The Dark Victorian: Risen is set in a steampunk London with magic and paranormal aspects. Jim, an agent of Prince Albert’s Secret Commission, is given a new partner: Artifice, a Quaker and artificial ghost (meaning that she can turn incorporeal at will). All agents of the Secret Commission were once criminals - they were executed and then brought back to life, bound into service, with no memory of who they once were. They are able to guess some things about their past selves, but that’s about it. It generally isn’t a good idea for them to find and communicate with people they once knew.

Artifice, who chooses to go by the name Art, and Jim begin investigating their first case, the disastrous reanimation of several corpses. The culprit started with animals but appears to have moved on to humans. In each instance, the corpses manage to kill someone before either being destroyed or escaping.

It took me a bit to get my bearings in this story. The Secret Commission wasn’t really a secret. Everyone seemed to know who and what they were, even if they weren’t always comfortable around them or happy about them. I also initially had the impression that Art was supposed to be an unusual sort of agent, but that didn’t seem to be the case either. She had special abilities, just like Jim, although hers were of a different sort, and she had the same limitations. Her primary oddity was that she was a Quaker, someone Jim would have thought would be unlikely to become an agent of the Secret Commission.

The world and setup were pretty interesting. Jim and Art each had their own abilities, and both were technically immortal as long as they consumed enough of whatever their particular bodies needed. Jim, a disembodied skull, could feed off of fire and smoke. Art needed raw seafood.

The story was a fairly simple one and would have worked fine in several urban fantasy and steampunk mystery series I can think of. The problem was that it was a bit buried. I understand that this is the first work in a series and is meant to whet readers’ appetite for more, but there were lots of details that were unnecessary for this particular story and could easily have been left out. As it was, it felt too large for its page count.

The pacing was a bit strange, too. Jim and Art would be chasing after the killer and investigating the murders, only to stop for a bit in order to make sure that Art was properly clothed. Okay, so she needed to be properly dressed for propriety’s sake, but it killed the flow of the story and made it easy to forget what the point of it all was. By the time one particular character made her second appearance, I had already forgotten who she was and why she might be important.

Despite my issues with this work, there's still a chance I'll continue on with this series. The second work is much longer and might therefore give everything more room to breathe - it’s possible that Watasin is one of those writers who does better with longer works than shorter ones. I wouldn’t mind seeing Jim and Art in action a bit more, and Art’s potential romances intrigue me, even as they worry me a bit. At this point she has two potential love interests: Manon, a “sapphic performer,” and Helia, Art’s lover in her past life. Both options are potential minefields for Art, Manon because she isn’t human and I suspect Art could end up wanting more from her than she’s willing and able to give, and Helia because of her curse.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

The Abyss Surrounds Us is set sometime in the future. Genetically engineered sea monsters known as “Reckoners” were developed to protect larger ships from pirates, and Cassandra Leung is a Reckoner trainer anxiously embarking on her first solo mission with her favorite Reckoner, Durga. Unfortunately, things go very wrong, Durga is killed, and Cas ends up captured by Santa Elena, the captain of the Minnow, a pirate ship. She learns, to her horror, that the pirates have not only somehow gotten their hands on a Reckoner pup, they also expect her to train it to protect them. She reluctantly agrees, hoping that at some point she'll learn the identity of the traitor who supplied them with a Reckoner pup and related equipment, and that she'll live long enough to pass that information on.

When I heard that this was f/f YA sci-fi with pirates and giant sea monsters, I knew I wanted to read it. I'd have bought the e-book immediately, except it was expensive and had DRM. I considered buying a paper copy, but, after taking a closer look and realizing that the book was written in first person present tense, I opted for interlibrary loan instead.

Let's talk about that first person present tense POV. An author really has to know what they're doing and be telling the right kind of story for it to work. The only decent book I can think of right now that used first person present tense was Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Granted, I didn't love it, but my issues with it had very little to do with Collins' POV or tense choice.

First person present tense was a mistake for The Abyss Surrounds Us. It was why, in an effort to give readers some of the history of this world that a 17-year-old like Cas wouldn't normally know or care about, a random elderly man walked up to Cas to reminisce about the past while she stood there and waited him out. The man was a throwaway character who never showed up again, existing only to give readers that bit of world-building info. First person present tense also gave readers sentences like this:

“'Cas, you wanna explain who that was?' Swift asks, and I notice the harsh edge she's forced into her tone.” (203)

Cas didn't actually know that this “harsh edge” was forced – she was guessing, based on recent events. But the author needed to signal to readers that Swift was no longer potentially as awful as she seemed, and there were very few ways she could do that with first person present tense.

