Pilgrim of the Sky

Steampunk fiction podcaster Barron (The Aldersgate Cycle) misses the mark in her print debut, a story of alternate realities and battling demigods dragged down by heavy-handed detailing and flat characterization. After a portal between worlds opens in Boston, Maddie Angle, a grieving art history student, awakens in the body of Mattie Roth, a sexually aggressive, opium-addicted version of Maddie called a twain. Maddie’s quest to locate her vanished lover could have been a dazzling adventure. Unfortunately, Barron relies on repetitive expository dialogue, and by the time the plot has been explained to Maddie yet again, readers will wonder whether she is altered by her new opium habit or merely dense. Efforts to bring the world to life fall similarly flat, as inorganic descriptions of a balloon-suspended mansion and numerous corsets fail to capture steampunk’s hallmark anachronistic anarchy. (Dec.)