The Court of the Air

I got to page 172 before deciding against finishing this story. The author crams many different ideas into this steampunk-fantasy-mashup of a tale. The two main characters are orphans. Molly Templar gets placed by the orphanage into prostitution, but her very first john turns out to be an assassin. She escapes but we don't know much about who the assassin is, who he works for, or why Molly would be targeted. By page 172 I still don't know.

Then there's Oliver. When he was very young he and his parents crashed an aerostat (an airship) and he lived for 4 years within the “feymist.” The feymist has been known to alter people only after casual contact yet Oliver seems unaffected. Then his guardian uncle and household are murdered and Oliver is framed. Again we don't know why his uncle was targeted or what the motivations are of the killers. Ugh.

There's various fun things thrown into the mix: other races like the craynarbians (crab-like people), autonomous “steammen” (think robots) with their own culture, floating pieces of land (often the result of floatquakes), underground cities, etc. The problem is that all these new things keep on coming and keeping everything straight is a complicated chore. Place names are thrown about but no maps are provided. Various terms are sprinkled in, but their definitions are lacking (no glossary either). And so far Molly and Oliver are fairly one-dimensional. I don't feel like I know them. I should after 172 pages, no?

So, dang. I was looking forward to getting into this one but the hypercomplicated, incomprehensible plot along with the cardboard characters and indeterminate world has me scratching my head. There's too much other stuff to read before I continue plodding through this one hoping it'll get better. (Plus, this could be first in a series that may number seven books... and I've already committed to too many other series.) On to other venues.