Everfair

I've long been a fan of steampunk, but it's always made me a little uncomfortable that a lot of the genre glosses over a lot of the actual history of the Victorian/Edwardian periods in favour of using the time period as window dressing. I appreciated Everfair because Shawl refuses to do that in this story of Fabians and American religious missionaries founding a new society in the Belgian Congo during the reign of King Leopold. Additionally, there's a lot of interesting, thought-provoking material on how socities come together and define themselves, and the perils they face in the light of doing so.