Our Lady of the Ice

Clarke (the Assassin’s Curse series) brings novelty and delight to steampunk Antarctica in this complex and lovely mystery. Eliana Gomez is the first female PI in Hope City, a domed city originally built to support an amusement park full of steam-powered automatons, and she wants nothing more than to emigrate to warmer climes. When recently widowed Lady Luna, an heiress with a secret, asks Eliana to recover some stolen documents, the fee is too good to turn down, even though it puts Eliana in the path of Hope City’s biggest crime boss and at odds with her boyfriend. With robots from the amusement park evolving their own intelligence and agendas, freedom fighters agitating more openly for Antarctic independence, and the increasing unreliability of the power supplying heat and light to the city’s main dome, Eliana’s need for a hasty departure quickly becomes urgent, even as the tasks required become riskier. The worldbuilding will sweep readers away, and the entertaining and compelling cast of characters will make excellent company on the journey. (Oct.)