mark monday's Reviews > The Iron Duke

London freed by the former pirate "The Iron Duke" is still a London chock-full of resentment, violence, economic insecurity, destroyed body parts replaced by machinery, and racism against half-breeds descended from the city's former masters, the Mongolians known as The Horde. Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth is one of those luckless, product of - and later, victim of - the ability of the Horde to make their pet English do as they pleased, sexually and otherwise. Inspector Wentworth has a lot to deal with: everyday contempt from Londoners still angry over their former servitude, a noble family in dire financial straits, a body dropped from a zeppelin onto the Iron Duke's estate, and a beloved younger brother lost or kidnapped. Perhaps her biggest problem, one she won't admit even to herself: she has a hankering for that Iron Dick.

Overall this was surprisingly impressive, despite its laughable cover and designation as some sort of Steampunk Romance (not that I have anything against Steampunk or Romance). Meljean Brook is a really talented writer and the world she constructs is almost dizzying in its complexity and layers of history. But the story never feels cluttered. This alternate England is deeply, richly imagined - so much so that it could have been too much. Brook's imagination is a fertile one, and in the hands of a lesser author, the story could have been easily overwhelmed by all of the creativity on display. But her smooth, exciting narrative and deliberate parsing out of details give her book an appealing suppleness. This is an easy world to get lost in!

The romantic elements are key - this being a romance novel, after all, and despite all of the fun, strange worldbuilding - and those scenes ended up being either the most tedious or some of the more striking parts of the novel. Fortunately, the romance improves over the course of the story.

To the former: Mina's constant perception of the Iron Duke as one very bad and very untrustworthy dude becomes very very tiresome, very very quickly. It really gets ridiculous and it just goes on and on. Eyes were rolled, very hard. The Duke's instant obsession with Mina alternates between creepily aggressive and amusingly sweet and soft; despite that schizophrenia, overall he was not a particularly interesting character.

But to the latter: the reader soon learns that Mina's hesitation around intimacy is coming from her experience with intimacy being forced upon her. (And it turns out that that is something she has in common with her paramour.) Rape and its emotional aftermath are topics that deserve to be treated with delicacy and empathy; I really respected Brook's skill and care when dealing with such things. She made those past traumas central to her two protagonists' psyches and profound influences on their sexual behavior, yet she also made sure that the impact of those traumas could be overcome. Good job, author.