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Remember back in the late aughts/early teens when steampunk was all the rage? This was published on Tor.com (with a free epub download) in October 2010.

Claude Stone is affianced to Desiree Southland, the mixed race daughter of an English lord. Claude's views are not so great: "I knew Lord Southland disapproved of me, although his antipathy puzzled me. If he hoped to marry off his mulatto daughter, I was his best prospect. Not many men were as free of prejudice as I was."

Desiree is enamored of building clockwork devices. Claude does not share her interest, but allows that he can indulge her fancies. However, Lord Tyndall is quite keen to see Desiree Southland's clockwork fairies.

Rambo really nails the personality of a certain type of performative ally in just a few words and pages.

new vocabulary: the ton

fashionable society

new vocabulary: benison

A blessing

Thought the first book in the series was solid, but the second was dreck. However, I need to know how it ends so I'm going to put myself through this.

Set immediately after the caper in Worth Dying For, which was set immediately after the events of 61 Hours. Reacher tries to hitchhike to Virginia to meet with the agent whose voice he likes whose name I've forgotten. Except the people who pick him up are involved in some criminal conspiracy, which Reacher figures out pretty quickly. The FBI is behaving hinky too.

The setup makes very little sense. Half-assed conspiracies within half-assed conspiracies. About ⅔ of the way through (by the reckoning of my Kobo), the author stops trying to maintain the house of cards and just transitions into the end-game where it's mostly shooting.

The whole thing is very slapdash. Now I'm wondering if the series is slowly sliding toward craptasticness. I'm really hoping there's a bright spot or two or I'll have to find a new series for my palate cleansing.

Someone is leaking specs for a new sniper rifle. Because of a highly contrived setup, the Army has to call Reacher in to wine and dine the 4 female suspects without them knowing he's undercover. A prequel story set before Reacher leaves the Army and becomes the drifter that moves through most of the books.

Roger Gale has three daughters, a traditional married homebody, a free spirit who gallavants around the world, and a driven professional. Most of His Family is Roger either thinking about his daughters and what they should do, or trying to talk them into doing what he thinks they should do. Only Deborah, the professional who wants to improve the lives of New York's tenement dwellers, is interesting. And there only when the story doesn't veer into the possibility of her getting married and living the more traditional life that Roger wants her to. Plodding and dreary.

new vocabulary (surprisingly, Lee Child doesn't normally use fancy words in Reacher thrillers): porte cochère

A covered entrance large enough for vehicles to pass through, typically opening into a courtyard

new vocabulary: dido

A mischievous trick or prank.

new vocabulary: roister

enjoy oneself or celebrate in a noisy or boisterous way

published in 1917! we'll use the sun to power transportation in pneumatic tubes!

new vocabulary: frowzy

Scruffy and neglected in appearance

(have i mentioned how much i like the feature where i can hold my finger on a word in my e-reader and get the definition? i like it very much.)