Phoenix Rising

I wanted to like this book. I only finished it because I wanted to count it for the Punk's Not Dead challenge. While this book is steampunk, it has none of the fun attributes of steampunk. But, what type of steampunk is it? A bland, generic one apparently because there no description or exposition to explain the world to the reader. There's no worldbuilding here.

As the first book in a series about The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, it is again lacking in exposition. What is a peculiar occurrence in this world? There are some hints of past cases but not enough guide the reader to understand what this organization with the cool title is.

The premise of the book is the bringing together of unexpected opposites--Wellington Books is the Ministry's archivist who rarely leaves the basement of the building and Eliza D. Braun is the agent who is sent to the archives because she disregards orders and does things her own way. She is a brash "colonial" from New Zealand, and Wellington is a by-the-rules British gentleman. They hate each other at the beginning, but there is sexual tension, blah, blah, you know how this goes. Besides Books and Braun, all the characters are two-dimensional--the villians don't seem particularly menacing, just cartoon cut-outs based on Bond villians and those of 1930s serials. The authors also steal an element from Arthur Conan Doyle that I won't give away here.

The book is a fast fluffy read. The plot elements are predictable and the characters clichéd. Even though the authors leave enough mystery about the characters and the umbrella plot to lead into the sequels, I won't be reading them.