Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½
Bridget ‘Briar’ Rose is a rarity: a woman who runs a canal boat, transporting cargo along the waterways which form the Ohio & Erie canal network. However, her livelihood is under threat. The increasing growth of the railway as an alternative method of transportation is increasingly a rival for the jobs she takes, and her cousin, Andrew, is looking to see her barge out from under Briar, so he can invest in the railways instead. However, she suspects he is working with an outlaw: a ferromancer, one of the mages who revolutionized industry in Europe, but who had supposedly been wiped out two decades ago due to the threat they posed.
If she can prove that, it will discredit Andrew, and allow Briar to keep plying her trade. She steals the plans from Andrew’s house, and kidnaps his apparent business partner, Grayson, after he finds her and demands the return of the plans. Doing so creates a whole new set of issues, bringing Briar and her crew into contact with some very dangerous people. In particular, Mr. Solon, a ferromancer whose can use the darker magical arts to turn people into soulless automatons under his control. I think the world building here is likely the strongest suit. Though it’s lightly drawn – I’m really curious about what must have been a war between the mages and The Scourge, the organization set up to destroy them.
The sense of period is also nicely done. For some reason, I kept forgetting it was taking place in America, maybe because I associate canals more with England. But it’s another aspect of the world which I enjoyed, a slightly alternate history where a brief dalliance with magic was ruthlessly crushed. On the other hand, I was rather confused by the motives of a number of characters. Both Grayson’s and Solon’s motivations are murky at the best of times. The former’s fondness for dribbling out both significant and relevant information, which might have helped, annoyed me – considerably more than it did Briar, who just seems to (metaphorically) roll her eyes briefly and keep on hanging out with him.
Given the era, it’s not surprising that most of the physical action is left to the men-folk. However, Briar does get involved in a brawl with another “canal chick”, for want of a better time. She’s also not averse to a great leveller in the battle between the sexes, which is a kick to the groin! The further we go on, the clearer it becomes that ferromancers are very different to normal people – to a degree where they may not even technically be human. Andre does leave a lot of things open at the conclusion of this, although at least has the courtesy to avoid a direct cliffhanger. Was there enough to get me to buy into further volumes? Likely not immediately, though it’s not entirely off the table.
Author: Becca Andre
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Iron Souls series.