I think I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't really like steampunk. I'm in the middle of two steampunk series---Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate---and as much as I enjoy the writing and like the characters and find the world-building clever and innovative, I don't feel much eagerness to see what happens next. I finish each book and move on to the next mostly because I feel I should...and because I *do* like the characters and the world. But when I compare that anemic reaction to the vivid hunger I feel when deep in an equally well-written and respectable romance novel, more traditional fantasy, classic, or philosophical sci-fi...well.

So what is it about steampunk that I find unengaging? Can't be the sense of rewritten history, as I love Patricia C. Wrede's and Caroline Stevermer's efforts along those lines. It might be the pseudo-Victorian elements---that's certainly not my favorite era---but I do enjoy classics and romance novels from that time period, and I adore those elements in Diana Wynne Jones' books. So, might it be the science?

I'm not a terribly scientific person, that's true, but I have an idle interest in biology and medicine and physics. So books that play around with probability engines or rely heavily on flora and fauna or dip into time travel or prophecy---those, I tend to find immediately fascinating. But steampunk seems full of dirigibles and excess clockwork and inefficient mechanisms or tools, and there are octopi everywhere---but only symbolically, which makes me sad, since real octopi would only liven things up---and the end result seems chilly and impersonal...so much clockwork with too little heart, even when the books make me laugh, even when I enjoy the characters.

Do any of you delight in steampunk? Is it just the visuals and the pip-pip-cheerio humor and reserve that you like? Or is there something I'm missing?