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The Court of the Air, Stephen Hunt

Oh, steampunk, why do you keep breaking my heart?  I want to love you, I do.  What’s not to love about steampunk?  In theory it should be everything good: Victorians, and flying machines, and (usually) fantasy elements too.  How can it be that I have never read a steampunk book and really loved it?

The Court of the Air is about two plucky orphans who are being chased by assassins, and they’re not sure why.  I got bored about 150 pages in and didn’t finish it.  There were several reasons for this.  First of all, there were dangling participles all over the place.  I can’t stand dangling participles.  Someone said “It’s alright,” which is fine in closed captioning on TV, but I feel like an editor should catch it in a book.  Secondly, there were too many made-up words with not enough explanation as to what they meant.  I tried to wait patiently for the explanation that was surely coming, but it didn’t.  Anyway I sort of subscribe to this rule about made-up words in books.  Finally, I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I didn’t really care.

Has anyone read a really good steampunk book?  I want one!  I just don’t know where to turn!