The Brass Giant by Brooke Johnson

Steampunk is always a curious genre.   This seems to be the beginning of a series called the Chroniker City.   It was a romantic Steampunk story and I liked it anyway.   The Pygmalion quality of the story was not overdone although the well to do boy meets down trodden girl is somewhat overworked, in general.  

Petra Wade is fighting for a place in a male dominated world.   Even with equal rights, statistically, even today the number of female engineers is far less than male engineers.   In Chroniker City, Petra is fighting a severe uphill battle to become a mechanical engineer.   She meets Emmerich who is not only from a different side of the tracks, he is in the career for which she aspires.  

The two of them design a "brass giant"  mechanical man and then despair to find they have both been deceived as to it's purpose.   There is action, romance and a modicum of violence.   There is also an underpinning theme of true equal rights.

I recommend the book.

Web Site: http://www.brooke-johnson.com/.

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.