Amber (The Literary Phoenix)'s Review of Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass, #1)

by Gwendolyn Clare

The rich world of The Clockwork Prince meets the political turmoil of The Eyre Affair.

As a prodigy in the science of scriptology, Elsa can write new worlds into creation. She lives in one such world called Veldana. When her mother is abducted, Elsa follows her trail into the real world, where she must recruit the help of a secret society of fellow 'mad' geniuses who are similarly gifted in powers of mechanics and alchemy. Here, she meets Leo, a mechanist with a smart mouth and a tragic past.

With Leo's help, she unveils a political conspiracy with her own family at the center. Her mother's most valuable and secret creation, a scriptology book with the power to edit the real world, is also missing, and Elsa must find it and her mother before her enemies do.

I desperately wanted to love this book, but it's hard to love a book that meets none of your expectations. Steampunk and I already have a mixed history, but I really thought that the worldbuilding in this one was going to steal my heart.

Except... it didn't.

The worldbuilding is light at best, and for a book that boasts people who can write worlds into existence, there was a whole lot of "And she climbed on the train and sat across from him" and nearly enough, "She squished into the poorly repaired letter seat, the clack-clack-clack of the rails underneath worsening her headache while outside the train window, a rainy landscape rushed by." ... Okay, I made both those up, but see my point? It's really easy to skate atop the surface of this one rather than to be wrapped up and enjoy it.

The same for the character - tropes and cliches with a lot of characterization in conversation rather than facial features or fidgeting with dress skirts. I wanted more from this, and I didn't get it.

ALL THAT SAID. This feels like something that a lot of other readers, the ones who aren't looking for deeply involved fantasy, will enjoy. I think that for a debut author, there's a lot of potential with Gwendolyn Clare even though this books really wasn't for me, and I'll be keeping an eye out for future releases outside this series.

Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass, #1)

by Gwendolyn Clare

Reviewed by Amber (The Literary Phoenix) on Sep 9, 2018

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