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England has abolished slavery, but not all are willing to let the lucrative trade go without a fight. The Royal Navy is charged with keeping the Caribbean clean of slavers, pirates and privateers… but even in the Navy, there are those who put profit before principle.
Anonymous
Posted March 26, 2013
While this novella is at least a bit entertaining it IS NOT steampunk. It appears to me that the author does not know what steampunk is and did not do enough research before she decided on a title for her story. The only steampunk element of this story is that it appears to take place at or just before the beginning of the Victorian Era.
The title character of the story is an "automaton" named Lady Mechatronic but she is not like any automaton commonly used in steampunk fiction. Generally steampunk automatons are clockwork machines from 18th century technology that never actually existed but is not outside the range of an active imagination. Mechatronic, on the other hand, is a highly advanced android from another planet. She enters the story when her spaceship crash lands in the ocean and interrupts a fight between the main characters and the traitorous admiral who is setting up his own slave trade because of the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
The main characters escape the fight and are "upgraded" when they swim through water that contains "molecular technology" that spilled from the wreckage of Mechatronic's spaceship. The "upgrades" closely resemble the mutations that characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby go through when they receive their superhero powers. Some of the powers the characters gain are night vision, regeneration, and even the ability to shoot electric bolts from fingertips.
I do not know if future stories that Wyatt has written in this series are different enough to actually fit the steampunk genre instead of being a sci-fi/Pirates of the Caribbean/superhero smash-up but I will not be reading them to find out.
Overview
England has abolished slavery, but not all are willing to let the lucrative trade go without a fight. The Royal Navy is charged with keeping the Caribbean clean of slavers, pirates and privateers… but even in the Navy, there are those who put profit before principle.