Little does she realize, the moment she sets foot inside the building, she becomes a pawn. With less than two hundred dollars in the bank and rent due, Nicole is forced to take a job at Tribec Insurance as a last resort. On Tulare Island where Nicole grew up, Magick has always been a way of life-one she’s determined to avoid at all costs. She’s been fired from every job she’s had but still refuses to work in her father’s apothecary shop because of his practice of Earth Magick. Smart-mouthed Nicole Fontane has a way of getting herself into trouble. All opinions are my own.Fusing magick and ominous secret societies, Lineage is the perfect fantastical mystery for fans of Dan Brown and Shayne Silvers. I received a free copy of this book for review. It’s a really great selection of stories, and you can’t help but get swept up into the mysterious worlds these authors have created. I cannot recommend this highly enough for steampunk fans. It was beautifully written, and provided a very emotionally satisfying climax to the end of the collection. In many ways this was the most ‘classic steampunk’ of all the stories, while also being the one that was least about the steampunk elements and most about the characters and relationships of the story. This is a heart-wrenching romance set against a steampunk backdrop. The final story is Gossamer & Thorns by Elle Beaumont, who is also the editor of this anthology. However, it was nice to have a bit more of an adventure story to break up the collection.

It felt a bit like it was the prologue to a larger story, and was so short it didn’t have a huge amount of time to get going. The second story is the shortest, The Rogue of Vanguard by Nicholas J. The story keeps you on your toes right to the end, with a twist worthy of a blockbuster movie. The story is so immersive and the world-building is incredible within a few pages an entire world has been created. It’s a fantastic introduction to the anthology with one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long time. My personal favourite is the first story, The Soulless Ones by C.

Not the case here, I am pleased to report!Įach of the stories has a completely different take on steampunk, so it’s a really nice introduction not just to new authors you may not have read before but also to the genre itself. I really like steampunk as an aesthetic and as a premise, but have often been disappointed by steampunk books. Beyond the Cogs is an anthology of three steampunk short stories.

Beyond the Cogs by C. Vonzale Lewis