The Stowaway Debutante
Tales of the Captain Duke Book 1
By Rebecca Diem
Number of Pages: 103
Date Started: March 28, 2017
Date Finished: March 28, 2017
Synopsis: (From Amazon)
Airships, pirates, and hidden identities…
When Clara dreamed of running away to seek her own adventures, she never imagined that a chance encounter with the legendary Captain Duke might set her life on an entirely different course.
Armed with her wit and charm, Clara can usually talk her way out of any troubles. But first, she has to get back to solid ground…
—
Clara stole a quiet breath of relief when the loud man’s boots retreated toward the stairwell. She could hear the other two moving about the cargo hold, and hoped that her own thudding heartbeat would not betray her position.
She quickly thought through her options: Could she bribe them? Should she fight? Could she run? She made herself as small as possible and waited, every instinct on high alert. The lighter pair of footsteps was getting closer.
A shuffle. A step. He must be less than four feet from her, only the crate she huddled against blocking her from his view. When his voice called out, the blood froze in Clara’s veins.
“Hey, look over here!”
Review:
Lately I’ve been quite into steampunk and gaslamp fantasy. This did hit that niche, but, there was very little plot involved in this novella. There wasn’t a moment when one was truly worried for the characters. Though entertaining, Clara is very much a Mary Sue, naturally taking to every new task assigned to her. The relationships are quite unrealistic, with everyone taking to Clara, despite her reluctance to explain why she’s run away.
The Tales of Captain Duke could likely be condensed to “The Tale of Captain Duke”, with subsections of the three different stories in the trilogy. Given how short the novella is, and how bare the plot appears, it would have been much nicer, and more cost efficient to the reader, to have all three in one, especially for the print book price.
Author Biography: (From Amazon)
Rebecca Diem is the author of the steampunk adventure series Tales of the Captain Duke.
She grew up in a far-off land known as Chatsworth, ON. It was surrounded by hills and forests and streams and strange metal beasts that tore through the landscape leaving iron in their wake.
Then one day she started to write it all down…
Amy S. Brown 