Steam Book

While this was an ambitious novel with a unique concept, it failed to draw me in as much as I'd hoped. I never connected with the characters and felt this was one of those stories that was more about a concept or theme than it was about telling story. It was sorely in need of a good editor, as the book repeated the same ideas over and over until it was just like, enough already, we get the metaphor you're going for. I understand that this was written by a victim of the AIDS crisis at its peak and that gives the book a lot of poignancy. But this was also very much a first novel and saw the same indulgences we see in a lot of early works--namely, repetition and reliance on purple prose.