The Watchmaker's Daughter (Glass and Steele)

Using C.J. Archer's apparently favourite trope, the book is told from the perspective of a young woman who at the beginning of the story finds herself suddenly needing to take control of her own life in the big city after the death of her remaining parent, and with no money and few friends.

We came to this book and series after first reading the author's Glass Library series, which is set 30-odd years later in the same alternate-history fantasy universe, with many returning characters. This inevitably meant some spoilers, but on the other hand I think it helped with keeping us invested early on in the story; this first book is a little more lacking in polish and pacing than the Glass Library series.

On the other hand, once it got going, this book turned out to be quite the tense thriller which we found hard to put down - definitely less cosy than books 1-5 of the Glass Library. (Book 6 is pretty tense too in my opinion.) Definitely worth sticking with for the second half, and hopefully a sign of things to come for books 2+.

The worldbuilding here is great, I think, including the unusual take on magic. (This isn't elaborated on in great deal in this book, but based on what we know from the Glass Library series, books 2+ should expand on it to a great deal.) While set in the Victorian era, some of the characters and dialogue feel a little more modern. I'm no expert on the era though, so perhaps that's an inaccurate interpretation.

The protagonist characters' outings in this book are a little clichéd, but sympathetic. We aren't exposed to the villains much, their brief outings don't allow much opportunity for complex character development.

The romantic elements are nothing novel, but they are neither over-done, out-of-place, nor frustrating.

We listened to this as an audiobook; unfortunately, Emma Powell seemed to struggle with the narration. We particularly found the American accents somewhat cringeworthy; they make the characters come across as unintelligent and bumbling. There also seemed some inconsistency in voices even for the English accents. For this reason alone I'm glad this wasn't our introduction to the Steele & Glass universe, as we might have given up on the book given its slightly slow start. The other books set in this universe are narrated by Marian Hussey; in the case of the Glass Library series we have already listened to, expertly so. I hope her earlier narration of books 2-13 in the Steele & Glass series is similarly high quality. (And I hope Emma Powell has since managed to improve her American accents or found projects that aren't so far outside her comfort zone.)

Overall, having enjoyed the Glass Library series, we simply had to read this book, and struggled to put it down during the second half. Some of our enjoyment may have been down to familiarity with the fictional universe and some of the characters; the book definitely felt a little rougher than some of the author's later works, but this was easy for us to overlook.

"I'd wanted to be a little reckless and experience something I'd never done before, but staying in with a good book now seemed more appealing."

India Steele is the daughter of a watchmaker who has passed away, and whose store was left to India's ex-, and not to India herself. Women can't own property, you know. On her initial quest to see a wrong righted she meets Matthew Glass, mysterious man from America who's trying to find a specific man who created a specific pocketwatch who once resided in London. India is hired to help him look, having no job and no boarding and needing a roof over her head. So begins a bit of a meandering quest to find this watchmaker, where India meets Matthew's friends and family, visits watchmaker after watchmaker, all the while suspecting Matthew of being more than he seems.

I don't normally read YA and I don't normally read romance, but I was willing to overlook these personal hangups because it was the book being read in my book club on Discord this month and because it was a relatively easy read. The chapters are a bit on the long side, but it still was a very quick read by my standards. I didn't particularly care for how India was written, being that she's supposedly 27 or 28, but waxes wildly between being incredibly capable and incredibly helpless. That bit of inconsistent character development sort of grated on me after a bit. I also felt like the book spins its wheels a bit in the beginning, before we get an infodump about what all this is supposed to mean near the end. I know this is part of a longer series, but I feel like things could have been paced just a bit better. Finally, my old nemesis "we are both attractive and in close proximity to each other, we must fall in love" romance trope reared its ugly head again. I guess I just wish for a bit more...meaning, intent, something, to two people who are suddenly just together after less than a week.

All that said... the idea of clock magic was appealing, it's a unique take on magic I haven't read before. I liked the cast of characters surrounding Matthew, and thought the story itself was well written beyond my pacing hangups. It's an intriguing beginning to a lengthy series, but I'm not sure I'll be continuing with it.