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Nothing groundbreaking, but very cute.

Several reviewers have already commented on THE FALLING MACHINE's slow pace, and I agree in particular with someone's statement that it reads too much like an intended comic book. That might sound strange considering the appeal for most readers will be the Victorian superhero scenario. I, too, was drawn in by that concept. That said, it was Justin Gerard's cover art that caught my attention, with the book itself falling short of its expectation. This may speak to the need for the visual side of the superhero genre. However, with or without the illustrations, many superhero stories succeed by merit of their complex characters, whereas THE FALLING MACHINE resorts too comfortably to stereotypes. None of the old men are any better than the sum of their steampunk costumes, and the villains--crucial to any superhero story--are all but invisible throughout. What I haven't seen mentioned yet is something that proved highly distracting, which was the book's large amount of typos--usually missing words or spelling errors. Whether or not these were the author's original errors, the fact that so many exist in the published book (I'd say one every two pages or so) isn't a great advertisement for the publisher. Though a minor consideration in a stronger, more established work, something like this can be a death sentence for a debut novel, especially when combined with its other weaknesses. For me, these included a lack of perspective (never seeing or understanding the things that seemed most interesting), a plot that progressed far too slowly, and untapped potential in a setting and era that should have provided as much historical, atmospheric, and psychological context as some reviewers have claimed they did. While I may have read the sequel if it had belonged to this volume, I don't care enough about the story now to go out and get the rest of it.