Elitist Book Reviews

In THE FALLING MACHINE (EBR review) we were introduced to Sarah Stanton and her father's team of heroes called the Paragons. In the sequel HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM (EBR review) Sarah's life changes as she learns the difficult truth of what it really means to become a Hero. In Andrew P. Mayer's exciting conclusion, POWER UNDER PRESSURE, Sarah must become the hero, or else watch the people and the city she loves fall to the machinations of the villainous Lord Eschaton.

Lord Eschaton's plans are coming to fruition. He wants to see the human race realize its glorious potential using his fortified smoke, even if it means making martyrs of New Yorkers in the process. His first experiment is Nathaniel, Sarah's step-brother, captured in the battle for the Hall of Paragons. Meanwhile Sarah and Emilio are trying to rebuild Tom the automaton, because they won't survive Lord Eschaton's plans without him. Unfortunately, Tom is not the same machine he was in FALLING, even making the loyal Sarah question his stability.

Mayer's development of the technology shines in POWER. Lord Eschaton and Emilio's experiments are really what drive the story, and it's interesting to watch the technology develop and evolve. One wouldn't think that a machine could change much over a series, but despite not seeing much of him in book two, Tom's transformation in book three is clever and explores fascinating ideas and possibilities.

If you haven't read the first two books, POWER won't have much appeal--there's too much back story and character development in order for it to make sense. FALLING and HEARTS are both satisfying reads, with an interesting cast of characters, and a well-drawn setting. Sure, as a first-time author, Mayer's books aren't without their flaws, but on the whole the series has been enjoyable. And by book three, Mayer's storytelling should be improving, right?

As a reviewer I try to give new authors leeway as they progress in their writing, because even though they're published, writers are still honing their craft. I remember Brent Weeks' first series, Night Angel, was fun and enthusiastic, but had serious new writer issues. He's since improved considerably. While Mayer has great ideas and fun characters, I didn't see any improvement with POWER; in fact, all the problems from the first two books only got worse in book three. POWER felt like Mayer pounded out everything he had as fast as he could and didn't bother to go back and revise it for plot/consistency/characterization.

To prevent repeating too many of my complaints about books one and two, I will provide for you a Reader's Digest version of all the books' issues: painfully slow plot buildup, PoV changes in action sequences that overlap chronologically and thereby slow down important events, predictable fights, repetitive and sometimes confusing characterization, clunky prose and trite dialogue.

I got through the first quarter of the book and began to wonder if book three was the end of the series as planned. I got halfway through and began to despair that it wasn't. Where was this plot headed? I couldn't tell. All the new PoVs indicated to me that Mayer was expanding the story, making it head into many other potential directions. Sure the secondary characters are interesting and I like what he did with them (there are too many to explore here in detail in order to explain), but the extra PoVs made the book lose its focus. By the end I'd lost my interest in the main characters, the climax (while exciting) was on the whole unimaginative and predictable, and the resolution left enough loose ends to hint at possible sequels. Not really the best way to wrap up a series.

Despite all the extra information about the cast of characters, we get the opposite problem with the city since the story is limited to a few locales, which is unfortunate. We get a taste of the era, but by this point the setting feels more like repetitive gripes about society's attitude toward women and minorities, and less about what it was like to live in 1880s New York City.

I wanted to like POWER, I really did. Mayer has created an interesting world by exploring  how a new era of heroes rises from adversity and how personal ability and technology makes that happen--all while doing it in a fresh setting. Ultimately, though, Mayer didn't spend the time refining POWER UNDER PRESSURE to give the conclusion the series deserved.

Recommended Age: 16+ (more for the sexual references than for the violence)
Language: Not really any
Violence: Fighting, deaths, and torture, but not particularly graphic
Sex: Referenced

You can check out this series here:

1. THE FALLING MACHINE

2. HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM

3. POWER UNDER PRESSURE

In THE FALLING MACHINE you were left with a cliffhanger: during the battle with Lord Eschaton, Tom is dismantled and Sarah leaves home after a fight with her father.

The continuation, HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM begins over a month later. Even though Tom was destroyed, Sarah was able to recover his heart in the chaos. Unfortunately it's broken, and she needs to find someone to repair the heart, but doesn't trust the majority of the people in New York who are able to do it. Her search leads her to Emilio Armando, an Italian immigrant and inventor—whose past, if Sarah knew it, would make her think twice about trusting him with Tom's secret.

In the meantime, the Paragons have lost two of their rank, and must find help, as the remainder of them aren't getting any younger. They interview new applicants—a strange and varied assortment—and discover King Jupiter, who appears to not only be able to create amazing technology, but who may just have supernatural powers. Don't forget, however, that in FALLING we learn that one of the Paragons is a traitor. The Paragons are in great danger, and as a result so is New York.

After a slow start, the action in HEARTS moves very quickly, even more than in FALLING. I read the books in succession, and after I was finished I had to sit on it for a while to absorb everything before I could disseminate how I feel about this series thus far. The action moves fast and is detailed, but like in FALLING the actual plot isn't much further than when we started; I could probably number the main plot events on one hand. This doesn't mean, however, that FALLING and HEART aren't lots of fun to read, because they are. I only wished there were more. (Hrm. Wanting more isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it?)

