JoSelle Vanderhooft

There's a gazillion good things about this anthology, and only one story struck a particularly sour note for me.

There's a keen sense of history, of the problematic nature of fetishizing the industrial revolution, boatloads of different ways to be queer, and characters i fell a little bit in love with.

Top favorites, CSE Cooney's short story the Canary of Candletown and Amal El-Mohtar's elegiac take-down of steampunk. I can't even put words to it, other than it's like a ballad, a ballet, a show more post-colonial theorist and a WWE match had a beautiful, beautiful baby. show less

OK, I got this book pretty much expecting a good N.K. Jemisin story and some cheesy-but-hopefully-fun erotica.
It significantly exceeded my expectations. Although only a couple of the stories are sexually explicit, all but a couple of them are well above the literary quality I would expect from an anthology from a romance/erotica publisher featuring several lesser-known and new writers. I'm definitely going to look up more work from some of these authors - I very much enjoyed the stories from show more Georgina Bruce, Rachel Manija Brown, Teresa Wymore (even if it's derivative of Mieville!), Amal el-Mohtar & Tara Sommers.
Only a few minor points:
The prologue is really annoying. Good job on the story selection, could have skipped the prologue. People patting themselves on the back for being wonderful, diverse and blah blah really gets to me. Just Do It.
N.K. Jemisin's story: I loved it. Wonderful settings and characterization. But it ends with That Ending. The one I hate. The one where the brilliant, competent woman who is good at what she does acquires a rich lover and the lover says: "I'm not fond of you keeping up this dangerous line of work... I can keep you in comfort for the rest of your days." And the woman instantly gives up everything, and says that sounds great. It doesn't matter if it's a woman lover; it's still aggravating. I'm trying to find some irony in it, but if it's supposed to be there, it's not coming through for me.
Mikki Kendall's story: I completely fail to be convinced that any woman would or should feel guilty for calling on her deity to violently destroy the invaders who enslaved her people and repeatedly raped their children. Not even one from an unusually pacifist culture.
Other than those quibbles - I'd highly recommend this book to anyone; I feel that its appeal transcends both the steampunk and lesbian-erotica niche markets. show less

This anthology was recommended to me by friends and I found it an amazing read. The stories span the globe from India to New Orleans to South America and deal with complex issues of race, love and binding all of them women creating their own lives in steampunk worlds. In terms of how the romances are written, the writers go from small intimacies to gorgeous erotica that at times made me rather conscious of where I was reading. For any lovers of the steampunk genre, this anthology is a must show more read as it delves into stories that aren't always being told in the more mainstream steampunk anthologies. I hope that in time, there won't be a need for such a specific series of anthologies but in the meantime, I'm going to read the second Steam-Powered which came out this year. show less

Steam-powered v.1 is a compelling and thought-provoking anthology of Steampunk short stories with lesbian and otherwise female narrators. The writing styles and themes vary greatly, but the stories were all intentionally hand-picked and share some very refreshing overarching themes: non-Western, non-White, non-Christian, non-hetero, feminist and heroine-replete fantasy (one or two are rooted in actual historical events). Although I didn’t immediately pick up on it, Vanderhooft has show more intentionally placed similar narratives together. To label these arcs in the order in which they appear they would go something like… stories about air travel; slipstream; erotica; industrial workers; gothic/dystopia; clockwork ; and fantasy-setting. Of these arcs, air travel was probably the most fun, while clockwork was the most disturbing. I distain dystopia as a setting or story type, but these ones weren’t the worst I’ve ever read. I was a little disappointed with the slipstream showing but it was a nice touch at any rate. All-in-all, Steampowered was a wonderful piece of post-modern, post-colonial literature.

I don’t intent to spoil these awesome stories, just offer some vague highlights.

N.K. Jemisin’s “The Effluent Engine” : an enticing corporate espionage thriller about rum, set in New Orleans and the Caribbean
Georgina Bruce’s “Brilliant” : the absolute cutest story in the book. Two young women and one clueless mother travel in the same car on a train in Egypt

D.L. MacInnes’ “Owl Song” : a young British heiress tosses away her court life in exchange for a mining camp and the valuable assistance of a local businesswoman in Guyana

Sara M. Harvey’s “Where the Ocean Meets the Sky” : decidedly manga-like story about airship smuggling, with a swoon-worthy romance between a captain and an dock traffic controller

Beth Wodzinski’s “Suffer Water” : doubtless the best written story in the collection, set in Wild West Nevada, a dying cyborg bounty hunter must hunt down her ex-girlfriend creator

Rachel Manija Brown’s “Steel Rider” : slipstream adventure mashup between Haibane Renmei and Stephen King’s Dark Tower? Girls fight for survival with their horse mecha for companionship in the Sierra Nevadas
Shira Lipkin’s “Truth and Life” : Fascinating but very short clockwork impressionism set in Prague

Matthew Kressel’s “The Hands That Feed” : Cross caste Indian romance with Judaism *yawn*

Meredith Holmes’ “Love in the Time of Airships” : settled, uncompliated married woman falls for young bluestocking-esque “aether tube” installer. The tech reminds me of the tubes from The Shadow. A nice piece with lovely Edwardian diction. It could be expanded into a novella.

Teresa Wymore’s “Under the Dome” : human/animal gene splicing, nymphomania and rape. Utterly unpalatable. I recommend you skip it.
Tara Sommers’ “Clockwork and Music” : two girls struggling with identity effect a lugubrious escape from a Waters-esque insane asylum. It was amusing but somewhat dense.

Mikki Kendall’s “Copper for a Trickster” : a Loki-esque rabbit god helps women and children escape from their ogre-like captors. I guess in the end it was a cute Fantasy with some dark imagery.

Mike Allen’s “Sleepless, Burning Life” : Buddhist afterlife as a hapless marionette living outside of time. No dialogue but it was kind of interesting.

Shweta Narayan’s “The Padishah Begum’s Reflections” : I’m not even going to make a guess at what this is about. Suffice it to say, it’s an example of world literature. Every other paragraph time shifts to a different era with an inscrutable dating system, all dealing with automatons and France.

Amal El-Mohtar’s “To Follow the Waves” : Deals with dreamcrafting as a profession and becoming a djinn somewhere on the Mediterranean. Highly unique and well-composed.

By far, my favorite line from the book (as it speaks to me personally) appears on page 48: “You have chosen, in your mode of dress and demeanor, to stride through this world in a manner that ensures your way will be the most difficult possible, rather than least.” show less