Wings of Sorrow and Bone, by Beth Cato

Wings of Sorrow and Bone was nominated for a 2015 Nebula award.  It is the second to last story in Cato's Clockwork Dagger series.  This story is told from Rivka Stout, the daughter of Caskentian princess Mrs. Stout.

Rivka is a talented mechanist, but was born with a cleft palate and is generally poorly treated in Caskentia.  She confronts Mr. Cody, the creator of gremlins, over his plan to construct a second large gremlin cyborg to compete in Warriors, the favorite action/strategy game in the area.

There's not a lot more to the plot, except for her complicated friendship with Tatiana Garrett, sister of Octavia Leander's paramour Alonzo Garrett from the previous books.  The story is a little blocky and pat, really just kind of edges in there as an award nominee.

There's one more story in the series, but I don't feel particularly compelled to read it.  I'll give this one three stars, weakly.  It's OK.

That wraps up my reading of Nebula nominated novellas for 2015.  I liked The New Mother, but Waters of Versailles probably comes closest to my style of story--velvet water pipes!  Wild!

The Deepest Poison, by Beth Cato

The Deepest Poison is a precursor story for Beth Cato's Clockwork Dagger series.  It is from Octavia Leander's time serving as a medician in the Caskentian army.  The story is told from Miss Percival's perspective, and explains her enmity toward Leander.

The story is OK as explanation but it's kind of blocky as a story in itself.  Read it just for information on the series, I'd say.  2 stars.

The Clockwork Crown, by Beth Cato

Continuing with my romance novel reading, I just finished Beth Cato's The Clockwork Crown, sequel to The Clockwork Dagger.  The action picks up directly after the first book, with Octavia and Alonzo having escaped the Wasters and fled south to Alonzo's native Tamarania.  Octavia's powers are growing and becoming uncomfortable.  She and Alonzo try to research the Lady's Tree in the libraries of Tamarania.  They discover that the Tree has become visible in the Waste.  Adventures ensue.

This is actually a better book than the first one.  The characters are still somewhat one-dimensional but Octavia in particular fills out to an extent.  This is shown particularly in her relationship to her growing powers and to the Lady, who just might not purely be a force for good.  She is challenged by physical changes as well as spiritual ones.

Cato also pushes harder to bring out the strangeness that being connected to the Lady entails.  We have people and creatures animated beyond normal endurance by the Lady's powers.  We have hardened characters overcome by her proximity.  It held my interest all the way through and indicates why the series might have progressed to the point of getting a story nominated for the Nebula.  Still coming to that.

I can reasonably recommend this if you like fantasy romance, and give it 3 stars.

The Clockwork Dagger, by Beth Cato

Beth Cato's Wings of Sorrow and Bone was nominated for a Nebula this year, so I wanted to read it.  But it's a later part of a series, and my library doesn't have it.  I thought I'd read the first one, The Clockwork Dagger, to see if I wanted to catch up.

The promotional material says it's a "steampunk romance", and the steampunk part is there, but Cato doesn't really expand on it.  The technical development is aircraft before their time, zeppelins and gyrocopters.  But the focus is magic in the form of a connection to the Lady, initially a grief stricken human who somehow transformed into a world-supporting tree of magic.  The protagonist, Octavia, is a medician, one who wields that magic to heal.

The book is a straightforward romance novel, which is not so much my cup of tea.  We have a plot of intrigue involving a missing princess, but mainly this is about Octavia's relationship with hunky Tamaranian Alonzo Garrison, who turns out to be an agent of the queen, a Clockwork Dagger.  Adventures in keeping them alive, and intense hand holding, ensue.

The series didn't get off to a flying start, but it might get better.  I may catch it up later in the year.  For now, I give this one 2 stars.