlocks the old curio cabinet in the corner and reveals a world where porcelain and clockwork people are real. There, she could find the key that may save Whit’s life and also end the Chemists’ dark rule forever. (goodreads.com) I hesitate to put this in the “Christian” category. For, although it is published by Blink, which is a branch of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, it doesn’t exactly seem like a book written for Christian readers. Regardless, I will put it in the “Christian” category of my blog because there are only three other books in that section. So, I have no idea why I read this book. I think I was hoping for fun steampunk adventures because when I first saw it I’d just finished with the Etiquette and Espionage series by Gail Carriger. But I read it and it was not exactly the thrilling adventure I hoped it would be. Yeah, there was loads of adventure and loads of action. And sure, there were lots of exciting parts, but I also found myself unable to pay attention to the action scenes. I even skimmed through a few pages. It was also quite difficult for me to get into this book and it seemed like the interesting parts didn’t start until Grey actually went to Curio City and after the newness of reading about Curio City, that too got boring. As you see, this book already didn’t have a lot going for it, but then there were the characters *insert the sound a parent makes when “they aren’t mad, they’re disappointed”*. First off we have Grey Haward. She wasn’t bad as far as MCs go, actually. At least she wasn’t constantly complaining or talking about how unfortunate she was. Her life was a wreck, but she pushed through because she had a job to do. And she didn’t even act like her circumstances were super unfair or horrible, she just kept going. I have to say, I really enjoyed a female protagonist who didn’t whine or complain. Apart from being kind of boring she was a pretty good character. Then we’ve got Whit. Urgh. He. Was. So. Boring. I just didn’t care a whit for what happened to Whit (see what I did there?). And he fell in love with a girl so fast it just about gave me Whitlash (hehe, get it? Whitlash?). Unfortunately, there were whole chapters just about him and they were filled with Whitless dialogue (hurhurhur) and I was about at my Whit’s end (okay, I’ll stop) with his lack of intelligence. You could say he was (sorry in advance) a half-Whit. All puns aside, he was just kind of a boring character and, though I felt pity for him, I couldn’t really connect to him. Onto Blaise: aka the Mad Tock. If you’ve read my post about Things I’m Sick of in Teen Books then you know that I am not overly fond of mysterious men with a troubled past. Blaise starts out as enigmatic and, what do you know? He’s got a very troubled history with the people of Curio City and the people of the town Grey is from. Plus, he’s got that possessive streak in him where he thinks things like “she should be with me” and “she’s mine” *narrows eyes at Blaise*. He does a decent job of correcting his own aggravatingly possessive thoughts, so I’m not too mad at him, but still. There were a lot of big characters in this book that I would love to talk about: Fantine, Nettie (I loved Nettie, she was adorably awesome), Sir Weatherton, Seree, Callis, Olan, Steinar, Adante, that guy whose name I can’t remember but I know starts with an “H”... there were a lot of characters jammed into this book. Some of them were interesting, some of them not so much, but one that I definitely want to talk about is Lord Blueboy. My first reaction to the ruler of Curio City was “oh, here’s the power hungry, gentlemanly, creepy, makes everything feel inappropriate, guy”. Lo and behold, he was indeed that guy and my, oh, my was he disturbing. Lord Blueboy (even the name creeps me out) is one of the main reasons I question if this book was actually read by any of the people who claim it is a “clean YA novel”. Whenever he was on the scene he made my skin crawl and I just wanted to punch him in his supposedly gorgeous face and tell him to leave Grey alone. Alas, I cannot punch people who reside in books (though if you know how to do so I would be very interested). I'm rather perturbed by the moral content of this novel. The publishing company claims it has good teen books that are “clean” and they do have their definition of “clean” on their website here, but I still don't feel like this quite met the standard. I don't wish to go into much detail but there were parts (mostly whenever Lord Blueboy was around) that made Grey out to be an object and something to be explored. Nope. Nopety no. I was not a fan of those parts. On a different note, I'm not really bothered by violence, however many people are so I feel inclined to report that this book had a lot of it, described it detail. Like, we're talking body parts flailing, people, and blood. Lots of blood. The world building could have been better, in my personal opinion (and that’s saying something coming from me). In Grey’s hometown I wasn’t sure if it was in another world or an alternate version of our world and the only way I ever figured this out was because I think someone said something about Colorado and then Grey mentioned the United States Army. The book was supposed to be steampunk, but I feel like it was a steampunk dystopian but still in the late 1800’s. Does that make sense? No? Well, it didn’t really make sense to me either when I was reading it. And then Curio City, which seemed like it was full of opportunities for really great world building, didn’t give me much explanation as to how it existed. It said a little bit about why, but never how. I thought it was supposed to be in a curio cabinet, but it seemed like a whole different world - oh hey! Maybe it was supposed to be like Narnia! Except, it seemed like the only way you could get in was through the cabinet and that the cabinet and the magical world could not exist apart from each other. Sooooo… not really sure. I was kind of hoping it would be like the porcies and tocks were actually living in a curio cabinet and there would be shelves and other knick-knacks on the shelves that they came up with creative names for that were close to what we call them, but hilariously different - I wanted it to be like The Lego Movie, okay? There, I said it. But it wasn’t and I was super disappointed. I know that’s a stupid thing to be disappointed about, but I was and it may or may not have made me like the book less. Also, can I real quick say that I wish there had been more about the Valor Society? Because they sounded cool. Sir Weatherton sounded cool. His wife sounded cool. They had all the fun steampunk gear and I wanted to see more of it and more of porcies doing dangerous stunts. One more thing, what the heck did the symbolism in this book mean? I could see that it was there, and I could tell that it was trying to be Biblical, but it really didn’t align with any common gospel symbols that you generally see in literature. I mean there kind of was, but it didn’t quite work and if you thought about it too much it became really weird. And why was there a god inside the curio cabinet, but no sign of one in the “real” world? What exactly was this book trying to say about beauty? Because it started off sounding like a “beauty isn’t everything”, but then the porcies were talking about how the “Designer” didn’t want them to be ugly and how ugliness was bad, but then the heroes briefly touched on the fact that even ugly people deserve clean water (idk, man, idk). I’m sure you aren’t surprised that I was baffled. I’m sorry, book, I really wanted to like you, but you were only okay. Subpar. Fine. Ordinary. Meh. I said this last time, but hopefully next time I’ll write a review for a book I actually end up liking. I just have to read a good book first… I’m kidding, I have plenty of good books I could review, but ranting is just easier than praising. Which isn’t good. Children, don’t look to me as a rolemodel. Build each other up, don’t tear each other down. Thanks for reading! I shall now fly off with my steam powered flight suit. *whoosh* Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25309770-curio?ac=1&from_search=true
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