Steampunk is my latest love in book genres. The costumes, the imagined smell of the grease and the engines – the oil dripping to the ground and then all the supernatural elements coming together to compose a story that is altogether awesome in its scope – I am, of course, talking about Cold Magic. The Iron Duke fell short of my expectations for the main reason that I was expecting a story – a complex, glorious story that dealt with complex, glorious characters and it gave me a romance novel disguised as a steampunk fantasy. It is my own fault. I mean, look at the cover. Half-naked man, Nafiza. What else do you expect?A girl can hope, okay? I have nothing against romance. Actually, no, I hate romance novels. Not because they are bad or anything like that. No, not at all. It’s just because I have read way too many of them. Like a thousand or more. I am not joking. In Fiji, romance novels are what it’s all about. Okay, so let’s attempt a discourse on The Iron Duke as a romance novel.The protagonist, Iron Duke as he is called, is a hero. He has saved England from what suspiciously sounds like Asian conquerors who were nefarious and did horrible things like inject people with nanoagents and then controlled them through the frequencies that these nanoagents functioned on. They essentially controlled the actions of the English people, not being believers of personal freedom. Let’s move back to the villains of this book for a second. I think it is a really bad idea to focus on one nativity or race as villains in a novel because it raises questions about the author’s intentions. I am sure this sounds pretty serious and I am most probably wrong but I felt uncomfortable reading this because though the race of the villains was not explicitly stated, there were other obvious hints that made me pause and shift uncomfortably.The main leads. I liked the heroine – to a certain extent – better than I liked the male protagonist. She was a strong woman, living her life as she wanted to despite the amount of rancor and discrimination she faced because of the way she looked. The male protagonist was a sap. It simply did not fit that the a character who is written as strongly as his was is reduced to a mushy, blubbering, sappy fool as he is. Do I sound irate? Too much so? His frequent asides and the times the readers got to see the world from his perspective is just so…bloody womanly. I am sorry, okay? There’s no reason why a man can’t think about forever and hearts etc, but when a man who is portrayed to be as masculine as the Iron Duke is shown capitulating so easily – it’s just not logical.The analytical reader in me noticed how the female heroine was a virgin and the end was a marriage. All neat and tied up. Why did she have to be a virgin? Why did they have to marry? Because it’s a romance novel and all women’s lives culminate with marriage. Right? Ergh.What makes me sad is that this book had so much potential. The mythos was well created, the side characters were well developed, there was so much happening, so much material to work with to create something truly memorable. The scenes dealing with the main conflict were almost extraneous and these conflicts were resolved with an almost ridiculous ease – as though their raison d’être was to showcase the virility and skill of The Iron Duke.Would I recommend this novel to you? Honestly, no. There are many other better novels (whether in the romance genre or steampunk) that you could read.
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