I loved this book!! It was absolutely brilliant. This is a must read for anyone with a steampunk fetish. (Also check out book one of this series, The Iron Duke (Iron Seas, #1))

SPOILER ALERT

This takes two of the secondary characters from book one (The Iron Duke (Iron Seas, #1)) and gives them their own story. When we left off in book one, Captain Corsair just threw Archimedes Fox over the side of her airship into zombie infested Venice. He landed in the water.

This story starts off with Captain Corsair visiting Fox’s sister to let her know about Fox supposed death and about the da Vinci artifact. She finds the sister being held hostage, kills the hostage taker, saves the sister and then offers to sell the artifact as long as she receives 50% of the proceeds.

Then leaving the sister, she goes to find the dealer who had spilled the information to the hostage taker about the da Vinci artifact. This leads her to the information that Archimedes Fox is still alive, Corsairs airship being blown up and the duo on the fast track to finding the thief.

This is an artifact hunting story that just blooms into so much more. The adventure is fun and fantastic. The characters are well written and the dialogue lives. The settings change as the airship travels the land. The romance is entrenched in the story itself and Fox is a man searching for love. He wants to experience it in all its glory and heartache. Corsair is a woman who wants to be respected and loved.

The sex in this book takes forever to happen, but you don’t care. The pages before the actual act are full of delightful temptation and agonizing anticipation. The sensuality is almost too much, but the climax is all the better for it.

My favorite scene is where Fox and Corsair are in their small room aboard the airship and they are bathing at the washing bowl. I can’t do the scene justice by explaining it here. I am at a loss of what to say to describe the pure sensuality of the scene. Read it and see what I mean.

This is my favorite of the two books in this series so far. I can only hope that we see more books to follow. You can read my review of the first book, The Iron Duke, here.

View all my reviews

The Iron Duke as a Steampunk novel is awesome, but as a romance not so much. There was so much more that could have been done with the emotional entanglements.

SPOILER ALERT

The Iron Duke starts in a post-apocalyptic style London. A body is dropped on the house of the Iron Duke, a war hero. The detective, Mina, who is assigned the case, is the daughter of an aristocrat. These are our two main characters. Mina is a strong, independent woman and the Iron Duke, Trahaearn, is a fierce, domineering pirate turned war hero. This makes for some interesting sparks.

As they go on this adventure to find out who threw the dead body from an airship (airship – so hot!) on the Iron Duke house, they find that they are very attracted to one another. They encounter zombies, pirates, and other interesting characters. They also explore their own relationship.

Mina is a strong woman who doesn’t want to be controlled by a man. I can get behind that. However, Trahaearn is so domineering he overpowers her as a character. She is constantly fighting him both as a character and as a woman. It leaves her to be seen as less than who she is or could be.

The romance and sexual tension aren’t as powerful as it could be. There are two sex scenes that stand out for me. The first is the almost “rape”. Both characters are drunk and things go further than Mina wants. Trahaearn doesn’t realize that she isn’t enjoying herself anymore. This scene is okay. It just doesn’t have the life that I would have expected in a scene of this nature.

The second is where Trahaearn gives up control. He lets Mina be on top. However, there are a couple problems with this scene. Mina doesn’t really take a lot of time to explore Trahaearn. If I had him under me, I would take hours exploring him. She also just gives up on the whole losing control issue that she has had all through the book. It is very anti-climactic. Also, the feel of the scene is that Trahaearn isn’t really giving up control, he is just humoring her. It just leaves the whole scene feel like it is missing something.

As for the romance, it didn’t really make much of an impression. I don’t really remember one scene or even instant of something romantic happening.

However, my favorite characters are Scarsdale and Captain Corsair. Scarsdale needs his own book and a man of his own. Captain Corsair’s story is book two, Heart of Steel, where she is seduced by Archimedes Fox.

The plot is good, fast paced and fun. It is a trip around this world chasing the killer of the dropped body. There is enough twist and turns to keep you interested and the conclusion isn’t predictable. It gives a lot of history and setting, so you can get to know this world without having it handed to you in a bunch of monologues.

