Brasswitch and Bot - Gareth Ward

Yup, it’s book review time again.  Mostly cos this book was pretty damn amazing :) and yes I did read it cos Lou reviewed it on one of her The Wonderful World of Wardini Books shows, and as with most my fav books the main character is a rocking awesome as female so it was like I had to read it hehe. 

Brasswitch and Bot is a young adult steampunk novel, set in the UK back in whenever it was set (yup as per normal I only took in some of the details, not all of them lol).  I did love that the main city was York, which is totally a better city than London, in my opinion.  Wrench is the main character, she is a almost 14 year old engineering apprentice who also happens to be a brasswitch, which is not really a good thing.  There was a rupture in the something that resulted in aberrations (aka humans that are different, some have powers, some have weird extras like tentacles, some have both, and some have magic) and that is what Wrench is.  She prefers the term Remarkable though, and as she says different doesn’t mean bad (that Wrench is a smart girl).

Wrench gets caught by the Regulators (aka the people trying to rid the world of the aberrations) and then, to her rescue comes Bot.  Bot is, in my opinion and words, basically a grumpy old man in robot form.  He has those cool as funny one liners which grumpy old men have that make us love them, and make us forgive all the other grumpy moments they have.  So yes, I also enjoyed Bot, he’s a cool character.  There are other cool as characters but I shant name them here, for a couple reasons, 1 you should read the book and 2 I have loaned my book to Ken and have forgotten the names, one either begins with a O or maybe a C…. lol.

The story is a pretty good one, I wasn’t sure if I would like it as I am rather fussy with my steampunk, and tend to only like it in regards to fashion, but I was happy to be pleasantly surprised.  And it almost made me late to work atlst one morning so it musta been a good book.  It contained trains, magic, running, fighting, baddies, goodies, goodies that might be baddies, friends, adventure and so much more.  I would share more but personally I think you should all just read it :) and I don’t think you will regret it, unless you don’t like book hangovers then you might not love it quite so much.  I am over my book hangover now, and I have forgiven Gareth for making me wait till August next year for the next book hehe.

If you would like to listen to my spoken review of the book, check out the A Study In Literacy episode that airs on 5^th September (its title will start with Steampunk and end in Games (I think)), and if you would like hear mine and Luke’s interview with Gareth Ward it will air on the 12^th September, and the audio will be on our website that evening as well :) 

Here is the link for all you interested folks - A Study In Literacy