This book had an amazing setup, introducing a corner of the world where the boundary between realities is weak, and lost objects from other worlds rain from the sky. The promise of a quasi-steampunk fantasy had me hooked. And the story did deliver a twist ending I hadn't seen coming. But the middle of the book dragged, as the story stumbled through several cliches:
- A forced, rapid romance between main characters.
- A prophecy.
- A girl previously billed as independent getting captured and/or attacked multiple times, and being literally carried to safety by a guy every time.
- One character becoming a plot-convenience dump of skills which they heretofore haven't shown the audience.
- One character nobly, but recklessly, going off on their own to spare their friends further pain, and inadvertently causing a lot more pain for everyone which was completely avoidable if the team had stuck together.
- A character who is billed as having superhuman strength is consistently the first to go down in a fight.

There was on additional pacing problem I experienced: The book opens with a map of the continent, and the quest revolves around getting Piper and Anna across the continent to the capital city of the Southernmost kingdom... But instead, the majority of the book takes places on a train. The details of the plot, and the natural purpose of a train, led me to /feel/ like the characters were meant to ride the train /to/ a destination. But the train is the destination, the characters never really leave the train. And that gut sensation of never reaching an end point, never finishing the quest... made me anxious. That same feeling as waiting for a delayed flight. I found myself rushing through the book just to see if the characters would ever get off the train, and take that sense of travel anxiety away. Knowing what I do now, that the book was meant to be more of a train heist story... Maybe with different expectations I could have enjoyed the book more. But I feel like the book did a disservice to itself focusing on the train for so long, instead of the meteor shower of misplaced objects mystery. The most intriguing part of the story was the part it left behind after the first few chapters.

It's a good, adventurous, surprising, creative book for its demographic. But I was left wanting more.