The first steampunk I've ever read, a rec from vantine and a great one. It's nineteenth century London, England has been controlled by mongol invaders via nanoagents that controlled the population. The mongols were booted out a decade previous and we're following our heroine, a police inspector, who is the most fun in this book. We're going to see dirigible airships and ship battles and zombies and body enhancements and a giant conspiracy! I flew through this book, it was super fun and the world was real exciting to imagine. There are three more books in the series and I know I'm continuing for sure.

It's a romance book, with a super-alpha hero who vacillates between caring concern for the heroine and no-means-yes rapey-ness in several scenes which I think the author could have written a lot more consensually without a lot of extra work; it was disappointing she did not. I guess it would have made the alpha hero a tiny bit less alpha (if "knowing of what the woman really wants even if she says no" is super-alpha? ugh.) I wish these handful of parts had been just a little better and then I'd have no reservations about calling it a 5-star book.

(well ok, and the first couple of chapters were hella confusing. It felt like I'd walked in to the middle of a series. The exposition gets there before long, but I think the author might have gone a little too much into the "let the reader catch up" direction...)