The formatting of the ebook is, unfortunately, kind of rubbish. I’ve half a mind to reformat it and reconvert back to the Kindle format, but meh. But it really is rubbish. So much so that each story’s title isn’t formatted any differently from any other text (no bolding, no up-sizing), there is no table of contents, and sometimes there’s text that must have been meant to be italicized but… isn’t. It’s a shame. A crying shame.
It’s probably fair to disclose that I’m a) not a fan of steampunk (in that I have no real interest in it as a subject or sub-genre) and that b) I’m not generally into multi-authors anthologies due to their natural unevenness in quality, and I always prefer longer stories over short ones, which makes it a little tricky to appreciate many of the pieces in Steam-Powered 2 since some tend toward the shorter end of the scale. But despite all that, in the end I found many of the stories contained in this anthology amazing, moving, affirming. This is the kind of collections we need, the kind of material that should exist and be encouraged to thrive, and I can’t praise Joselle Vanderhooft enough for making it happen.
In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
