Kora Blackmore is the illegitimate daughter of Britain’s leading industrialist and creator of automaton, brought up in Bedlam mental hospital. Her father hopes she can be cured of her bizarre condition; she has a second soul living inside her. But after she is broken out by a mysterious gentleman who claims he once worked with her father, Kora must learn about herself, the society she now lives in, and about her past.
But the second soul, Roka, is not so compliant with the position forced on them. She and her guardian automaton are soon caught up in street politics, disorder and protest – and because neither soul remembers the actions or thoughts of the other, Kora is unaware of Roka’s passions until she wakes up.
With agents of Sir Tantalus and other players closing in, Kora and Roka must uncover the sequence of events behind their incarceration in Bedlam, and the reasons behind it – and seek to understand what it is that makes the Girl With Two Souls someone that the leading figures of the Empire desperately want to find.
The Girl With Two Souls is the first in The Factory Girl trilogy; the second in the series is The Girl With One Friend (both available now), and the third is The Girl With No Soul.
I was sent a link to the blurb for this book and jumped at the chance to read it; steampunk, automaton, a girl with two souls? Intriguing and interesting! And the book does not disappoint.
The world is an interesting take on the British Empire; a world where automatons do domestic work, drive carriages, do manual labour – all controlled by stenograph instructions. But the political turmoil is still there; the fight for worker’s rights is exacerbated by the robotic labour, and the arguments for women’s right to vote, religious freedom and political systems are all raging in the city around the Factory and its mysterious Soul-Giver. Major figures from the Victorian era are worked in with quirky nods to the historical era; Erasmus Darwin has a robotic hand, and Lenin himself speaks at a worker’s rally. The drive for powered flight is controlled by mysterious figures, and clockwork plants grow and flourish in a city experiencing all the change of the British Empire and the turn of the 19th century.
Kora and Roka’s story is at the heart of the book, and her journey tugs you along. Incarcerated in Bedlam, bored and unsure of why she is there, Kora is rescued by the mysterious Dr Spellman. When he and Kora slowly exchange information, struggling to discover how Kora’s two personalities work and what caused it, they also find that she is being sought by others. As Kora spreads her wings and knowledge in Sheffield society, Roka does the same – except she finds her passions drive her towards the cause for freedom and liberation, and the fight for political rights for automaton and workers. Slowly, Kora discovers more about her father, Sir Tantalus Blackmore, and about another shadowy figure that also seems to have an interest in her and in Roka…
The story sweeps along; while the focus is on Kora and Roka, there are glimpses of the rest of society and the Empire outside the city. I would highly recommend this to any steampunk lovers or anyone after a character-focused YA adventure, and I’ve got the second in the series (The Girl With One Friend) on my TBR pile!
© Kate Coe, December 2016
The Girl With Two Souls by Stephen Palmer
Published November 18th 2016
https://stephenpalmersf.wordpress.com/
Review copy courtesy of the author
378 pages
