She manages to pull some of those well enough but you need a lot of experience to pull them all off and Cato misses that. It almost feels as if she had a checklist and she had to tick things off. And Cato proceeds to hit us with every cliche you can think of - a missing princess that suddenly reappears, a dashing hero that is Octavia's biggest enemy but love will prevail, characters named for a distinctive characteristic of them, am enemy that wants her death, a good guy that wants her death, a betrayal and new friendships. Except we already know that this won't happen - or there will be no novel after all.
And in that world Octavia goes on a trip to her new life and job - by boarding an airship and expecting a pretty uneventful trip. Not everything is in the names after all. For some reason Cato finds it needed to rename known concepts with new names - which could have worked if she had also added some new properties. Unfortunately for her she is born in a world divided by a war, with technological advances used to advance the war. And our protagonist is one of the most gifted ones to have ever been born - Octavia Leander. The heart of the novel is the fantasy component - the medicians (healers) draw their magic from the Lady and help people using magic, herbs and prayers (or something close enough to that) to heal people. However if we exclude that part of the novel, it is actually a pretty good read. Why she needed the last piece is beyond me and the relationship does not work at all - nor are any of the romantic scenes written in any convincing way. Beth Cato could not decide what genre she would like to write into so ended up with a mix of a not so bad steampunk novel, a decent fantasy one and a mediocre romance novel.
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