Emmeline Muchamore is a well-bred young lady hiding explosive family secrets. She needs to marry well, and quickly, in order to keep her family respectable. But when her brass heart malfunctions, she makes a desperate choice to steal the parts she needs to repair it and survive. She is unable to explain her actions without revealing she has a steam-powered heart, so she is arrested for theft and … theft and transported to Victoria, Australia – right in the midst of the Gold Rush.
Now that she’s escaped the bounds of high society, iron manacles cannot hold her for long.
The only metal that really matters is gold.
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“Society doesn’t allow young men to marry science experiments”.
Straight from that first line we steam into enormous fun. Emmeline Muchamore needs to marry and fast to save her family from penury. But ..the prospective mother in law was unlikely to appreciate the sight of her prospective daughter in law steaming violently from between the breasts. Our heroine must take action to prevent this awkward steaming, understandably, as any well-bred young lady would, but what she does is disastrous. In just one day she plunges from the eligible ranks of London’s high society to a grim prison ship.
To keep her brass heart a secret Miss Muchamore adopts one desperate measure after another. She is even forced to associate with, sniff, an Irish currency lad, Patrick. What a come-down for a British lady. But equipped with her probability parasol and her pet rats and her affinity with the mysterious properties of metals, our Emmeline hangs firmly on to her bonnet.
‘This new horizon was mine. It just didn’t know it yet.’
Felicity Banks has created a heroine whose foibles and prejudices only add to her strengths. I loved the droll lines delivered on every page. Readers might also become intrigued by the pivotal events in (non-steampunk) Australian history referenced in this rollicking story
This book was received from the Publisher, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
This is the first steampunk book that I have read that mostly takes place in Australia. It was interesting I can not say how much was fantasy and how much was based on fact when it comes to Austrialia during this time. I really need to look it up.
This was an very easy to read book especially for being the first book in a series. There were some places that seemed to drag along but as a whole it was an enjoyable read. I really liked how metals have magical properties. And I found it interesting how Emmeline is able to talk to metals, this is not explored very much in this first book but I hope we learn more in the other books in this series.
As a whole I enjoyed the story it was different I just found myself contiguously frustrated with Emmeline, which made the book to easy to put down and walk away from.
Heart of Brass is a fun, historical steampunk fantasy set across London and Australia in the 1850s. Author, Felicity Banks has managed to combine all the elements of a great story in such an innovative way, the series as a whole is destined to take pride of place in everyone’s family fantasy collection.
Emmaline Muchamore is a well-bred young woman from an eccentric London family. Determined to move past the stain on their reputation (and economic status) brought about by their father’s arrest and execution for murder, Emmaline and her sisters are focused on making good marital matches and hiding their eccentricities as best they can.
Hiding the fact that your heart is made of brass and powered by steam is not easy, even in a world that revolves around the special qualities of metal and its highly fashionable status. When Emmaline’s heart malfunctions in the middle of afternoon tea with her future betrothed and his mother, she must obtain replacement parties immediately or die on the spot. What she needs, the prospective mother-in-law has, and with no time to ask permission, Emmaline rips the silver locket from the shocked woman’s neck and proceeds to save her faltering heart. Unfortunately, Emmaline then finds herself arrested, in court, and transported to the Colonies before she can even say goodbye to her beloved family. Still hiding her brass heart, Emmaline makes friends with a fellow convict and enemies with another and sets in play a series of adventures that will take her from a smelly, leaky ship to the outback of Australia during some of its most pivotal times.
Felicity has woven the magic, adventure, and history together and bound them in a story that will leave you wanting to know what happens next to the intrepid Emmaline and her friends. I especially enjoyed how the characters, quite naturally, becoming embroiled in the Eureka Stockade rebellion of 1854 – very cleverly written – and look forward to her brushes with the law as she flies around the outback with an Irish bushranger, and an Australian-born adventurer in their magical metallic convertible hot-air balloon basket… thing… you really have to read it yourself to work it all out, but it’s amazingly clever and I applaud Felicity on her ability to craft such an inventive story.
I recommend Heart of Brass to teenagers and young adults, and any grown up with a fun sense of the slightly absurd.