Book Review: The Clockwork Giant by Brooke Johnson

The Clockwork Giant
Chroniker City #1
Author: Brooke Johnson
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Steampunk
Released: December 11th 2011
Review Source: Author
Available: Amazon
Read Excerpt: Goodreads

Summary: (from goodreads) It's 1881, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Chroniker City, the global hub of technological advancement in the modern world. Based off the British coast, the city is home to the most prestigious polytechnic university worldwide, a center of mechanical ingenuity teaching everything from clockwork mechanics and thermodynamics to electromagnetism and electricity.

Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, dreams of one day becoming a member of the Guild, an elite group of inventors and innovators who envision a future fueled by technology, but her ambitions will only come to fruition if she can find a way into the illustrious university—an institution reserved for men only. When she meets Emmerich Goss, an accomplished engineer newly recruited into the Guild, Petra discovers that he needs help building a top-secret, government-sanctioned automaton, and she is just the girl to help him.

Together, they craft the clockwork giant, and as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra finds that she can love more than gears and mainsprings.

This was my first time going into reading anything steampunk and i really loved the details in this story. The book is set in 1881 but with amazing clockwork and very advanced technology but still a sense of being in the past. I love the mix of technology and old timey aspects to this book. Brooke takes you into the world of Chroniker City and as you read you can visualize everything and have it be such an amazing notion in your mind you wish it was real.

In The Clockwork Giant you get brought into the world of Petra Wade. She is a girl but isn't allowed to be an engineer which is the dream of a lifetime for her. She has taught herself how to be a clockwork engineer with the help of her employer. The sexist views of the Guild only allow males to study at the institution and she has to find a way in. I love the way she tries to get into the guild its such a simple way but just how she tries to pull it off is adorable.

When Petra meets Emmerich Goss her world gets turned upside down when he offers to pay her to help him on a top secret project that no one is supposed to know about. But he can see in her the real potential and clockwork ingenuity that he might be lacking. After they are tasked to build a clockwork giant, things go awry and Petra has some tough decisions to make and so does Emmerich.

This book is amazing, and I think I've fallen in love with steampunk. It really pulls you into the past, but has semi futuristic aspects that is just amazing. It has love, mystery and amazing technology. Definitely a good read and I definitely want to read the next in the series!