Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Steampunkish YA one-volume quest fantasy. It took me a while to twig that this was actually supposed to be a YA book, since that wasn't mentioned anywhere on the dustjacket (apart from the detail of our heroes being early teenage orphans), but once I shifted gears to that I could enjoy it.

He has some amazing ideas, but he's too clumsy about executing a lot of them - the 'clever' similarities to Victorian history look more like lazy copying, and his characterization doesn't live up to his worldbuilding. The world is filled with fun, amusing one-note characters.