Review – The Tremblers (Blackburn Chronicles, Book 1) by Raquel Byrnes (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Steampunk
Length: 388 pages
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Release Date: January 19, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1611169737
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Blackburn Chronicles
Source: eGalley through NetGalley.com
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Charlotte Blackburn—a beautiful, intelligent, and gifted tinkerer—lives in a cloistered world of wealth and privilege beneath the Electric Tesla Dome that shields survivors of The Great Calamity. But when her father is abducted, and a strange sickness starts transforming men into vicious monsters, she discovers that technology is no protection at all.
Ashton Wells has a dire mission: Secure Colonel Blackburn and deliver his research to The Order of the Sword and Scroll. But the plan goes awry, and he is left with nothing but the colonel’s daughter who has a target on her back and is willing stop at nothing to rescue her father—including handing over to the enemy the only means to stop the monstrous plague.
Branded as traitors, Ashton and Charlotte brave the treacherous floating sky ports of Outer City to hunt down the elusive inventor, Nikola Tesla—the only person able to activate the strange device that harbors the secret to their salvation. With the government closing in, a rebellion brewing in the streets, and terrifying Tremblers attacking the innocent, the two must work together to stop their fragile world from crumbling once more into destruction.”
This is the first book in the Blackburn Chronicles. The story is a steampunk story set in an alternate historical United States. I love steampunk worlds and books and this book started out promising but went downhill from there. I did enjoy a lot of the devices and action scenes in here. However, the writing was bit hard to follow at times and the plot was fairly predictable.
This whole book was just lacking a bit. The story got confusing at times and I had to go back and reread parts to try to decipher what was happening. I am talking about characters being in one location and then suddenly being somewhere else without an explanation; it was disorienting. I thought that the characters were okay but they were also lacking a little…something…they just weren’t as engaging as I would have liked.
I did enjoy the world-building and the history behind this alternate Earth. There are some very neat ideas in here and the book is action-packed (although the action scenes were a bit hard to follow as well).
Overall this is a book I wanted to love, but it just wasn’t engaging enough or well-written enough to really intrigue me and hold my attention. I won’t be continuing with this series.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– New Release Reading Challenge
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
