I found the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter a fun, well executed steampunk novel.

     Elizabeth provides likable, intelligent lead full of agency who is easy to emotionally invest in. While remaining tough, she retains enough emotional vulnerability for the plot to exert emotional pressure on her, and thus the reader. One of the smaller (or larger depending on how you view it) was I like dhow she operated in the world, specifically the way she had to obey the social constraints of her society. It’s a part of older/victorian settings that is often under-explored or rebelled against, but is also one of my favorite aspects of those settings as well as being wonderfully immersive. Elizabeth’s pantomime allows her to narratively both shuck those constraints when the plot requires, while still forcing her to be subject to them for much of the narrative.

     The world building is solid, and the aesthetic of the clothing, and the carnival, and the contraptions and all the other smaller things that make something ‘steampunk’ are well executed.

     The plot itself is tense, balancing character and action well while posing a good variety of situations, perils, and threats for Elizabeth to surmount.