This is a beautiful middle-grade book, extremely steampunk (which was the reason I picked this up in first place)

This review was written by jv poore for Buried Under Books, with huge thanks to North Star Editions for the Advance Review Copy.

I just love everything about this book and I cannot wait to give my copy to my favorite classroom library.

But she’s no fool, so she is willing to let Robert and Malkin assist in her quest to obtain the elusive perpetual motion machine and to keep it safe from the heinous hybrids and whoever they are working for.Ĭogheart could be categorized as an epic action-adventure and that would be accurate but there are also some subtle, yet intriguing, conversations that provided unique points to ponder. When we finally meet Lily, and she pulls her little nose out of her beloved penny dreadful, we see a young lady that needs no protecting. One pair wants to protect Lily and provide comfort, the other is after the Professor’s greatest invention. Creepy-Mirror-Eyes Scary-Face (not his real name) and his equally alarming pal are popping up everywhere and it soon becomes obvious that the four share the same goal but for very different reasons. Robert and Malkin are indeed an unlikely duo, but it is apparent that they must work together to get to Lily, because they are definitely being pursued. With a watchful eye, Robert realized the fox was a mechanimal and impulsively sought him out to see if he could be of assistance. The teen-aged boy living above Townsend’s Horologist’s was having trouble sleeping and he spied the fox from his window. Slinking and thinking, Malkin has no idea he has been spotted. He must get a message to John’s daughter, Lily, but even a creature as clever as he cannot make that journey alone. Professor John’s airship was attacked and it seems the sole survivor is Malkin, the mechanimal fox that serves as family pet and pseudo-protector. It has to be hard for a young reader to step away from this fast-paced, perilous plot because as an adult, I found myself hurrying through a chore or four so that I could get back to the search for the oh-so-secret cogheart. Set in the skies above and the streets running through London, this scintillating story of clockworks, mechanimals, hybrids and humans is the book that will keep kids reading well past bed-times.

Cogheart author