Saturday 10 August 2013

Review: The Girl in the Clockwork Collar - Kady Cross

In New York City, 1897, life has never been more thrilling—or dangerous

Finley Jayne and her "straynge band of mysfits" have journeyed from London to America to rescue their friend Jasper from the clutches of a devious criminal demanding a trade—the dangerous device Jasper stole from him…for the life of the girl Jasper loves. One false move from Jasper, and the strange clockwork collar around Mei's neck tightens and tightens.

From the rough streets of lower Manhattan to elegant Fifth Avenue, the motley crew of teens follows Jasper's elusive trail. And they're about to discover how far they'll go for friendship.

More than ever, Finley must rely on powerful English duke Griffin King to balance her dark magic with her good side. Yet Griffin is at war with himself over his secret attraction to Finley…and will risk his life and reputation to save her. Now, to help those she's come to care for so deeply, Finley must infiltrate the criminal gang. Only problem is, she might like the dark side a little too much . . .

The Steampunk Chronicles:
The Strange Case of Finely Jayne (Novella)
The Girl in the Steel Corset
The Girl in the Clockwork Collar
The Dark Discovery of Jack Dandy (Novella)
The Girl with the Iron Touch
The Wild Adventure of Jasper Renn (Novella)
The Girl with the Windup Heart

Visit Kady Cross' website for more information

Review:
I really enjoyed The Girl in the Steel Corset so I'm not sure why it took me quite so long to get around to reading The Girl in the Clockwork Collar. The good thing about waiting is that all three books in the trilogy are now available so I'm going to be able to read the final instalment fairly quickly! I'd actually forgotten how much I liked Finley and the crazy group of misfits that she has become friends with and it was great to get back into the world that Kady Cross has created.

Finley is still struggling to bring both sides of her personality together but she has come a long way from who she was in the first book thanks to Griff and the others. She is still incredibly independent, intelligent and more than capable of looking out for herself which is something that has to be admired but she does have a tendency to act without thinking through the full consequences which often gets her in trouble. Griff struggles with the fact that Finley is often more capable of protecting herself than he is of looking after her but as much as that grates on him he puts that to one side once he has time to think about things. I have to say that Griff has grown on me since the first book but I did miss Finley's other potential love interest Jack in this instalment. It's not often I'm interested in love triangles but with the two distinct sides to Finley's personality it's not surprising that she is attracted to both of these very different men. I always tend to have a thing for the bad guy so it wasn't much of a surprise to me that I previously found Jack the more appealing of the two but after reading this book I'm now split down the middle and I'm almost tempted to switch to team Griff.

It was great to catch up with Emily and discover her latest impressive inventions, she is the smartest one of the group by far and she always has a few tricks up her sleeve. Sam has had quite a change of attitude which he desperately needed and he and Finley have almost reached a point where they could consider each other friends rather than enemies. This story takes us away from London and across the pond to New York and Jasper's old hunting grounds. Jasper is in a mess, his old gang have caught up with him and they are using blackmail to get their hands on a weapon he stole and hid from them before he fled to London. Finley, Griff and the others can't leave their friend to deal with the mess on his own and they have followed him to America to assist in any way they can. I always loved Jasper so it was great to spend more time with him and to get to know more about his past. I have to admit I wasn't a huge fan of his ex-girlfriend Mei but I absolutely loved his old friend Wildcat and really hope we get to see more of her in the future.

The story was well paced, had a nice amount of action and had a couple of great twists. I'll admit that I had suspected one of them well before the big reveal but I'm pretty sure that was intentional and it didn't spoil my enjoyment. I really like this steampunk world full of automatons, organites and airships and am looking forward to reading The Girl with the Iron Touch in the not too distant future.

Source: Received from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
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