Catherine's Reviews > The Difference Engine

Well, the world-building is quite interesting, though apparently all the female characters in this alternate Steampunk England are whores or math geniuses, with the occasional murderess thrown in for good measure. Every other social or political movement gets accelerated or represented but not the Suffragists, amazingly enough. Apart from that, many of the secondary characters are way more interesting than the protagonist. The plot is a ramble-fest through the world-building and requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. All the villains are offstage with occasional nonsensical walk-ons; one manages to go from being a racetrack roughneck to the equivalent of Prof. Moriarity in about 100 pages while not doing anything particularly impressive in the villainy line. Makes for quite the promotion. The book started out well and I had hopes of better things, only to be sadly disappointed.