A review by justabean_reads
The Doomsday Vault by Steven Harper
4.0
I really liked the gender dynamics here. Gavin was basically a manic pixy dream boy (He only wants to fly, he's from an exotic country (the US), the colour of his hair is described more often than any other physical feature in the book, he sings and plays the fiddle astoundingly beautifully, he spends a good deal of time getting rescued, and more or less exists to convince the heroine to break convention and follow her dreams). Alice is a genius mechanic who fixes giant robots as a hobby. She also gets stuck with a traditional marriage plot, which was one the weaker areas of the book, but mostly it was about her fixing robots and rescuing Gavin. The two chessmaster characters moving the plot forward were both middle-aged women, and that's not even counting in Queen Victoria. It felt great to read a Victorian set novel that was so deliberately breaking out of period gender roles.
Speaking of, this book also had feelings about colonialism and empire. It wasn't preachy, but it looks like the series is going to run in that direction. While the mandatory queer character was pretty secondary, and didn't get a lot of characterisation, he was there. Always nice to see.
None of it felt lick a diversity checklist! The writing was light and often funny, and though I saw a few plot twists a mile off, the ending surprised me. Always nice to read. I will say that it's very, very much the first book in a series. It had self-contained story and character arcs, but I've got to say, if when I catch up to where the series is now, if they're still doing these cliffhanger endings, I shall feel cross.
Speaking of, this book also had feelings about colonialism and empire. It wasn't preachy, but it looks like the series is going to run in that direction. While the mandatory queer character was pretty secondary, and didn't get a lot of characterisation, he was there. Always nice to see.
None of it felt lick a diversity checklist! The writing was light and often funny, and though I saw a few plot twists a mile off, the ending surprised me. Always nice to read. I will say that it's very, very much the first book in a series. It had self-contained story and character arcs, but I've got to say, if when I catch up to where the series is now, if they're still doing these cliffhanger endings, I shall feel cross.