Off Kilter: a Buffalo Steampunk Adventure
Author: Laura Strickland
Cover designer: Diana Carlile
Editor: Nan Swanson
James Kilter has few illusions about himself. Maimed in a boiler accident when young and routinely reviled by those he encounters, he’s no prize for any woman. He’s content working security for a good friend until he sees Catherine Delaney disembark from an airship one May afternoon. Her fragile beauty calls up all his protective instincts. But will she accept a monster as her defender?
Having traded her own safety to save her young sister, Cat Delaney has landed in the hands of a ruthless, wealthy man who intends to use her as a pawn to his avarice. Alone in a strange city, she has nowhere to turn except to the very man hired to keep her from running. Can she trust James, with his ruined face and crusader’s spirit? Dare she give him her heart?
James switched his gaze to the three people who had just disembarked, two men and a woman, and promptly lost all the breath in his body.
They made an unlikely enough trio—one of the men willowy and slender, clad in a splendid suit that screamed wealth, the other broad and squat if also well-dressed. James dismissed both of them almost immediately, for the third of the group gathered all his attention and focused it the way a mirror gathers light.
"That his doxy?" Latham persisted.
She wore one of the new tailored gowns of some thin fabric that fluttered around her slender body in the breeze off the water. Strawberry-blonde hair clustered round her head in a woven crown of curls and even from fifty paces away James could see the delicate perfection of her features. She stood between the two men like a doe trapped by wolves, and something about her demeanor bespoke the fact that she longed to flee. Suddenly James wanted to tear the two men apart with his bare hands, rescue her, change her world. He knew he could do it too; at that moment he could best anyone.
"Nice piece," Latham muttered. "Wouldn't mind the job of guarding that."
And just as abruptly, James wanted to tear Latham apart also, a visceral reaction that flowed from the core of his being outward to his fists.
"Button it," Tate snapped before James could. "That's our client, Mr. Sebastian Boyd—one of the wealthiest men you'll ever meet."
And with him, James amended in his head, the most beautiful woman he'd ever hoped to behold.
This book was very fun to read. I love the idea of the historical time period
mixed with futuristic components. The
book was well written and the characters drew me in. It is the first book I have read by Laura and
I really enjoyed it. The main male character,
James Kilter had a very rough childhood and was scared while working as a young
child. The scars are mostly on his face
and he is made fun of because of the way he looks. He works for a man named Tate who took him in
and gave him a job when no one else wood.
The main female character, Cat Delaney has been sold to a horrible man,
Boyd by her step-father. The man originally
wanted her little sister but Cat offered herself in place of her sister. Cat knew that he wouldn’t be nice to her but
she had no idea what he had in store for her.
She is to be a kept woman possibly given to other men as part of
business deals for a time may be given away completely to someone else with no
say in the matter. James is hired by the
man to make sure Cat doesn’t try to get away.
James was chosen to guard her because Boyd thought that Cat would never
do anything with a man who looked like James.
Too bad for Boyd that Cat is moved by how James acts not how he
looks. Cat could care less about the way
James looks on the outside she only cares about how he acts and treats
her. James believes there is no way that
he and Cat could have a future after all how could any woman willing want to
tie herself to a man who looks like him.
It was wonderful to see that appearances didn’t matter to Cat and that
she loved James anyway. I felt for James
so much. He had been teased about his appearance
for so long that he believed there was no way Cat could really love him. He kept coming up with excuses as to why she
didn’t really mean it when she said she loved him or was attracted to him. All the characters in this book were good. The story flowed well. I look forward to reading other books by
Laura in the future.
Born in Buffalo and raised on the Niagara Frontier, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. To her the spunky, tenacious, undefeatable ethnic mix that is Buffalo spells the perfect setting for a little Steampunk, so she created her own Victorian world there. She knows the people of Buffalo are stronger, tougher and smarter than those who haven’t survived the muggy summers and blizzard blasts found on the shores of the mighty Niagara. Tough enough to survive a squad of automatons? Well, just maybe.
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