Guilty Pleasures: The Clockwork Dagger, by Beth Cato

The book I'd like to tell you about today comes out tomorrow (Tuesday, Sept. 16).  I read the ARC two months ago.  Oops!  Not to say I've been busy or anything.

Here's my review of The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato.

Statistics
Checkouts: Comes out tomorrow - none!  Having copies on the shelf before the release date is unethical, if not illegal.
Typical reader: Fans of steampunk, perhaps particularly the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger (I actually agree with a read-alike on the back cover of an ARC, for once)
Source: Advanced reading copy, courtesy of Snowbound Books

Synopsis: Trained as a medician (medical magician, if you will), Octavia Leander sets off into the world to take her first job in a rural town.  But there is much intrigue and adventure to be had on her journey by airship.

My Goodreads rating: 5 stars

I fell in love with this book within the first dozen pages.  This is no small feat, but I was extremely impressed.  In that short amount of text, I learned more about the protagonist, why we should like her, how magic works, and the world she lives in than in some entire books.

And the book kept my love throughout.  This is one that I resisted finishing as long as I could, to savor it longer.  It depressed me at the end to know that I was reading an ARC, and I would have to wait even longer for the sequel (and it sounds like there will be one!)

How did I adore this book?  Let me count the ways.

• It has a plucky, unique heroine with a well-rounded support cast.
• The magic is unlike any other I've read about, coming closest to a cross between a Dragonlance mystic and a druid with a penchant for healing.
• It's an interracial romance!  How common is that?!  For all the diversity in romance in literature, you'd forget that Loving v. Virginia made it legal in the U.S nearly 50 years ago.  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell gets a lot of its attention because it's a love story between an overweight redhead girl and a half-Korean boy.  I'd honestly like to see more books like these.
• Speaking of the romance, it isn't overbearing.  And in a Victorian-style steampunk setting, that's to be expected.  Flirting and wooing is very cordial.
• The plot has plenty of twists, turns, and intrigue.
• The worldbuilding is exquisite.  It has a Dickensian feel, particularly in the cities.  There wasn't much interaction between Octavia and the poor, but one particular scene made me sit back and say, "Whoa."  Outside the cities, the author has constructed an interesting, different world with a mixture of magic and mechanisms, spirituality and science.

Go out tomorrow and buy this book.  It could well be the best fiction I read all year.