This is such a breath of fresh air in a genre that I usually find drab and boring. It is such a good mix of speculative and realistic problems while focusing on great character development over a relatively short period of time. I didn't know when I started this that it was part of a series but I'm so glad to is because there is so much of this world to explore and I'm eager to see more of it. It is great to have a non-European centered steampunk story that has a healthy dose of "lead character learns that maybe he's a bit more of a misogynist than he realizes and has to fix that." I also really loved the monster and the way the book resolves. There's so much to this, I could see it making a fantastic Netflix series because you could explore so much of this world and probably never run out of possible stories to tell.