steampunk

"Some people always burn." - Ally Condie, The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe

            Poe Blythe is the seventeen-year-old captain of the last mining ship from the Outpost. In this dystopian fiction, she wants far more than the gold they tear from the Serpentine River. She is looking for revenge, and she is going to use her steampunk-ship to do.  Poe has vowed vengeance on the river raiders who robbed her of everything two years ago. This woman of steel navigates the treacherous waters of the Serpentine. As she does so, she realizes there might be a traitor among her crew.

            The book

A mysterious, transdimensional library that sends its librarians to alternate Earths to procure rare books? Brilliant! A clever, witty librarian and her new assistant, who is clearly hiding something, sent to find a collection of Brothers Grimm fairy tales? Cool! A steampunk/gaslight fantasy alternate Earth that operates along the lines of narrative drama and comes complete with sharp-as-tacks consulting detective and a host of conspiratorial secret societies? Wonderful! Faeries, dragons, and weird magic? Fantastic!

The Invisible Library, first book in Genevieve Cogman's new series, presents

Husband and wife co-authors, Clay and Susan Griffith have put a new twist to an old tale in this first book of their Vampire Empire trilogy. 

In 1870, vampire clans rose from underground and the fringes of society to unite and overcome all of North America and Europe, causing the surviving humans to flee south. The Greyfriar begins in the year 2020 when two of the largest human societies are about to be united by marriage, so they can start a war to retake the north. Princess Adele, heir to the Equatorian Empire (think of the old British Colonies), is doing one last diplomatic foray before doing her duty and marrying Senator Clark...

While steampunk as a subculture may be best known for corsets, goggles, and extraneous decorative gears, beneath those trappings is rich fodder for fiction often featuring plucky female protagonists--and publishers have certainly been taking note. Beth Cato's The Clockwork Dagger is one such tale, complex enough to entice existing steampunk fans but approachable enough to those new to the genre.

All the requisite trappings are present here—a spunky heroine, airships, an alternate universe where scientific progress exists alongside older magic. Heroine Octavia is a "medician," a Druidic doctor