Cornelia Amiri, $2.99, ISBN 978-1386842576
Fantasy Romance, 2014

I know, the cover says The Brass Octopuss, but this story is referred to as The Brass Octopus in the title page as well as the copyright page. Since I don’t want people constantly telling me they think there is a spelling error in the title, I’ll go with the correct spelling.

This is a steampunk historical romance set in England, or in other words, historical romances but with more mechanical stuff and some woo-woo. Hey, why not? The historical romance genre is fantastical anyway, with the sheer number of dukes crammed like mackerels in a can in every building in London, so what’s a little gizmo here and there.

Piety Plunkett is a sensible librarian all about progressive thinking and female empowerment, and she detests chauvinist pigs. Naturally, as sensible and intelligent bluestockings are wont to do, her bloomers drip like her laundry on the line after a typhoon upon overhearing the scathing anti-female rhetoric of Blake Blackmore—something tells me that the author isn’t even trying when it comes to the hero’s name—because, you know, no matter how intelligent these romance heroines claim to be, they are all horny ga-ga over any pretty boy with a hot bod that comes their way.

Of course, Piety is above bodily craving, as she is a romance heroine, not someone with a functional libido. Her overpowering need to get stuffed stems from a more intellectual place, or so the author insists.

“He read a passage of Early Experiences out loud.” No one had ever read to her. She used to read to Polly when they were little. She often imagined what it would be like for someone to read to her but she never imagined it to be someone as handsome as Blake Blackmore reading the passage he did. “It is men like the one you mentioned who remind me why I prefer books to gentlemen, if Mr. Blackmore can even be called such.”

See? He’s literate, so he’s… perfect.

Sure, the nice fat plain-faced guy next door can read too, but sod off with such nonsense, will you? Fat and ugly men have no right to exist in romance novels, so take those sacrilegious nonsense elsewhere.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, our heroine has found true love, and she’s certainly not just gagging for the hero’s gander.

Because a woman deserves to be loved for what’s inside and not just outside, our progressive heroine then kvetches about how she’s not hot enough to attend a party and lure him close enough to dry hump his leg engage him in intellectually stimulating conversation.

Polly, her sister that is way too sweet and nice to be biologically related to this judgmental yet ultimately hypocritical dingbat, uses the brass octopus mentioned in the title to transform Piety into a babe, because we all know a woman’s intellectual capacity is directly proportional to her perceived attractiveness.

As Jasper dashed off to secure a dance with one beauty, Blake’s breath caught in his throat as a vision of loveliness glided into the entrance hall. He peered at the woman’s neck, swan-like and creamy, above the low-cut, shimmering blue gown. A desire to press his lips against her neck, to nibble at her tiny earlobe, jolted him.

It’s so wonderful when a hero finally recognizes the heroine’s inner virtues.

You may be wondering why I am so hard on this angle of the story. You see, this particular England is a modernized one because the queen takes to heart all the mechanical treatises and philosophies written by women of that time, hence there is an overwhelming overtone of how women are awesome, because they are intelligent in every amazing manner.

Hence, this particular “I’m not worthy of the hero’s attention until I get a hot makeover and wear a cleavage-revealing dress” angle feels so, so, so out of place that I can only wonder whether the author is aware of what she is doing here.

Worse, it’s not like the hero learns to accept that a woman’s beauty comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes. No, the grand lesson here is that the heroine learns to trust that she’s beautiful enough for the hero—a convenient lesson considering that she already had a makeover to impress him with the size of her dinner plates.

The whole thing is so disingenuous that it’s not even funny; it actually crosses farther and farther into intelligence-insulting territory as it progresses!

I feel that this one could have been salvaged if the author had stuck to one lane. Either make it so that a heroine needs to be hot to deserve love, or have the hero be attracted to the heroine in spite of her not meeting the beauty standards of that time.

Instead, the author tries to have her cake and eat it too, and the end result is the work of someone with zero self awareness as to how the story is everything against what it is supposed to be preaching about.