First person present tense might have also contributed to Cas feeling like such a flat and bland character, and to Santa Elena just being confusing, period. I felt like I barely learned anything about Cas – what her life had been like when she wasn't training Reckoners, what her relationship with her family members was like, anything. Santa Elena made no sense. On the one hand, the Reckoner pup she'd acquired was a precious resource that could give her a lot of power and prestige. On the other hand, she treated Cas and the Reckoner like they were both expendable and like she'd enjoy hurting or killing one or both of them. Skrutskie tried to humanize her by having her briefly chat with Cas about motherhood (she took over the Minnow while her son was still a baby, and she viewed Cas's efforts to raise her Reckoner as being similar to a mother raising a child), but then kept giving readers scenes in which she behaved like a vicious despot. I'm amazed she made it through the entire book without inspiring a mutiny.

Anyway, I was willing to put up with the first person present tense POV because I absolutely loved the Reckoners aspect, and I still think they're the best thing about this book. Although Cas resented Bao, the turtle-based Reckoner she was forced to train, I loved their training scenes. Had the story gone the way I'd have preferred, Cas would have slowly become more and more emotionally attached to Bao. Her growing affection for him would have mixed uncomfortably with her grief for Durga, who was also a turtle-based Reckoner, and her recognition of the fact that training him to protect the Minnow and its crew meant that one day he'd be killing Reckoners who meant as much to their trainers as Durga had meant to her. Because Bao had imprinted upon the Minnow (Reckoners imprint upon particular ships as part of their training), Cas would also find herself facing a decision to either stay with the pirates or to escape and abandon Bao.

Sadly, the book I wanted was not the book I got. Cas spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to train Bao just well enough to keep Santa Elena from killing her, but not so well that he could truly be used as a weapon. She wanted to figure out Santa Elena's Reckoner source and then escape, but things became more complicated when she began to fall for Swift, the young pirate who'd been assigned to keep an eye on her.

The relationship between Cas and Swift was very subtle, at first. In fact, if I hadn't known this was f/f YA, I'd probably have figured that certain early scenes were laying the groundwork for the two of them to eventually become friends. Cas's attraction to Swift became more apparent later on, but she fought it because 1) she was still Santa Elena's captive and 2) Swift had made it clear several times that her primary loyalty was to Santa Elena.

Then, at the worst possible moment, Cas and Swift's relationship suddenly deepened. In the space of less than a day, Cas went from wanting to escape the Minnow at the first opportunity to wanting to stay for Swift's sake. The speed of it all threw me. It all became clear when Cas was given the opportunity to escape and chose not to. The reason for the sudden deepening of Cas's feelings for Swift was because Skrutskie needed to give her a believable reason to continue to stay with the pirates and do things she might not have otherwise agreed to do. Except it happened so quickly that it wasn't believable. It was like watching a movie and catching glimpses of the lighting equipment or the wires used during a fight scene. The authorial puppet strings moving Cas and Swift into place were so obvious that it was painful.

Things got worse from that point on. Without being too spoilery, in the final few pages Skrutskie jettisoned or stomped on those aspects of the story that might have left me wanting to read the book's sequel despite my issues with her writing. It's possible that she could find a way to fix what she did or undo some of it, but I don't know that I have the trust or patience necessary to find out.

All in all, I loved the Reckoners, but that was about it. The execution wasn't great, the romance was a tool to keep the plot going in the direction Skrutskie wanted, and the world-building had holes you could drive a truck through. I'm still wondering why the Reckoners, who were expensive to breed and train and who even necessitated the creation of a genetically engineered food source so they wouldn't completely clean out the ocean just trying to keep themselves fed, were considered the best way to combat the pirate problem. I'm also still wondering about the book's brief mention of terrestrial Reckoners. If Reckoners were meant to fight pirates, then why would terrestrial Reckoners be necessary?

Rating Note:

During much of the time I spent reading this book, I thought I'd be giving it anywhere from 2 to 2.5 stars, maybe 3 stars if the ending was really good. My difficulty with staying interested in the story plus my hatred of the book's ending lowered my final rating to 1.5 stars.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)