I received an advanced reader's copy of The Clockwork Scarab ages ago, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. I remembered being intrigued by the overall premise—young female relations of Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker taking on a mystical mystery in a steampunk London. It sounded like fun. I finally cracked the cover and dove in but I found myself struggling to stay as interested as I would have liked.
The overall premise is intriguing. The development left me wanting more. The story is presented in first-person narration by Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes as they pass the storytelling narrative back and forth between one another from chapter to chapter. The alternating narrative does help with the sometimes uneven delivery of plot elements since jumping from one perspective to another (often within different locations and with different knowledge) explains why we get unsteady introductions of information and plot points.
We learn that the Stoker family is actually a bloodline of vampire hunters and that Miss Stoker is a sort of hunter in training, still working her way up to being a full Slayer. Interestingly, it seems that her brother, Bram Stoker, isn't quite as involved in the realm of the supernatural. He is merely writing what he considers to be fiction. Meanwhile, Miss Holmes is the niece of Sherlock Holmes, who is definitely a real character and not fiction. And although Miss Holmes has shown that she has intelligence and deductive skills, she is still relegated to being kept apart from all things Holmesian.