The Queen of All Crows is a difficult book for me to review.  I did struggle a little to get through it but in fairness to the book and the author I think that’s down to me and not the book – hence why I’m having difficulties putting my thoughts down.  On the face of it this story has so many elements that I was excited about.  A gaslit empire with airships, a female who isn’t afraid to forge herself a place in a world where women are restricted and not appreciated for their minds or actions, an adventure out at sea with spies and pirates – come on.

The main character is Elizabeth Barnabus, as the story begins Elizabeth, in male disguise, is employed as the Scientific Officer aboard a whaling ship called Pembroke.  As the story unfolds it becomes apparent that Elizabeth is being employed by The Patent Office as a spy.  Elizabeth has her own agenda and obviously the Patent Office has theirs.  Elizabeth is looking for her dearest friend who went missing after her airship was shot down whilst flying over the Atlantic.  This is a world where many nations have banded together to form a peaceful alliance.  The Patent Office oversee the whole affair, primarily it seems by policing the creation of inventions that could be used to aid war and bloodshed.  When more airships are shot down the Patent Office needs eyes in territories that they are forbidden entry to and Elizabeth/Barnabus needs a way of entering an environment which she is similarly forbidden entry to.

I don’t really want to say too much more about the plot but I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that the pirates of the story are females, women who have escaped their lives to create something new for themselves, a world unrestricted by petticoats and polite manners.

There are a lot of intriguing elements to this book.  I loved the time spent at sea – and to be clear, that’s a lot of time.  I think Elizabeth is a great character who I loved.  She actually has real determination, she’s brave and caring and she is relentless in her search to find her friend, in fact she takes tremendous risks to do just that.

So, why did I struggle a bit with this one?  Well, the plot felt a bit vague to be honest.  The thrust of it really is Elizabeth saving her friend and I think my issue with that was that I didn’t really know either of them well enough to really sink into the story.  I know that there have been three books from this world already and I also understand that this is the start of a new series but I wonder whether I would have felt myself more invested if I’d read the other series first.  The other thing was, as much as I love this idea of a whole boatload of women becoming pirates, shirking their restricted lives, banding together to break free – I felt like their world needed a bit more building up.  Don’t get me wrong, there was some detail but I felt that it was a little skimmed over.

Overall, although I had a few issues with this book I certainly wouldn’t discourage others from reading.  I feel that I was having a bit of a reading go-slow for a couple of weeks in December and that probably also contributed to my mood in some ways.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.