Reeve has created a universe filled with sentient storms on Saturn, a plague that turns people into trees, ships powered by alchemical weddings.It's imaginative, though a little heavy-handed. The illustrations are charming, and the combination of steampunk and ya should make this book a slam-dunk. I really, really wanted to like this book. They join up with a pirate crew led by the notorious Captain Jack Havock and have a number of thrilling adventures whilst evading the spiders. But then giant spiders invade Larklight and kidnap their father, and Art and Myrtle barely escape. With their absent-minded father for their only human company, Arthur and Myrtle live in a ramshackle house named Larklight floating in deep space. It is the mid-nineteenth century, Queen Victoria is on the throne, and the British Empire stretches into the stars. Even so, I had such a bad taste in my mouth that I don't plan to read any more of the series, or indeed, anything by Phillip Reeve. Even then, she passes it off as dumb luck, unsuitable for a young lady. There is a token female lizard in Jack Havoc's crew, who is a very capable alchemist, but this is just some mystical ability, no brains involved, and all her work is done off-page.The book does improve, and ends up with strong female characters indeed even Myrtle has her moment of glory. Not all of the less than admirable Victorian traits (God is an Englishman) were limited to women. Art cannot imagine why one of the others describes Myrtle as sweet, and obviously attractive. Myrtle is annoying, untalented, thick-headed, snobbish, and narrow-minded. I understand that siblings are often antagonistic Art doesn't like his older sister, Myrtle. I persisted only because some of the reviews on Amazon promised me that it got better. I definitely want to see more of his work.The problem with the book is that the first third was so misogynistic that I almost stopped reading it. The best part of the book, in my opinion, and easily worth five stars. The book is lavish with them on almost every page: they are wonderful as illustrations, extremely expressive, detailed, and worked beautifully into the layout of the page. Phillip Reeve has a terrific imagination and spins a rousing story (except for the point noted below.) I find it difficult to express how wonderful David Wyatt's illustrations were.
I found this a mixture of the wonderful and the very off-putting.
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