The dialogue is great. There is a lot of give and take and no one is overshadowing the other characters. I really liked how we are introduced to the secondary characters. They are strong in their own right and are a great introduction to the world from another perspective.

This is a great adventure/travel novel. There is a lot that I liked about this book. I love the airships and other Steampunk gear infused into the story. I loved the action. I also loved how the zombies were part of the landscape but not a day to day horror. I gave it four stars.

Great first novel in a series!!!

View all my reviews

Problems I Had

1. Shop Interface
2. Sections
3. Uploading Designs

Shop Interface

There are three ways to make changes to your shop: Templates, Colors and Fonts, and Custom HTML.

Templates

The templates are boring and mostly ugly, though this is the easiest way to change the default look of your store.

Colors & Fonts

Changing the color & fonts to something custom is cool, but they don’t have anywhere to upload a background or decide what areas of your shop you would like to display or not display.

Custom HTML

Not only the most complicated, but it there is no way to know what sections are being changed without making the changes and then seeing them in your shop. The easiest way to make the custom HTML work is to choose a template that is close to what you want and then search for where you want to make changes. This is not an easy or quick process.

Sections

These were probably the easiest to fix of the three main problems I had. Changing the name of the section wasn’t hard, but changing the image was irritating. I had to upload the image several times before it would show up. The section area would say that it was there and saved, but when you looked at your shop, no image.

Also, this is where you decided to change you makeup for your products. I’m not sure why this is in this area as I would have though it should be in the settings are of the product section or the setting for each individual product.

Design Images

This was the most annoying part and why I have cancelled my account. The help section says that they can take up to 10MB images without any problems. However, my design image was on 138k and still wouldn’t upload. I tried it on two computers and it still didn’t work. No clue why and the help section didn’t help.

By this time, I was frustrated and irritated, so I called it a night. I tried again the next day with the same results.

I cancelled my account.

I have made several styles, but my favorite so far is the Purple and Black Skull Messenger Bag. Click here to check it out and let me know what you think.

Also, I have been checking out several Print on Demand stores to host my items, but so far Zazzle has been the best.  As I continue to research the different sites, I will review them and post about them (see list below).

As always, let me know what you think!

—————————————————————
POD Company Reviews

Cafe Press

Browse other gifts from Zazzle.

Alisha's Skull by Pennysilver

Dimensions: W 3.75 in. x H 3.75 in.
Design Number: EMB0014
Thread Changes: 11
Embroidery Format: PES

The gorgeous drawing for this embroidery is by pennysilver. Her art is really cool, so check her out! This is the second of five artworks that I have commissioned so far.

Let me know what you think!

Check out Alisha!

Dark Arts Challenges is a club on Deviant Art which has month long contests with a dark theme.  The last one was the Tarot Card contest.  The current contest is Supernatural Love Story.

Here are some of the latest deviations that I have upload for Stock Use.

Rules:

• Feel free to use my stock in anything you would like as long as you are not using them to depict abuse or prejudice.
• You may use my stock for personal and commercial use.
• Please link back to me in some way, shape or form.
• Please leave me a comment or send me an email to handbags.by.kat@gmail.com.
• Otherwise, have fun!

Contest Dates: 1 March 2012 to 31 March 2012
Submissions Review: 1 April 2012 to 6 April 2012
Winners Announced: 7 April 2012

Required Stock are by mysticmorning (Just pick one of the required stock to use.)

At least one other stock art must be used in combination with the required stock. You must give credit to all the stock deviations that you use.

Also, don’t forget, in your description, you must give you rank, the contest name (Steampunk Transportation) and the icon for Steampunk Contests :icon Steampunk-contests: (remove space)

You can find our Code of Conduct, Ranks and Pay Schedule on the About Us page. Read these as they are important to the contest.

April’s Contest will be announced on March 15th.

Alisha's Ankh by pennysilver

Design Number: EMB0016
Thread Changes: 4
Embroidery Format: PES

The gorgeous drawing for this embroidery is by pennysilver. Her art is really cool, so check her out! I wasn’t able to get the stars right in the embroidery pattern, so they were deleted. This is the first of five artworks that I have commissioned from pennysilver this time.

Here is the original artwork:

Let me know what you think!

Check out Alisha!