There are more PoVs here compared to the previous book, and the switching back and forth isn't strictly chronological. Mayer will move PoVs around in time in order to cover simultaneous character viewpoints in an important scene. While it's helpful for knowing all the events in a scene and each character's motivations, it does get confusing. Mayer did it in FALLING, too, but not as much as he does in HEART and it got frustrating when I was more interested in the forward movement of the plot.

Sarah must deal with the reality of being a working-class girl in 1880s New York, find a trustworthy repairman, and keep her identity secret from the Children of Eschaton who will do anything to retrieve the heart. She wants to be a hero like her father and the Paragons, but she's discovering that it isn't all adventure—it's dangerous and frightening work. But Sarah is determined, and works past her worries in order to restore Tom, which she believes is the only thing that can stop Lord Eschaton and his 'children'. Tom was the most interesting character in FALLING, but in HEART there's very little of him—and most of that is his disassembled parts. This was a frustration. The story is about him, and yet we see very little of him. Fortunately we are introduced to some new characters, including Emilio, who's trying to move past his complicated history. These new viewpoints add flavor to the storytelling.

The majority of the setting is established in FALLING, but in HEART Mayer doesn't set it aside in favor of plot advancement. We still get to see new and exciting inventions, learn more about what life was like in 1880s New York, and discover some fascinating things about Tom and the true genius of Dennis Darby, his inventor.

More self-contained than the first book, HEARTS ends without as big of a cliffhanger...comparably. Not that Mayer doesn't like to leave you at the edge of your seat. He promises more adventure, and has set up for a spectacular continuation.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: Very little
Violence: People get stabbed or shot, some death, but not detailed enough to be gory
Sex: Innuendo—there was none at all in FALLING, but here there's the potential for a romantic relationship, and the prudish mores of New York's high society are addressed; there are also references to erotic art

Want to give this series a shot? Below are the links:

1 - THE FALLING MACHINE

2 - HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM

Sarah Stanton is the only child of business magnate Alexander Stanton. She's a woman ahead of her time—her time being New York's 1880s, the Gilded Age of industry and technology, but otherwise behind on women's suffrage.

However, Sarah doesn't let her father or society's strictures slow her down. Sure she has to wear a bustle and corset, and her father wants to marry her off by the end of the season, but that doesn't stop her from trying to find Sir Dennis Darby's killer.

In the meantime, Darby's magnum opus, an automaton named Tom, is also trying to find his creator's killer. Unfortunately as a machine he's considered persona non grata, and the Paragons—the vigilante heroes of New York who use steam and technology to serve and protect, among whom is Alexander Stanton himself—refuse to follow Darby's last request to make Tom their new leader. They even go so far as to confine the automaton and refuse to repair him. Sarah sympathizes.

THE FALLING MACHINE by newcomer Andrew P. Mayer covers a lot of ground. What really makes a hero? Is it the mask and costume? Is it supernatural abilities? Is it their sense of morality? Steampunk fans—especially the YA variety—will enjoy this recent addition to the sub-genre. Not only are there superheroes and robots, but the steampunk tech plays an integral part of the story, there's a mystery to uncover, societal issues, aging superheros, and a villain who truly believes that he's doing the right thing—even if it means murder and the breakdown of their way of life.

Mayer does a good job explaining the story's machines and inventions, and he includes some fascinating concepts. Even though these descriptions can slow the pace, it helps develop the atmosphere, and since the tech is important to the story, it's worth the time to pay attention. We only get a taste of his portrayal of Industrial Revolution-era New York, its high society as well as the common man. Despite this brief glimpse, I still got a good feel for the time and place, and I suspect there will be more as the series continues, as there simply wasn't time to go into depth here.

Mayer creates the story's superhero crossovers with enough stereotypes to make them familiar, but without being lazy—they still feel like real people. I enjoyed both the main characters, Tom and Sarah. Tom is more than a machine, as he attempts to carry out his maker's plans. Readers will learn a lot about Darby and the kind of man he was from the machines he made. Sarah is barely into womanhood and discovering the kind of woman she is and wants to be. Her relationship with her father feels a little forced, but it isn't hard to believe that Alexander Stanton behaves as a result of his era and class.

Unlike the wealth of steampunk coming out today, there's no magic or vampires or werewolves in THE FALLING MACHINE. I can't say I'm too sad about it. The result is that the focus is on the tech itself and its importance to the story, and not simply tech for its own sake with the supernatural stealing the show.

While the pace moves forward consistently, revelations come slowly, and the story isn't much further along by the time we reach the end of the book. Most of the novel is told from Tom and Sarah's PoV (with minor references from Alexander Stanton and the Sleuth Paragon Peter Wickham), so the storyline involves following clues and trying to come to a conclusion. Another issue with the pacing involves the villain not even appearing until the end of the novel. While THE FALLING MACHINE storyline itself is mostly self-contained, the ending leaves the conclusion too open, and readers will have to wait until the second book, HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM , to hopefully find some answers to their inevitable questions.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: A handful of moderate uses
Violence: Tom and Sarah's sleuthing does lead to danger; there's blood, but otherwise it's not gory
Sex: Vague references; one of the Paragons is referred to as a sodomite a few times

Want to give this series a shot? Below are the links:

1 - THE FALLING MACHINE

2 - HEARTS OF SMOKE AND STEAM