When Cedar Hunt agrees to protect and guide his party from Hallelujah, Oregon across the western landscape he includes himself as one of the dangers, especially the day he came back to himself as a man with blood on his lips and a dead man at his feet. Still, there were greater dangers waiting and as long as crack-shot Rose Small keeps a gun close by and ready to train on Cedar, they will get along well enough.

They are riding east to return Mae Lindson to her witch sisterhood before the spell they set on her drives her mad, hoping they will have a cure for the beast rising up in Cedar and his brother Wil. Rose Small is looking for adventure and eager to see the rest of the world, no longer welcome in the only town she can remember as home.

Cedar has also agreed to sniff out parts of the Holder for the mysterious and chancy Madder Brothers. They could be good allies when faced with danger or their infernal machines could cause more trouble than they started with. Still, the Holder is a weapon of uncertainty and great power, better left in the hands of those without desire to rule the world. The Madder brothers are far too intrigued with their gears and gyros to rule anything.

Nothing could have prepared them for what they find in the town of Vicinity. People dead in their homes missing various organs and body parts with the smell of Strange laying heavy on the air.

Devon Monk continues the adventure started in Dead Iron with book two in her Age of Steam series. TIN SWIFT continues the story of characters we've already met and adds a new level of enticement by exploring the world of the sky pilots gathering glim from above the clouds. We also are introduced to a new villain who has joined forces with an otherworldly harbinger of the Strange.

Monk has the true gift of storytelling, inhabiting her world with twists of language and Victorian sensibility while keeping readers a bit off balance and eager for the next chapter. The Age of Steam series is solidly steampunk infused with touches of romance and echoing horror. If you are new to the steampunk genre it may be a learning experience but with Devon Monk's skillful world building and the true notes she strikes with all her characters it works, it most definitely works.