Review: Sand in the gears
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 27, 2012
Timepiece is an ambitious mixing of a gob of genres (Time-Travel, Alt-History, Steampunk, and ZombieMania) that nevertheless works smoothly.  Most of the settings are in 19th Century England, and the historical places and lifestyle had a convincing feel.Time-Travel is the featured genre (hence the title), and if I counted right, there are 10 chrono-hops to and from 6 locations.  Alt-History-wise, Heather Albano is not afraid to rewrite a timeline, and that's a delight for any reader of the genre.Coming up with believable Time-Travel rules and mechanisms is always a challenge (what happens if I go back in time and kill my parents before I was born?), but they are well-crafted here. The only clunky part was when the novel's self-imposed "you can't be in two places at the same time" rule was broken, but maybe the author painted herself into a corner, and we'll overlook this for the sake of an exciting, coherent storyline.The Steampunk parts (the constructs) were very good.  The "Wellies" didn't float my boat, but I'm not big on that genre.  Any novel that has French in it gets a thumbs-up from me.