Clockwork Heart — (2008) Publisher: A steampunkish romantic fantasy set in Ondinium, a city that beats to the ticking of a clockwork heart. Taya, a metal-winged courier, can travel freely across the city's sectors and mingle indiscriminately among its castes. A daring mid-air rescue leads to involvement with  two scions of an upperclass family and entanglement in a web of terrorism, loyalty, murder, and secrets.
Forthcoming: a sequel
 Clockwork Heart: A blend of genres that works
I really don’t know what sort of story this is. It’s an adventure, it’s a mystery, it’s a crime novel, and a romance kind of all throw into one. It's a complex blend of genres all set in a different world where technology is far behind our modern times in many respects, but has been carefully enough thought out that it makes sense.
At the center of the story is a young woman who works as an Icarus — basically the equivalent of a bicycle messenger, only state-sponsored and with wings instead of a bike. The setting is a city-state that supports a caste system of governance. Again, pretty well thought out and not so complicated that you can’t follow it. Taya, that main character, is a free-spirited, intelligent, unknowingly pretty protagonist who is drawn into a convoluted series of plots because she happens to be in the right place at the right time to save a woman and child who are members of the highest caste.
Taya is pretty well written and, as is often the case with female main characters in fantasy works, she blends an interesting combination of stubbornness, willfulness, and outright luck. She makes mistakes and causes problems for herself and others, and this makes her believable as a character. She is surrounded by a variety of supporting characters that fill their respective places in the story fairly well. No glaringly out of place supporting cast in this book.
The story follows a fairly quick pace and covers a variety of settings. It’s not quite an action/adventure book, but there’s enough action to pace the slower social scenes. On the whole, it’s well blended. I honestly felt more like I was reading an urban fantasy novel, but the setting is not modern.
If you’re looking for traditional epic fantasy, this is not it. If you are willing to try something that carries hints of fantasy with no real magic or knights in shining armor, then this is worth the trip. It’s not too long and feels in no way like it’s the beginning of another series. Kudos to the author for that!
I'm giving
4 stars out of 5. It was good, but not something I would drop the latest Kim Harrison to read. —John H. Comments
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That was an interesting interview. SHe sounds like an interesting person. I liked Clockwork and hope she'll write that sequel soon.