Silver and Stone is the second volume in a steampunk trilogy set in a fantasy version of Australia where certain metals can be ‘activated’ to take on magical properties – iron can confer strength, gold can attract, silver can heal, etc. I read the first volume (Heart of Brass) last year so it didn’t qualify for the Cannonball but it did give me the background for this story, which takes up pretty much where the last one left off. (This review will therefore have spoilers for that first book).
The hero is Emmaline Muchamore, a proper young lady from London who is herself an inventor and scientist and whose inventor/scientist father replaced her biological heart with one made of brass and silver, leading to his untimely death. The family falls in its fortunes and Emmaline commits a crime that results in her being transported to Australia as a convict. While there she makes her escape with the assistance of Matilda, the half-Aboriginal girl with whom she falls in love, and Patrick, Matilda’s adopted brother. The second book involves their attempt to rescue Patrick’s mother from the Female Factory on Tasmania where she herself has been imprisoned, and their subsequent efforts to fulfill a promise they make to Patrick’s mother that puts them in significant danger of being recaptured. As in the first book, the story is set against an event of actual historical significance – in the case of Heart of Brass, it was the battle of the Eureka Stockade, and in this book it is the women’s suffrage movement.
The books do have their flaws – the characters, particularly the secondary characters, could stand to be fleshed out more – but I found them to be a fun, breezy read. A particularly entertaining feature is that they have Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stories in the back of each book which take place in the same setting as the novels.
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