The Parent's Guide to Software for Children Book

That Tom Olam fell into this fantasy Europe some time ago and is now in the high echelons of the Bavarian secret service does the book credit, respecting the reader more than many do. But then, Olam and the other major characters figure greatly into the fiction and metafiction of the Castle Falkenstein rulebook itself.

The story seemed determined to puncture its own momentum. For one written in such a lighthearted tone, it took a hundred pages to engage on all cylinders, and once it did, Lord Auberon of the Seelie Court popped in twice to save the heroes from certain doom. While this was thematically appropriate--the Seelie and Unseelie manipulate events in some unseen Great Game of this world--it was hard to assign significant value to the actions of the human participants when all was said and done.

The setting resembles something between Terry Pratchett and the Girl Genius comic minus that one's frenetic slapstick and persistent dark tone. Magic is mixed with a steampunkery (sometimes literally) in something that verges on the fairy-tale and doesn't have much depth.