The Explosionist, Davidson. Yes. There were a number of features of this book that annoyed me: it’s nearly tiresome in the same ways that Jo Walton’s “Small Change” series was nearly tiresome (it is conceptually similar to Walton’s work, too); I discovered that I do not much care for the taint of outright fantasy in my historical speculative fiction; and there was this:

Dismissed, Sophie slipped upstairs just in time to avoid the inevitable awkward encounter with Miss Gillespie in the hall.

On the other hand, that sentence was the only time Davidson’s writing pulled me completely out of the story, and I found the characters believable enough, and some moments were quite well executed.