Whitechapel Gods

I finished reading Whitechapel Gods a few days ago.  It's a book I bought based on looking at the cover, which is a bad way to go about book selection.  The back cover describes the book pretty well, I think.  It's set in Victorian London; Whitechapel has been taken over and isolated by two gods named Grandfather Clock and Mama Engine.  Some folks who live there aren't happy about it, and this is their story.

The book does cool things with those gods.  The ironmongery of the factories is writ large into an almost-alien city, and also small, into the bodies of the people who live there.  Yes, many of the inhabitants are sprouting brass-and-steam growths, a condition they call "the clacks."  The themes, the setting, it's all good stuff.  But the characters, and the writing in general, aren't so good.  I thought the characters lacked real identity, and many of the scenes were described in a very sketchy way.  In the end, it's better than some books, worse that others.  Check it out if you're interested in people with coal furnaces where their hearts should be.

Spoilers: Don't read this book if you're looking for strong, positive female characters in a fantasy setting.  There are three women with names in this book that I can remember.  There is Mama Engine, who creates male consort gods to put her in the bondage she secretly longs for.  There's Missy, a recently-escaped brainwashed sex slave who goes crazy and kills an innocent man and the protagonist (don't worry, he comes back to life later and forgives her).  Finally, there's Lady Giselle, the woman who brainwashed Missy and pimped her out for years.