MUSE

Political intrigue in an alternate America.

Seventeen-year-old Claire Emerson has the magic touch, able to bless people via skin-to-skin contact. Such power makes her a commodity, and Claire believes her only escape from her crazed father’s demands will be through marriage. The 1893 World’s Fair is finally happening, and Claire intends to seek refuge with her long-absent brother once her father’s newest invention debuts. Instead, she becomes a pawn in the political scrabble among young Gov. Remy Duchamp, his power-hungry general, and malcontents from the neighboring province of Livingston-Monroe. Female independence is not a possibility in this 19th-century Great American Kingdom, where the Washingtons are a monarchical dynasty, the U.S. is divided into provinces ruled by governors, and suffrage is suppressed. This is also an America where immigration is limited—the villains are blatantly xenophobic—but slavery, abolition, and Indigenous populations are not mentioned, their omission a serious flaw in an otherwise richly detailed setting and timeline. For a novel about science, magic, and politics, none of the rules are adequately explained, leaving the readers to learn alongside Claire as she struggles to understand her powers, the political game, and various steampunk gadgets. Cavallaro excels at intrigue, capers, and feminist concerns, but this book needs more substantial worldbuilding before joining the crowd of alternate history tales. Most characters are White.

Like a lightbulb: incandescent and dazzling but artificial.